Spray On Baptism

(Preached at the Church of the Atonement, Westfield, MA on January 12, 2025)

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 In 1998, 2,000 people were baptized in Charlotte, North Carolina — by fire hose. “It’s not the water,” explained the pastor, “it’s the belief you have in it.”

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Then there was the preacher who used to refer to the water of baptism in every sermon that he preached. Every time! Even when he preached at clergy conferences he preached about baptism.The clergy got tired of it.  The next time he was invited to preach, they assigned him the text. Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The pastor read the text to the congregation and continued, “I’m sure many of you know that over three- quarters of the surface of the earth is covered with water. And that brings us to the topic of our sermon: the water of holy baptism.”

 

It was shiny, brand new off the lot judging by the dealer tags with that day’s date on them. “It” was a brand, spanking new, solid-white Hummer. The original Hummer made near the Studebaker museum in South Bend was discontinued when GM went broke in 2008.

 

People seem to be willing to wear the Hummer name.

 

The people who look into these things tell us that only 5% of four-wheel vehicles other than trucks are used off-road. The Hummer has 4-wheel steering so it can “crabwalk” over stuff like Priuses. The advertisement shows us a just-about-to-be-over-the-hill-junior executive piling the family into the Hummer over the river and through the woods to have a picnic at 9,000 feet next to their mud splattered four-wheeler. For those who never get closer to mud than driving oh, anywhere rural in a New England Spring, you can buy a spray-on mud decal. Called Sprayonmud for the low, low price of $12.95 you get a bottle of squirtonmud so your vehicle can look as if it had been somewhere manly. Oh, we do live in desperate times.

 

Maybe it was more real in Jesus’ time. Maybe. It is easy to have a picture of John the Baptizer and Jesus looking like they are in a 20th century movie like “O Brother Where Art Thou” which features a Southern baptism scene. The water is flowing and clean. The candidates for baptism are people as pure of heart as you can find. The preacher is ardent and if not convincing, at least loud. Down, down, down, they go into the crystal-clear Westfield River somewhere up in the Berkshire foothills. Up out of the water they come as the background singing swells, the congregation cries and one more soul is added to the roll called up yonder.

 

The problem is that this is a movie. Movies are, well, movies. In other words, good fakes, like spray on mud or tanks dolled up to look like cars. As far as I can tell, a lot of religiosity comes in a bottle that the users confuse with the hairspray right next to it in the cosmetics aisle. Pouffy hair and pouffy religion.

 

John the Baptist and Jesus were the real deal. So was the muddy creek they were standing ankle deep in. Jesus is not fake. Neither is John. John was so straightforward, if a little crazy, he couldn’t fake anything. In Matthew’s Gospel he tried to get out of baptizing Jesus. Jesus wouldn’t let him off the hook. Jesus said: “People won’t think this business of turning our will and our life over to the care of God by washing off the old life is real unless I do it too. You gotta baptize me.”

 

Here in the Episcopal Church, we are short on rivers. Short on fake too I’m proud to say. All we have ever insisted on is enough water so that people could tell it is actual water. We do not believe in trickle down baptism or mere dampening with a gentle mint-scented mist.

 

Our water comes out of the tap, just like all the rest of the water we use. But God turns the water into the water of baptism. If you change your mind about the fake mud on your Hummer, a little solvent and some elbow grease will wash it off. It was only movie mud anyway.

 

But this baptismal water won’t wash off. The membership it washes on us is permanent, more like a tattoo or even a water stain. The name we get is a Christian name and it won’t come off either. We are named for Jesus the Anointed one, Jesus the Christ. We are His—forever. Nothing, ever, can wash off this name, not death, not even the end of history.

 

GMC makes the Hummer EV 3X Omega Edition in Detroit and has an MSRP of $150,295 plus tax. The Hummer weighs in at 10,000 pounds, sports three electric motors totaling 1,000-horsepower and a 359-mile range. This behemoth goes from zero to 60 in 3 seconds making it the most likely vehicle in the world to kill pedestrians. In Europe you need a special driver’s license! It is marketed in a blatant example of “Greenwashing” the term used to transform an environmental and human disaster into an eco-trend. All 13,000 of them made in 2023 went out the door.

 

Baptism on the other hand is a whitewash. Baptism is a free gift from God. Like the Hummer it gets delivered; unlike the Hummer the only payments are a life lived in grace one day at a time.

 

Baptism begins the business of making us into what God intended at our creation. We don’t begin to look like God; we are already created in God’s image. No, Baptism is our invitation into God. God is willing to make us loving, just, compassionate and infinitely forgiving, just like God is.