Cold Well Water

Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:21, 22
January 7, 2007

At one point during my college years at Appalachian State University, a friend of mine suggested that I should ask a certain young woman for a date. He felt like she and I would get along real well. I knew the girl by name and face, knew she was majoring in music, and since she had a bright personality and was cute, I thought I’d give it a shot. I approached her in the music building after Men’s Glee Club got out and suggested that we go for a bite to eat and maybe a movie.

She sat down on a bench there in the lobby of the music building, crossed her legs, cocked her head a little and said, “Drexel, are you a born again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

This threw me off guard because I didn’t know if she meant yes or no. I decided it mean “maybe,” depending upon whether or not I was saved. I hate to admit that I’d already lost some of my enthusiasm for going out with her, but I chose to answer honestly.
“Yes,” I said, “I’m a Christian.”

She said, “That’s not what I asked. I mean, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, entered into the waters of salvation, and do you have the Holy Spirit?”

Now I was beginning to wonder how I could tastefully withdraw the invitation, but being a philosophy major, I couldn’t resist the urge to engage in a bit of theological debate. I pointed out that I didn’t think any human being could “have” the Holy Spirit. You could accept God’s gifts, follow God with all your heart, and spend hours singing God’s praises, you could be in touch with God, have a relationship with God, and be unusually open to God’s guidance, but there wasn’t any way for a mortal being to “have” the immortal, timeless Creator in any way approaching possessing him. It was the other way around, I insisted. God has us and either we cooperate with God or we don’t.”

She uncrossed her legs and sat forward on the bench and rummaged around in her book back from which she extracted a rather large Bible. She flipped open some yellowed, dog-eared pages and found this passage from Acts. “See there,” she said, “Those guys in Samaria had been baptized into Jesus but it was after Peter and John went to see them that the Holy Spirit came on them. After they were baptized they didn’t have the Holy Spirit.”

“That’s not what that means,” I said.

“That’s what it says,” she said, rather sharply. “And if that’s what it says, that’s what it means.”

I didn’t have an answer to that. On the surface of things it looked like that’s exactly what happened. The Holy Spirit came AFTER the baptism, but I also remember thinking that her interpretation didn’t feel right. I didn’t know how to express it or support it, but I was convinced that where she was coming out was not where the passage meant to take her. Interesting that I’ve forgotten that girl’s name – which may very well have been her intent – but I never forgot that issue.

And now, I’m absolutely convinced that she, and her denomination, had ripped this passage from its context and intent. In fact, I’ve wrestled with this passage in seminary and since and this is how I deal with it. I asked myself, why would the Holy Spirit wait for Peter and John to do some ritual? Was God’s spirit NOT present when these new believers were baptized? We believe that there is no place in all of Creation where God is not present. Do we have here in Acts some left-over vestiges of primitive religion in which God doesn’t show up unless the shaman is present saying the right religious phrases with the right cadence?
Or could it be that these new believers were attracted to the freshness of the teachings of Jesus, to the enthusiasm of his followers, and to the newness and meaning that had come to them because of this burgeoning movement? What they didn’t understand was the context. Receiving the Holy Spirit affirms what Jesus came to proclaim – it’s not about us, it’s about God. Everything Jesus did and said pointed to God. His whole ministry was devoted to redirecting people to God.

Initial enthusiasm for Jesus needs to be followed up by placing Jesus in the context Jesus insisted on being put in – he came to fulfill everything religion was meant to promote. God had an intention for Creation and when you look at Jesus you see how God intended for humans to live, think, act, and react. In Jesus you see God’s priorities lived out.

Also, when you accept Jesus, you affirm that nothing in your life is exempt from his standards. Why is that? God’s intent for all of Creation rides on Jesus.

Notice the language, too, in verse 17: after Peter and John had instructed them and prayed with them, they RECEIVED the Holy Spirit. He’d been there all along. God wasn’t more present to those believers; rather, those believers were more present to God. They finally recognized what had been there for them all along and along with that came a fuller understanding of the implications of their baptism.

Now, no one had less of a need for religious ritual than Jesus. Whatever we do in our religious lives ideally attempts to reconnect us with God. In fact, that’s what the word “religion” means. It means “reconnect.” Jesus didn’t need to reconnect with God – no one was more unified with God than the one who said, “The Father and I are one.”

But Jesus got baptized. Why was that if he had no need? I believe Jesus was affirming the reality baptism symbolizes.
I’ll get a bit doctrinaire from a Baptist standpoint here. Why do we immerse when other congregations “sprinkle?” The symbolism of being immersed (which the Greek word means) is rich. Not one part of our bodies is untouched by the water. This symbolizes that not one part of our lives is untouched by the Spirit of Christ. This, at least, is our intent. It also means that we are buried with him in his death and raised to walk with him in his life. But think of that: we are soaked in Christ. Christ should be dripping off of us as we live. We should leave a trail of Christ like the water following us out of the baptistery.

In 1977, I spent a week in Rome, Italy working with a FMB missionary who ran a media center. Stanley Crabb and I have remained friends and at the CBF convocation this past summer in Atlanta Stanley and I remembered that occasion. Stanley had been showing me around Rome, taking me through back streets and alleys as only a twenty year resident of the city can. We went into the beautiful church where Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of Moses is kept. As Stanley liked to do, we edged into the periphery of a tour group and were led through a door into a little chapel behind where Moses sat.

The priest leading the tour pointed to a large basin occupying about half the floor in the space of the little sanctuary into which we’d entered. In the middle of the basin was a baptismal font. One of the tourists asked why the font stood in the middle of what looked like a giant Jacuzzi. The priest pointed to a trough that led from a sealed up hole in the wall of the chapel. “Back during the 3rd and 4th centuries when this chapel was first occupied for worship, they’d bring water into the basin from that trough and fill this basin. Then they’d immerse the baptismal candidates.”

The tourist was incredulous. “You mean they were dunked?”

The priest laughed. “Yes, that used to be the way everyone was baptized, but then the Barbarians sacked Rome, destroyed the aqueducts and water was much harder to come by. So, according to the ancient teachings of the church fathers, they went with the next best thing and began just dripping water on their heads to symbolize their belonging to Christ.”

It was in seminary that I first read the teaching the priest was referring to. It’s called “The Didache,” or “The Teaching.” It was a document that instructed early church leaders on proper church procedures. This is what that ancient manual says about conducting baptism:

And concerning baptism, baptize this way: Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water. But if you have no living water, baptize into other water; and if you cannot do so in cold water, do so in warm. But if you have neither, pour out water three times upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

God saves, not the water itself. Also, the manner in which one is baptized does not save, nor taint a person. To believe such would be to think in terms of magic rather than faith. The symbolism of being immersed (which the Greek word means), though, is rich. When you’re “dunked” not one part of your body is untouched by the water. This symbolizes that not one part of our lives is untouched by the Spirit of Christ. This, at least, is our intent. It also means that we are buried with him in his death and raised to walk with him in his life. Primarily, though, through baptism, we proclaim with our very bodies that we hold nothing back from God, we accept and receive the reality that nothing is exempt from God’s authority, and that we are in fact totally and completely immersed in the presence of God. Baptism doesn’t make this happen. It only recognizes it, and potentially opens us to a new and more powerful mode of life.

The fact of the matter is, we’re immersed in God from the moment we’re conceived. As the Apostle Paul said to the Greek philosophers in Athens, we live, move, and have our being in God. There’s no way to be out of this presence. When we decide to follow Jesus, we decide acknowledge and live by the fact that God’s dreams are going to be our dreams. In a huge sense, the act of baptism is our confirmation of that reality. It recognizes that God’s reality is all over us.

At Muldraugh Baptist Church in Muldraugh, Kentucky – my first church, which you’ve heard a bit about – we had a rather stress inducing combination when it came to baptism. Our baptistery took over 36 hours to fill, normally. Now, you’d assume that this meant that a couple of days before a scheduled baptism, you’d tell the sextant to turn on the water. The only problem was that due to some quirk of plumbing, sometimes the water would suddenly start gushing rather than trickling and if you weren’t regularly checking back with the rising level, it could overflow into the choir loft. This wouldn’t have been a huge problem if we’d had a reliable sextant, but the sextant we had was a ministry in and of himself. He had a penchant for hanging around the local taverns and sometimes, he’d forget to show up for work. The deacons and I were trying to show him a bit of compassion by having him watch over the facility, but sometimes that would cost us. One Sunday, it cost a bunch of baptismal candidates.
I had told Homer to fill the baptistery on Thursday before a service in which we were planning to baptize 9 young persons – 8 girls between the ages of 9 and 11 and one 13 year-old boy. I then went out of town and came back on Saturday night. I didn’t think to check the baptistery.

Sunday morning came and I went into the sanctuary. Upon entering, right away I knew that Homer had forgotten. There was no humid feel to the air which always indicated water in the pool up there underneath the cartoonish painting of the Jordan River. I ran up the aisle and looked in. Sure enough, the baptistery was dry as Homer wasn’t. I felt that familiar grip of anxiety in my stomach. Nine kids getting baptized meant that nine families with an average of 4 ½ family members apiece would be in worship in just three hours. That meant an extra 40 ½ people would be in worship that morning. There was no way to cancel the baptism for lack water. These people also knew nothing of the Didache, so I couldn’t just pour water over their heads. These kids had to be dunked.

So, I ran to the parsonage where we lived next door to the church building. (This, incidentally, was the ONE time in my entire pastoral ministry that I was grateful to be living in a parsonage.) I grabbed the garden hose, ran it across the driveway, up the front steps, up the center aisle and right into the baptistery. In one hour, the baptistery was full of water, right out of a Kentucky limestone well, and it must have been all of 50 degrees.

It had to have been the coldest water I’d ever experienced, colder, even, than the glacial lake in Austria I’d been in. I was shaking as I looked up at the baptismal candidates gathered in their thin, little white robes at the top of the ladder. They were excited. I warned them that the water wasn’t all that warm. Later, as each descended into the pool, their little eyes bugged out, they became stiff as boards, and I had a rather difficult time getting them to bend enough to get them under. Each of the young girls took it well, though, letting out faint gasps that sounded disturbingly similar to the gauks one makes just before throwing up.
The 13 year-old boy, however, was different. The moment his bare foot hit the water, he let out a shocked “Uhhhh!” I said the words familiar to all baptisms and placed my hand behind his head. He looked at me with wide eyes and shook his head. I tried to dip him but he wouldn’t bend. We sort of skittered sideways and back and it occurred to me that to the congregation it looked rather like I was trying to mug him. So, I placed my foot behind his heels and tripped him. He fell under the water, and as I was pulling him up, he suddenly lashed out with his arms as if trying to take flight. He blew out a cloud of water as he exclaimed, “Oh GOD, that’s cold!!!” Water was already sloshing from our virtual altercation, and a powerful wave broke over the glass at the front of the baptistery, soaking the basses in the last row of the choir loft. The boy rocketed up the ladder out of the baptistery. The congregation was already more than a little amused and now, overt laughter spread through the sanctuary. No one would forget that baptism.

Later, as I was receiving the vestibule review, Ed Carroll, chair of the deacons, and the owner of a permanent seat on the back row of the choir loft said, “Well pastor, that’s one baptism we all participated in!”

I’ve laughed about that every time I’ve thought about it since. But when you think about it, Ed had it truer than he thought. The fact is, we all participate in every baptism. Not one takes place without involving us all. Every time someone accepts Christ and decides to follow, the whole body of faith becomes stronger. That’s why the other major ordinance of our faith, communion, emphasizes the unity of the body of Christ. We’re all in this together – and it’s not about us, it’s about God.