Even domesticated, for our uses, fire is dangerous, must be approached with care. And we re going to get baptized with THAT?

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1 1 of 10 Allen Pruitt As the people were filed with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 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 thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. With the Holy Spirit and fire. That sounds not great. At least the fire part. We can spiritualize the Holy Spirit, theologize, think about the Holy Spirit. None of us can really be quite sure what that even means. But fire? Fire we know about. Fire we have felt, fire we have seen. Even burning safely beyond the hearth, the fire pops, the rug we thought was safe, melted a bit when a small coal landed on it. We ve seen the devastation of fire; every one of us has likely grabbed a pan out of the oven, only to discover that the towel we are using is too thin or the pot holder doesn t provide quite enough coverage.

2 2 of 10 Even domesticated, for our uses, fire is dangerous, must be approached with care. And we re going to get baptized with THAT? Who s got time to think about what John means when he talks about the Holy Spirit? Who s got time to think about that when we ve got to protect ourselves from that fire? And the water? Well, that s nothing at all. Water is safe and life giving. Water runs out of our taps and into our cups. Dirty water leaves our houses, clean water flows in. Nobody s worried about water. The prophet Isaiah says, When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. Water and fire. I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

3 Water and fire. We can be tempted to believe that one is easy and one is difficult. That one is better than the other, that one is safer than the other. Water puts out fire. Water is something that we drink, play in, ride boats on. We flooded a whole valley to make electricity and a man-made lake that many of you enjoy with some frequency. LaGrange is a textile town AND it is a town built on a lake. Water is good! 3 of 10 Even in the Bible. Water for the thirsty, streams of living water, cool water to refresh those lost in the desert. Water is good! That s the temptation anyway. That s the easy thing to believe: water is good, fire is bad. After all, John the Baptist can baptize with water. We baptize with water, sprinkling a little on the heads of those who come to this font.

4 4 of 10 We ll renew our baptismal vows in just a few minutes. Baptisms at this marble font: water poured out with a silver shell, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. We should remember our baptism. Whether you were 13 like me, or 3 months old, or a full on adult when it happened. We should remember our baptism. Why? Because that is when we got ordained for ministry. The ministry of all the baptized, the priesthood of all believers. We are all ministers of the gospel. We are all called and ordained into this work, the work of telling God s story every day of our lives.

5 5 of 10 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. We might be tempted to believe that water is good and fire is bad, that water is safe and fire is dangerous. But Robert Alter, in his monumental translation of the Hebrew Bible makes this point, God promises that we will emerge unscathed from extreme dangers. They are both extreme dangers. Water AND fire. Way back in creation, back at the beginning of everything, God separated the water and the land. God kept the water at bay. Now, that s not how it worked scientifically. We know that the blue sky is NOT an enormous ocean of water about to crash down on us. We know that the sky is blue because of the way that the light of the sun refracts through our atmosphere. But that s not what they knew. They knew that the sky was blue, as blue as the Mediterranean Sea. They knew that water sometimes fell from the sky.

6 6 of 10 And wrong as they were about the facts of the case, they knew something that we sometimes forget: our world, our lives, all the goodness and possibility we have, is because God makes space for it. Is because God created it in the first place. There may not be an ocean about to crash down on us, but imagine the feeling you had, perhaps as a child, ten or eleven years old, when you first saw a picture of the earth, floating in space, all blue and white and green. When you first understood that we are not all piled up on top of each other, but we are instead floating in space, hurtling around a fairly distant star. Any closer and we burn, any further and we freeze. Water, fire, the cold blackness of space, whatever the danger, we emerge because of the grace of God.

7 7 of 10 A great many of you were baptized with a little silver shell, in this very font. A little water sprinkled on your head. I was plunged into a bathtub up on a stage, wearing a choir robe and a pair of swim trunks underneath. It wasn t scary, not much. Scariest part was being up in front of all those people. But it was a little unnerving, being at somebody else s mercy. A preacher I knew and trusted, but still, he s in charge of putting me under, and more or less in charge of bringing me back up. I m proud to be an Episcopalian. Got no interest in going back to the Baptist church. A sprinkling is just as good as a dunking but for one thing. You see, when we are baptized, we die with Christ. We die with Christ and we are raised with him. And when you get put under the water and come back up again, well, I wasn t thinking about all that, but I thought about it later. I m thinking about it now.

8 8 of 10 In a minute, we will renew our Baptismal Covenant. We will remember our own baptisms. But it s not about a bunch of promises you make. It s not about being the very best version of yourself that you can possibly be. Baptism is about dying and being born again. About dying with Christ, and being raised with him to new life. And all those promises, all those things we say we ll do - that s the way we live when we ve been raised to new life. We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. We promise to come to church, not to fill the pews, but to fill our hearts and challenge ourselves to love our neighbors: our different political party, different football team, different language, different everything neighbors. We promise to respect the dignity of every human being. We promise to do it all with God s help.

9 9 of 10 What might that mean for us? What might that mean for some of the things we hold dear? I wonder if it might require some new priorities, some new ways of doing things. I bet it will demand stopping some things so we can do more of others. I bet it will turn our world upside down. I bet we ll die, some part of us, maybe even some part that we are desperate to hold, that we think we can t live without. We die with Christ. And we are raised with Christ. We emerge from these extreme dangers, unscathed. Fire and water at least. We emerge from those. But we can t get past the Holy Spirit. We can t emerge unscathed, unmarked from our encounter with the Holy Spirit. You are sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ s own, forever.

10 10 of 10 Remember your baptism. Remember that you died, that you were raised with Christ. Remember that God brings you through fire and water, but brings you to the Holy Spirit, from which none of us can emerge unscathed. Remember that you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and marked as Christ s own, forever.