Quotes about Baptism
Continuing our theme of baptism, I’ve thrown together a few great quotes about this sacrament of initiation.
Rather, in baptism, we are subsumed into a story of water and the word. A story of creation formed out of dark waters. A story of a God so righteous that he was willing to make war on the world he created, only to hang up his bow and to promise never to give up on us again. A story of a people, created out of nothing, by a God determined to be worshipped [sic] rightly, led through waters into the desert as imperial chariots foundered. A story of a Jewish woman visited by God in a way that confounded her fiance but caused her to sing. A story of a crazy man out in the desert proclaiming a new kingdom coming in water and fire. A story of one who saved by an issue of water and blood…Christian preching brings out or brings inot view the mystery inherent in the waters of baptism. Baptismal preaching names the reality to which we have all been exposed, that is, the peculiar salvation of theis crucified God. Therefore baptismal preaching is not so much a matter of being didactic, of explaining something, as it is of testifying to something, struggling to describe an event that has already happened to the congregation, bringing into view the significance of our baptism with words. (William H. Willimon, Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized p. 5).
By the way, while we’re dealing with Willimon, this essay is gold.
Then we’ve got:
We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the chidlren of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.
We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit. Therefore in joyful obedience to your Son, we bring into his fellowship those who come to him in faith, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (The Book of Common Prayer)
Then from the Archbishop of Canterbury [then Bishop of Monmouth]:
The actual shape and rhetoric of sacramental actions [depicts]… a process of estrangement, surrender and re-creation…Baptismal identity is given, not chosen…[The baptismal liturgy] begins…[by] telling us that all are born in sin, and that the gift looked for in baptism is something ‘which by nature [we] cannot have’; and it proceeds to rehearse stories of transition and rescue – Noah and his family, ‘the children of Israel thy people’. The apparently neutral condition of the infant [yes, he's talking about infant baptism...there's still something to learn here even if we disagree] is thus redescribed as on of danger or unfreedom, liability to divine ‘wrath’; what is necessary is incorporation into the society that is within the ark, where it becomes possible to be ‘rooted in charity’. Prayers are said for the ‘death’ of the child’s existing human identity and the distorted affects that go with it, and God is petitioned to number the child among his chosen. After the immersion or affusion, the child is said to be ‘grafted into the body of Christ’s Church’, and prayer is further made that the child may share Christ’s resurrection as it has already, symbolically, shared his death. In conclusion, the duties of the baptized are spelled out, reiterating the theme of death and resurrection: what is symbolically done here, the putting to death of ‘corrupt affections’, is to be renewed daily in concrete behavior…
Both the kinds of belonging evoked here – the condition of sin, belonging with Adam, and the new life of belonging in or with Christ – are not elective matters, not things over which the subject has any control. First there is the unsought and unwelcome solidarity of being in danger, then the ‘grafting’ into a new reality. The danger is associated with misdirected ‘affections’…we want, are drawn by, are moved by, what will kill us; so that, by contrast, the new life is implicitly associated with new attractions, a new sensibility…We must receive grace to want the endlessness of God. But…this has nothing to do with being educated into new perception: there is a gift bestowed…which orients us in a certain way, and what must follow is a discipline to ensure we do not lose sight of it… (Rowan Williams, “The Sacraments of the New Society,” in Christ: The Sacramental Word, pp. 90-91)
And finally:
For [Christ] dedicated and sanctified baptism in his own body in order taht he might have it in common with us as the firmest possible bond of the union and fellowship which he has deigned to form with us…Thus we see that the fulfillment of baptism is in Christ, whom also for this reason we call the proper object of baptism…For all the gifts of God proffered in baptism are found in Christ alone. Yet this cannot take place unless he who baptizes in Christ invokes also the names of the Father and the Spirit. For we are cleansed by his blood because our merciful Father, wishing to receive us into grace in accordance with his incomparable kindness, has set this Mediator among us to gain favor for us in his sight. But we obtain regeneration by Christ’s death and resurrection only if we are sanctified by the Spirit and imbued with a new and spiritual nature. For this reason we obtain and, so to speak, clearly discern in the Father the cause, in the Son the matter, and in the Spirit the effect of our purgation and our regeneration. (John Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion 4.15.6)
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