TRINITY SUNDAY
Listen to audio version
Readings: Proverbs 8: 1-4 and 22-31; John 16: 12-15
It’s a pleasure to conduct any baptism (or christening – it’s the same ceremony), and always special when the candidate is an adult. Jacob has decided that he would like to take this step as a preliminary to his marriage to Carrie here later in the year.
Adult baptisms were relatively uncommon say sixty years ago, because most people had been baptised as infants. Now, if adults seek baptism they are usually confirmed at the same time, but we’re not taking that step today. In the days of the early church, it seems that only adults were baptised, and this would have been through total immersion in a river or pool. I would never refuse to baptise anybody in a parish of which I was vicar, remembering that the Church of England is still a national and established Church. Vicars (or rectors) have pastoral care for everybody in their parish, and the sacraments have always been considered to be freely available.
Today is Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate the wonder and majesty of God. God has become known to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Another set of titles might be Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Jacob and I were talking about this idea of Trinity a couple of weeks ago. We recognise God the creator, who, according to St Anselm ‘nothing greater than which can be conceived.’ Great and unknowable as God is, he has made himself especially known to us through Jesus, who came to share our human lot. Jesus revealed God’s nature to us in a way no human has done either before or since. He shared a close relationship with God whom he called ‘Father’. He taught people the perfect ways of God, and lived perfectly – as we say – ‘without sin’. We call him ‘Saviour’, in that he took on himself the burdens of humanity; suffered a shameful death at the hands of humans, but was raised from the dead, and ascended – or returned – to heaven. There, as scripture says, ‘he makes intercession for us’- he prays for us; a go-between. Through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the barrier between God and humanity, between heaven and earth has been opened.
And then Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit. When Jacob and I were thinking about God, he said he found this concept of the Holy Spirit a bit difficult. Not alone there, I’m sure! Jesus described the Holy Spirit as being the way God would enliven his Church members once Jesus was no longer with them physically. One writer calls the Spirit ‘God at work in the world.’ Last week we celebrated the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the disciples in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. They were completely filled with God’s power, and were inspired to tell the world about Jesus, and how we might become children of God through faith and trust in Christ.
Within a short while of the Day of Pentecost, the disciples were baptising people with a ceremonial washing in water, but with the total immersion I mentioned earlier. By going down under the water the candidate would experience something of the death of Christ so that they would also experience his risen life when coming up from the water. Jesus himself was baptised by John the Baptist, a powerful prophet who convinced people of their need to repent and come to new life. Jesus had no need to be baptised, but in submitting to John’s baptism he identified himself with everybody else. The four gospels record that the Holy Spirit hovered over Jesus at the time of his baptism, like a dove, and that his Father’s voice was heard – ‘This is my beloved Son.’
Now from earliest days, candidates have been baptised ‘in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’ This was Jesus’ specific instruction at the end of Matthew’s gospel, that the disciples should go out, proclaim the good news and baptise people. Perhaps you know the hymn known as St. Patrick’s Breastplate, which begins “I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity.” That formula ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ has been recited in baptisms ever since the days of the first apostles. We ask that the candidate will be endowed with the fullness of God, living to the glory of God the Father, and seeking to follow Jesus’ perfect and holy life.
These days the Anglican church quite rightly assumes that baptisms will be carried out in a congregational service. The candidate, if an adult, has his/her own promises to make, and their own path of discipleship to pursue, but it is most fruitful when new Christians journey with others in the fellowship of the Church. So baptism isn’t to be seen as a private ceremony but as a celebration of a new member of the church being welcomed and supported.
Back in Sidcup when I was vicar, a community church used our building for their worship on a Sunday evening. Their minister approached me and asked if they could bring an inflatable pool into the church and fill it, in order to baptise a young woman who had joined their church. She had had a very troubled childhood and adolescence, and wished to make a new start in her life. Their tradition was to baptise adults by total immersion, and Chelsea, the young woman involved, agreed to this. I went to witness the occasion, and found it moving and powerful. The whole congregation gathered around the baptismal pool, and as Chelsea was submerged three times, they shouted out, in unison, ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’ I know, from what she said afterwards, that this was an unforgettable and life-changing experience for her. Did she manage to throw off all the shackles of her past life immediately? No. There were setbacks and difficulties, but I never doubted that Chelsea had a deep faith in Jesus and knew her need of him.
That’s really what God asks of any of us. Perfection isn’t attained in a moment – not even in a lifetime, but through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, God will use the faith and intention we have. So we will pray with Jacob that he will be cleansed from sin, born again, renewed in God’s image and walk by the light of faith in the Holy Trinity.