Sermons on The Sacraments : Summer 2010

3: Baptism & Confirmation

A sermon preached by Fr Robert Thompson on 20th June

"As many of you were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." Galatians 3:27

"Then the people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus and in his right mind." Luke 8:35

I have a new colleague who will be starting as a part-time Chaplain at the hospital in mid-July. She comes from a tradition of the Church of England in which you rarely see clergy in clerical dress. So when I met her for the second time I tentatively raised the issue of what she might wear. I suggested that in a secular context wearing clerical clothes both give quick and easy access to the wards and patients, and also stood as a countercultural sign. She, in principle agreed, but felt that for women there was a loss of femininity in wearing the old dog collar. I have a good deal of sympathy with her position.

The next time I saw my female colleague at our Harefield site, I sounded her out on how she felt about clerical dress - did she feel the same way? "Goodness no!" she said. For her to wear the traditional priest's clobber had been experienced as liberation. It meant that people saw her as a priest first, and as a Christian, and only then as a woman. For her the uniform meant that she no longer had to think about what to wear and also, at some level, was not perceived as a sex-object.

So for one of my female colleagues a clerical shirt was considered de-feminising, whilst for the other it was liberating. For one it constituted a loss of gender identity whilst for the other is constituted a degree of freedom from it. Two priests, the same clothes, and very different perceptions!

As we come to think about Baptism and Confirmation, in the third of our seven part sermon series on the sacraments, clothing is a good way in - a way that will enrich our understanding. Because of our historical and cultural heritage we too easily equate baptism with a mere sprinkling of water in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Sprit, over a newly born infant. We see baptism as a little religious dunking after a cataclysmic natural birth! Nowadays we might remember to expand this simple washing to include the anointing with the oil of baptism and the giving of a lighted candle. But we will still miss the dramatic nature of baptism as practiced in the early church.

From the late first century of the Church those who wished to become Christians, to follow Christ, and to join Christ's community went through a lengthy religious apprenticeship before baptism. An aspiring member of the Church would join the "catechumenate" and undergo a series of instruction called "catechesis" so that they would have a basic knowledge of what it was to follow Christ. These aspirants or catechumens attended the main church service during their training, but they had to leave after the liturgy of the word leaving only baptised Christians to celebrate the Holy Communion together. At the end of the instruction period there was an extended ceremony which was presided over by a Bishop. This took place generally at the Easter Vigil, though sometimes also at the feast of Pentecost. This ceremony consisted of the following:

• a verbal confession and examination of faith
• an anointing with the oil of 'catechumens' - baptism oil

At this point the candidates were separated by gender the men went with the male deacons and the women with the deaconesses to be baptised separately:

• a de-clothing
• baptism, standing in a pool of water, fully naked
• a re-clothing in a white garment

Then the men and women came back together in one place:

• a blessing by the Bishop imposing his hands on each candidate
• an anointing with the oil of 'chrism' - confirmation oil
• admission to the Eucharist

You can see from this outline that what we have now as two separate sacraments, in the early church was kept as one single rite; one rite over which only the Bishop presided. As the Church grew both geographically and numerically this unity fell apart. Infant baptism became the norm and catechesis and confirmation became post-baptismal events. In the west first communion was also kept until after confirmation. As the ratio of Bishops to people also changed, in the western church, a pattern developed of priests presiding at baptism and Bishops only coming for confirmations.

The other main element of this early practice of baptism and confirmation that we lose in our modern rites is the clothing element - the stripping, the naked baptism and the wrapping in the new robe of Christ after baptism. We retain vague hints of it in the wearing of baptismal gowns, and in the modern Common Worship service there is an opportunity for the baby to be wrapped in a white shawl after the baptism itself. But the full cataclysmic effect of those early catechumens being baptised is totally lost to us.

The narrowing of focus of baptism to the washing away of 'original sin' (whatever that might mean) for an infant, in the western church, is something of a theological tragedy. It led in the Catholic tradition to that strange state called 'Limbo' - which, thank God, the Pope has recently abolished. But it also accounts, even in our own tradition, for those strange phrases like a baby's 'need to be done' as soon as possible. It's a bizarre narrowing, which many of us find quite rightly morally problematic, of a richer baptismal theology

But baptism is not simply about the washing away of sin. It is about how Christians find their identity in and through Jesus Christ. It's a meaning that is kept in the full drama of the clothing aspects of the earliest rites. We remove the clothes of our former life, with all of its allegiances. We enter into the font, which is both Christ's tomb and Christ's womb, and we die with Christ and rise with Christ. Having risen with Christ we are re-clothed, we wear Christ. We take on Christ and we show that our fullest identity is found in Christ and that our primary allegiance is in working for the coming of Christ's kingdom.

It is to this radical shift within our personal identity that happens in baptism that St. Paul refers in our reading from his letter to the Galatians this morning. For Paul baptism is being clothed in Christ. Being clothed in Christ means that in Christ's community, the Church, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. For Paul, to be clothed with Christ is to cease to find our fullest identity in our nation, or tribe, or language (Jew and Greek); in our economic or social status, our jobs and profession (slave and free); in our gender or sexuality (male and female). Christ's community is not based on the distinctions and hierarchies of this world. Rather it is based on the dignity of the human person made in God's image. To live in Christ means shedding our old clothes and wearing his robe of radical, inclusive, love.

There is also a dramatic re-clothing in today's Gospel reading. The demonic at Gerasa begins our story today naked and chained up in a graveyard where pigs freely wander. But by the end of the text we are told that he is "fully clothed, and in his right mind" sitting at Jesus' feet. Being educated and sophisticated we are not so happy with stories of demon possessions and exorcisms. And yet we all know, only too well, that we are inhabited by our own demons, - social, emotional, psychological ones, that from time to time seem to take control over us as they did with this poor man.

Services of baptism throughout history have always included prayers of exorcism. We have it in a limited way in our modern service. After the candidate has been anointed with the oil of baptism the priest lays hands on their head and prays that they may be "delivered from every evil" and protected by God. Today's gospel is not a baptism but it does give us an example of the conversion of the human person: a conversion from being locked up by the demons within us to being clothed and in a right mind sitting at the feet of Jesus. For all of us with our own demons the cure for being possessed by them is being possessed by an-Other: being possessed by Christ. Baptism is precisely this - Christ claims us as God's own child. It is God who possesses us and no other. We are God's.

My two female colleagues may disagree on what the wearing of traditional clerical clothes actually means. I have some sympathy with both positions. Though as you can tell from the way I look I tend to come down on the more traditional and conservative position. But I come to that more conservative position for a truly radical reason. Our clothes often locate us socially, economically and culturally, and they do so much more than we imagine. But we are called beyond those definitions; called beyond them by our baptism; called to be re-clothed; called to be washed; called to be re-clothed in Christ; called to find our fullest identity in and through God; even the God who can exorcise all our demons and make us whole.