John said: “I came baptizing you with water, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” We who baptize in the name of Jesus still use water. The question is whether we are baptized with the Spirit.

I was 8. Slightly fearful, but feeling secure, for I was at church – a place I’d been quite a bit, even at the age of 8. But I was in a part of the church I had never seen, and with men I knew, but who weren’t my parents. I was in baptismal preparation room. My parents were down in the sanctuary, waiting for this momentous event – the baptism of their first child. I remember walking into that strange room, being shown a cubicle. I was given a small white well-starched cotton robe. I was told to put it on after I took everything else off. I remember the strange sensation of taking off my clothes at church. I put the robe on and I remember sheepishly coming out of the stall, seeing the preacher smile, and hearing him ask: are you ready? I remember the odd feeling of stepping down into the pool – stepping into waist deep water, at church. I can’t recall whether the water was cold or warm – which makes me think it must have been warm. I remember the words, and then little else. I don’t remember coming up out of the water or going back to change, or the rest of the service – not even the sermon. I know I lived through it, because I’m standing here.

Some weeks earlier I had asked about Jesus and this salvation I was hearing about. I was told that sin needed forgiveness and so I prayed for it. I didn’t have any problem knowing I was a sinner. The greater problem was believing that the God of the universe really loved this sinner. I still have occasional issues with that one – most of us do. But I visited with the preacher in his office, he was sure that I understood the basics of the gospel – which indeed any child can. We do wrong, God demonstrates his love for us, and gives us his forgiveness, in Christ. We can learn it early, but we spend a lifetime figuring out what it means.

Mark recounts this story to emphasize at the outset of his gospel: Jesus is different. His baptism looked like John’s – same river, same water, same method – but with Jesus it was different. When he was baptized the Holy Spirit showed up – and afterward his baptisms and those in his name would be done in the present by the HS.

Here’s Baptism 101 in a nutshell. What happens in the big tub is a symbol. A symbol is a small thing that stands for a large thing – a normal thing that stands in for an abnormal thing, a concrete thing that stands in for an abstract thing. It’s like a picture. In this case it is a picture of what has happened, and is happening, in our lives. There is nothing magical there. Nothing glorious in a human sense – just glorious in a Divine sense. Glorious in the way that the dirty manger was glorious, glorious in the way that the stinky stable was glorious. Glorious in what it represents, not in what it is.

And so if it is a picture, it’s a picture of what? Of two things primarily. The first was emphasized by John: purity (we use water to get clean – I, like most of you, took a shower with water today – I’ve heard of people in the desert using sand – doesn’t sound pleasant…). The second was what Jesus brought: immersion in the Spirit (the meaning of the Greek word baptiso: to immerse). We immerse ourselves into the identity of Christ – and we identify with his love.

So a natural question for us: do we need this picture? Can’t we repent, accept the Spirit’s work in our lives with out the messy symbol of baptism?
Let me answer that with a question: “Does the baby Jesus need the manger?”

Jesus could have been placed anywhere. Any crib, would do. But the manger is a picture of his human and humble origins, and that picture has spoken to humans though 2,000 years. It communicates an essential element of our Christian faith: God was in Christ, Christ was a humble human.

There are some pictures we don’t want to live without. Can you live without pictures of you spouse, kids, parents, loved ones? Of course – but why? The picture is no substitute for the real thing, but its sure good to have when they aren’t around. Baptism is no substitute for living in the Spirit. But it is a step towards saying: I want to live a better life and so I want to be immersed in the principles and person of Christ.

So there I was standing in that pool, in front of a group of people I had known my entire life. And a man from Missouri, a former president of Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar, pushed my skinny cotton-robed body under the fluoride water of Guthrie, Oklahoma. What a mess. Though I don’t remember coming out of the water – obviously I did. I came out, dried off. Put my clothes back on.

No dove. No voice from heaven. No feeling of immediate holiness. No sense that I was now a super-saint. There were no thunder bursts, lightning strikes, the pews didn’t quake and the lights didn’t flash. There was just the satisfaction of knowing I did what was right. Where was the Spirit?

Not in my feelings of ecstasy, not in a halo on my head, not in a voice. Was God there? Clearly there, like everywhere. But here is another mystery of our faith: God uses the mundane, banal, simple, messy, even inglorious things of this earth to bring about God’s glory on earth.

Tom was a father of 3 boys. A good and committed Christian, but at a retreat on the coast of Normandy, this man realized that he wanted to be baptized. So out we went, some 100 who had gathered for this retreat, and we went to the beach a Normandy – better known for other kinds of immersion – and in the cold waters of the Atlantic I baptized this Father of 3 boys. I did the dunking, the Spirit did the baptism.

I thought that was cold, until I baptized a young man in the swift rivers of Switzerland. The waters that come off the glacier near Grindelwald are nor warmed by a nice baptismal heater. But they are designed to make for a memorable baptism experience.

Do you remember your baptism? In many denominations this is a silly question. But we Baptists can ask it. Of course I’m ecumenical, I don’t discount other baptismal experiences – in fact I can even appreciate the beauty of infant baptism, of letting families promise to raise them in the Lord – but I do think we Baptists do it better. It can be messy, maybe even embarrassing, but it can also be life saving, if it comes from a decision to live better, by living in Christ.

Just as a picture reminds us of important people, so baptism reminds us of our desire to live clean lives and lives immersed in Christ.

Bathing is an anticipatory event. We bath, or shower, because of what we are going to do. I shower in the morning, knowing I’ve got a day of office work, hospital visits, counseling appointments – and as my Father in law says, if you got to smell, you might as well smell good.

We seek to get clean, in anticipation of what the Spirit, of what God’s Spirit, will do in and with our lives. John knew repentance was just the start. We can repent every moment of every day, but if we don’t have the grace of God’s Spirit, the impulse of his love, the joy of his peace, the hope of God’s forgiveness – all we’ve got is self-righteousness. And God knows the world has plenty of that. The world does not have enough people seeking to immerse their lives in the person and principles of Christ.

The world would say that my baptism some 30 years ago was nothing more than a young boy deciding to do what his community wanted. End of story. But, the story never ends until God closes the book. And in this story, God is still at work. Seeking to scrub off the dirt, and seeking to push me under those Holy waters of his Spirit. And in this sense every outgrowth of my life as a Christian minister – every hospital visit, counseling appointment, food pantry day, Sunday School lesson, committee meeting – is fed by the waters of my baptism. A baptism symbolized in a finite fiberglass tub, but one which represents the infinite flow of God’s love.