January 12, 2025

Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire…”

John the Baptist was in many respects a precursor to Jesus. He was thought to be the prophet Elijah reborn. And he is revered in several religions, including Islam and the Baha’i faith. There is even one small religious sect, the Mandaeans of Syria, who consider John to be the last and most important prophet.

John is sometimes referred to as Saint John the Forerunner, as the man who heralded in the coming of Jesus. But John might also be described as the mentor of Jesus, the one who ushered him into the life of a prophet and preacher. And if John baptized Jesus, that leads us to an enduring religious question—what is the purpose of baptism?

Living out in the wilderness between Jerusalem and Jericho, John drew many followers. And these followers were baptized in the River Jordan. There are modern rules and traditions about how you are supposed to baptize someone, but it was likely an act patterned after the purification rituals of Judaism in the first century. This was intended as a means of washing away some moral form of pollution, like after touching a dead body or recovering from an affliction like leprosy or menstruation—yes, this perfectly natural event required a ritual response according to the Book of Leviticus.

The water for purification had to be of a certain type. It was to be either running water, as from a river, or it had to come directly from the sky as rainwater. You could not draw the water from a well or take it from a lake, but you could use the ocean. In some cases, you sprinkled water on the person and in others it required full immersion.

A sacrament, like baptism, was defined by Augustine as an outward sign of an inward grace, that has been instituted by Jesus Christ. And even though the notion of baptism began with John, the sacrament of baptism is traditionally believed to have been instituted by Jesus.

To that end, Jesus provided a simple formula for the service, baptizing one in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That is where simplicity ends. Christians have adopted many idiosyncratic ways when it comes to baptism. The one constant is the invocation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Now this conversation may seem to be an odd one, calling out the three parts of the Holy Trinity, here of all places within a Unitarian church. We do not generally invoke the Trinity here, or so it might seem. Was not that the whole point of Unitarianism, to move beyond the notion of a Trinity? Well, actually no.

A debate over the Trinity was one aspect of Unitarianism’s conversation with its Puritan cousins. But Unitarians did not question what was included in the passage from the Gospel of Matthew, which is where the baptism charge may be found. Unitarians questioned what had been done with the idea of the Trinity, the rather confusing doctrine of three inseparable but distinct aspects of divinity, a God of three persons and only one substance. In a sense, the problem was not with a Trinity, but with the Trinity. The debate was over the Biblical interpretation of the Trinity, and of baptism, carved into theological stone by ancient scholars like Augustine.

At the heart of Unitarian thinking is a deep and abiding love of the question. The answer in many ways is just not as interesting. We seek and we find, and then we help others seek so they might find on their own. For each of us will find ourselves in different stages of the quest for any number of elusive answers. There would be no point in accepting a ready-made answer someone else discovered in his or her life. Because, strangely enough, those questions may seem very different depending on how far down the road one has gone. That is as true in one lifetime as it has been down the centuries. This appreciation of the questions of life extends to a Unitarian understanding of baptism.

If you were to go to a less Christian-oriented Unitarian church, there would be a service like baptism but one very different in character. It might be called a naming, for the name of a child would be announced and recognized in the congregation. It might be referred to as a dedication, welcoming the child into the church community. It would probably not be a baptism in the classic sense as it would not typically include a blessing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Whereas, here at First Church we do so.

One other point of clarification should be made about the word “christening.” The word “Christ” implies anointing, such as with oil, and this sort of blessing can be distinguished from the specific ceremony of baptism. The term christening may have arisen because of an ancient dispute about who should be baptized. Jesus spoke generically of baptizing the nations, meaning non-Jewish folks, but disagreements arose after his death about how old someone should be at the time of baptism.

Early Christians were mixed in their practices, sometimes baptizing just adults and at other times infants as well. Infant baptism became a requirement after Augustine wrote on his theories of Original Sin. This is the sin that supposedly came about when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. For Augustine, Original Sin attached to every person at the time of their birth. Under his theory, we are all born sinners before taking our first breaths. And anyone who died without receiving baptism, including an infant, would be excluded from heaven, from the presence of God. So, for reasons of eternal significance, infants had to be baptized.

But this understanding of baptism was questioned over time, questioned by various folks within the Protestant Reformation. For example, Martin Luther theorized that we are saved from sin by faith and faith alone. Given that faith is an active undertaking, it would make no sense to baptize a child before the age of reason. Yet Luther continued the practice of infant baptism. He suggested that baptism was the moment when divine grace was offered to a person, after which that person’s sins would no longer be imputed to him or her. I supposed that meant it was better to offer that chance early just in case reason took hold out of season. In other words, and I am just guessing here, Luther followed Augustine’s theories even when he did not believe them.

On the other hand, John Calvin thought that baptism was only of efficacy for the elect, meaning those who were already destined to be saved by God. One might quibble that if they were already elect, and therefore already saved, baptism was a ceremony without any purpose. But why would Jesus have stressed baptism if it were completely symbolic?

In the modern era, Baptists and Pentecostals generally only baptize adults. Such believer’s baptism is a later in life event, one that generally must be preceded by a saving moment, one in which the Holy Spirit descends upon a person. It can be marked by an ecstatic episode, one where you speak in tongues and fall to the ground. By the way, that is not a Unitarian notion of baptism. And again, if the ecstatic moment is the true mark of salvation, why did Jesus stress the importance of baptism?

One theory is that the term “christening” came about as a different sort of blessing for a “not actual” baptism. To christen was to grant a Christian name, a Biblical or religious name marking the child as Christian if not yet baptized. Does that mean naming your child something unique or modern would not have been accepted? Traditionally, yes. You had to give a child a name from the Bible or that was Biblically linked. No Emmas or Emilys need apply. This is one reason for why middle names came into use, so that there is one more shot at an acceptably religious name while also allowing for more popular first names.

The naming ceremony celebrated in many Unitarian churches seems linked to this ancient dispute over baptism, which might be a surprise to some Unitarians. For Unitarians, this would make eminent sense–it suggests a believer embracing faith with full knowledge and an understanding of that undertaking. One of the primary virtues for a Unitarian is reason, a scarce mental discipline much in demand these days.

At this church, we christen as this history suggests. We recognize and name a person within the church community and set down that name in our church records. But we also baptize, using the specific formula from the Gospel of Matthew, with the addition of an explanation of our understanding of that blessing and those aspects of God. And we baptize children as well as adults.

Here is what I say, in case you were wondering: I baptize you in the name of our Father, as John baptized Jesus; I baptize you in the name of the Son, as one in fellowship with Jesus; and I baptize you in the name of the Holy Spirit, the power of God’s love for his children. 

Unitarians do not typically hold to the tradition that Original Sin taints the soul of every child born, barring them automatically from any hope of God’s salvation. Instead, sins come to us in our lives, not because of our birth. So, baptism does not serve to wipe away Original Sin. However, one might take the chicken soup approach to this – it couldn’t hurt.

Now if baptism is to be understood as an act of faith undertaken to enter consciously into a religious community, it does not make a lot of sense to baptize children, particularly newborns. They are not making decisions about anything, let alone matters of faith. They do not even have faith yet that when you hide something under a blanket that it does not disappear. So, faith in God will take some time.

Baptism within this church and churches like it represents a threshold event, a welcoming of a person and often a whole family into the congregation. It is a blessing, marking them as a member of this community of God and inviting them to follow the lessons of our teacher Jesus. As Jesus charged the disciples before he left them, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. Baptism is therefore a two-part sacrament, of initiation and teaching.

And we are not unique in that approach to baptism. One of the main leaders of the Reformation, Ulrich Zwingli, a 16^th century Swiss theologian, argued that baptism was symbolic. Christians are only saved through their faith rather than ceremonies or sacraments. And so, Zwingli, which is a truly fantastic name in my book, stripped down Christianity to its essentials, at least the essentials in his estimation.

This brings me back to one of my own theories, Caggiano’s Theorem of Theological Necessity, patent pending. Under my theory, when one is presented with any theological question, you first must determine whether the answer to that question is necessary to address some fundamental aspect of faith. Does it matter or is it of secondary concern? Is there any way of knowing if the answer we select is correct? And, would anything change by answering the question one way versus another? Theological necessity requires us to determine what is necessary within our relationship with God, one another, and the world around us.

And one of my related rules of thumb is this: if Jesus did not talk about it, it is probably not that important. Strangely enough, Jesus did not talk about a lot of things that we spend way too much time wrangling over in the present. So, my hand dandy rule would also save us a lot of time.

How does a Unitarian baptism unfold here at First Church? First, we gather to bless the child of God before us, regardless of their age, and to lift our prayers to God on their behalf. Second, parents and godparents, witnesses and loved ones, will literally stand up on these children’s behalf. As they rose up on that day, so must they rise on the days moving forward to see and to care for the religious lives of the children in their care or the new members in their midst. Lastly, but also importantly, we as a church on that day welcome this child, and all children, into a church community, one that will hopefully serve as an example of how to live a good and righteous life in the service of God and his people.

And we are to teach them every day, in sometimes unexpected ways. They see the quiet kindnesses we share with one another, and they see the petty jealousies we sometimes harbor. They hear the loving, friendly words we have for one another, and they hear the spiteful, unkind words we sometimes have to offer on the car-ride home. They learn about hard work and good manners from how we live our lives, and they on occasion learn laziness and bad behaviors from how we choose to act when we think no one is there to see. They see and hear and learn so much from the men and women in their lives, and from the people they see just on the weekends.

A baptism in this way is a blessing of a child—the blessing of a person—and baptism is also a charge to a community of people. The parents, godparents, family and friends must live and act in a manner worthy of imitation because they will all be imitated. We will all be imitated.

Baptism serves as a threshold into a community and that community bears a deep and ancient responsibility to care for those who gather within its confines. And it is not just a Sunday morning undertaking. It is not just for the parents, godparents or for any of us. Baptism is an occasion for remembrance as well as a sacred undertaking. To hear those words, I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, should remind us of what it means to be a community of people serving God and one another. Baptism does not make any person good, let alone perfect, but it is nice to be reminded to be good occasionally.

Children look around to the adults, the men and women in their lives, and those children most surely pay attention, as I am frequently reminded by my own children. They listen and learn, so be worthy lessons for them to study. Remember the simple message of Jesus: Love God and love each other. Very simple, but not always very easy to remember, let alone do, all the time.

This should not be taken as a request for personal perfection, for that is not the nature of this world or any of our lives. The promise of baptizing a child is a hope that each and every day those gathered around will try to do their best and to teach what they know to these little lights amongst us. To lead a small child toward goodness is a blessing. May each of us be such a blessing. Amen.