Mark 1:7-11; Acts 19: 4,5

The mark of the Holy

Jesus comes to John to be baptized.  It is an act of purification, but also an act of humility.  The Great One is baptized by an eccentric prophet.  It becomes a moment of deep spiritual meaning as those gathered there here the voice of God affirming Jesus.  The Spirit of God and the Baptism of Jesus so become associated.   However, we cannot completely blame the first converts to the new Christian faith for being a little bit confused.  They were baptized in the name of John and Paul has to rectify this by re-baptizing them in the name of Jesus according to the book of Acts, for with Jesus comes the Holy Spirit.  Friends, as last week we saw how Jesus was part of creation from the beginning, now we see Jesus and the Holy Spirit as inseparable. So here we have the concept of the Trinity even more clearly.

That people get confused about Baptism is not a new thing.  In certain traditions baptism and salvation cannot be separated, thus the baptism of premature infants.  In the Presbyterian tradition Baptism is important but not necessary for salvation.  Salvation is a gift from God through our faith.

Howard Mumma who served as visiting pastor at the American Church in Paris for a number of summers in the fifties recalls conversations with a visitor to his services by the name of Albert Camus (page 190, Conversations with Camus, Best Spiritual Writing 2001, HarperSanFrancisco). Camus was one of the most famous Frenchmen of his day and one of the prominent non-religious voices for existentialism.  He was the author of the book “the Stranger,” about a man who feels alienated from life in the French colonial town of Oran in Algeria.  (As an important footnote, this last week the French have been feeling very alienated from their own society after the murder many of the staff at a satirical magazine, supposedly carried by Algerians. The French are used to living in a country where there is complete freedom of speech.)   Camus asks a question about Baptism:”What is the significance of this rite?” Mumma answers:”Baptism is not necessarily a supernatural experience….The (MOST) important thing is not the heavens opening up or the dove or the voice.  Those are the externals…Baptism is a symbolic commitment to God…  Camus says:”…The reason I have been coming to church is because I am seeking. I’m almost on a pilgrimage-seeking something to fill the void that I am experiencing-and no one else knows.  Certainly the public and the readers of my novels, while they see that void, are not finding the answers in what they are reading.”  Friends, these are startling words from one of the most famous writers of the twentieth century.  He is attracted to Baptism as a mark of the Holy.  He is hungry for being rooted in the Holy and to belong to God.  But intellectually he doesn’t know how to make sense of it. This is true of many of us in a science and technology dominated society.  The soul is starved, but the mind is confused.

Simon Winchester is a geologist who wrote a book about the eruption of Mt. Krakatoa.  What he wanted to be however was a Navy Officer.  He went to the Britannia Naval College in Dartmouth in southwest England for his medical test and thought he had it made. Instead it turned out he was ineligible because he was suffering from Daltonism,  i.e. colorblindness.  This what he writes (Best Spiritual Writing 2001, A True Daltonic Dandy, p. 267/8): “I was destined…. to be so supreme a success that…by the age of fifty-five, ..I would be the commander of an aircraft carrier… I saw myself in crisp tropical whites, my cap heavy with gold braid, my manner calm and reassuring, issuing quiet orders for the mighty vessel to turn this way and that through the crowded seaways of some faraway tropic strait…I would bring order and style to troubled, distant waters.”   But he is shaken from his dream. He writes that “this reverie had come to an abrupt end. It had done so in an entirely unexpected way-with the loud thwack of a suddenly-slammed-shut spiral-bound book and an evil laugh from a cruelly amused naval doctor.”

Friends, Winchester had this idea of the mark of a man he craved: a naval officer’s uniform and command of a great ship in the great British maritime tradition.  He desperately wanted to belong to that fraternity of patriotic sailors, but this was to no avail.  He had to find his way somewhere else and did t so happily in the end. He found out that colorblind people are not distracted by camouflage and notice all kind of things that general population doesn’t.   Friends, at one point or another we all desperately want to belong to something we can never be a part of. In my case for a while, it was the medical profession.  For others it may be the cheerleading squad or the football team, or the freshmen class of a certain university, or a chamber of congress or a place called the oval office or some job others always seem to get.  But thanks to Christ we always belong to the saints, to the family of God.  We will always be a part of it.  And while there are many marks of accomplishments we crave that will never be available to us, Baptism, the mark of the Holy is available to us whenever we wish it to be.  And isn’t that the greatest mark of all according to our faith? We ALWAYS belong. Thanks be to God.