The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
Any mention of a baptism in winter, especially to those who live in cold, northern climates, always causes a shiver at the very thought of it. Wise church stewards warm the water in the font for winter baptisms, whilst trying to calculate how many degrees of the water's temperature will be lost to the stone, marble, or air from the time of the font's filling to the time of the water falling upon the baby. I always hope that the cradle roll secretary is a physicist or that the other stewards guess correctly, because I am not really supposed to roll up my cassock sleeve and try the temperature in the font with my elbow, like you do before you bath a baby.
Many years ago, I conducted a particularly cold winter baptism in a little village chapel whose heating system, at the time, could only be described at best as apologetic, unlike some churches of which I have been the minister whose heating system would not have disgraced the palm house at Kew Gardens. However, the stewards were well dialled in and they calculated that very warm water would need to be put in the font to maintain an acceptable temperature until the moment of baptism. When the water hit the stone of the font, huge clouds of steam rose into the frosty chapel air, like incense at an Anglo-Catholic shrine. "Crumbs, " said one church member, "What are you proposing to do – baptize the child, or poach him?"
In the liturgical calendar of the Christian Year, the story of the baptism of Christ is always contemplated in the middle of January, after Epiphany, but before the onset of Lent. It seems a natural progression – after birth, baptism – although the baptism of Christ took place thirty years or so after his birth. However, the baptism of whole families (and their household!) as part of the covenant people of God in Christ became rooted in the Christian tradition within a generation, as the story of Lydia of Thyatira in the Acts of the Apostles testifies (Acts 16.15), proving, as some Christian denominations still fail to understand, not only the concept of Prevenient Grace (that is to say, God doing something for you before you were even aware of it), but also that Christ died for you – whatever your age – not just for your adult decision.
So, if the story of a baptism in a river, in the open air, causes you to shiver a bit at this time of the year, let me paint a warmer picture for you first.
You are standing with me at the end of a beautiful, hot summer's day in August on the foreshore of the little Devon village of Lympstone. I am looking out across the now calm waters at the mouth of the River Exe towards the sandbanks of Dawlish Warren. The tide is almost in, covering the usually unsightly mudflats of low tide, and the setting sun is casting a highway of gold across the waters towards me. I usually come and stand here before I conduct the annual Songs of Praise at the smallest chapel on the circuit. The chapel will be full, not only because we have invited the whole of the circuit to tea beforehand, but because Circuit Services pack small chapels to their doors and give the folk in them immense heart – and not just because I allow them to keep the whole collection to help them out financially! As I look out across the waters, it is the most absolutely perfect day. Life doesn't get much better than this moment, even if God were to whisper over my shoulder from heaven, "I am pretty pleased with this day, as days go. What do you think, Phil?" Well, remarkably, the day is about to get even better (for me, at least), because I am going to stroll back to the chapel and lead a service of well-loved hymns for people whom I love dearly, and I shall tell them a selection of my stories to illustrate those hymns. They usually seem fond enough of me as their minister to look as though they are actually enjoying the stories.
The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters… but if, on that occasion, that were true, he was moving so serenely, so beatifically. The picture of the Spirit of God… moving over the face of the waters in the second verse of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis has exactly the opposite connotation. The first two verses are actually quite strange. Whilst the first verse says simply that God created the heaven and the earth, the second verse pictures a state of formless chaos, an intermediate state between nothingness and creation, which the eye of man has never seen, but can only conjecture. Out of this chaos, creation unfolded – evolved, if you wish – according to God's creative will and word. Indeed, the second verse could be translated better as: the storm of God was moving over the formless chaos of the waters. What was drawn out of the chaos was ordered, and beautiful, and good, but there exists a lingering suggestion in that second verse that, without the supporting and constantly creating will of God, the order would soon return to the state of formless chaos.
There is the eternal paradox. God is constantly working to draw order out of chaos, and human beings, with their selfish and contrary natures, seem to be constantly working in the opposite direction!
To the Old Testament mind, the waters, the seas and even the great rivers, symbolised the original chaos out of which God had drawn and created order. They were the dwelling places of evil spirits, as with the story of Leviathan in the Book of Job. When Saint John pictured a new heaven and a new earth, he claimed that the sea would be no more, implying the very source of chaos itself would have no part in that new creation. The waters, with all their centuries-old symbolism, seemed to say that, without God, this is where we shall return.
Each year, when my wife and I travel to France to visit Le Mans, we tend to take the overnight ferry from Portsmouth. I know that many people love the sea, but it always causes me a certain degree of anxiety, theologically if not actually. I look down from the ship's rail into the inky black midnight waters whose rippling motion seems to contain a restrained malevolence and an unmeasured power to absorb into oblivion anything unwise enough to fall into them. The chaos is still there, scarcely under the surface, and for human beings, the ultimate state of the chaos of existence is the state of non-existence, which we call death.
When Jesus stepped down into the waters of the River Jordan, to receive baptism at the hands of John, the waters bore the symbolism of the washing away of sins, which is why John questioned the request. Saint Matthew gives a fuller account than Saint Mark, for Matthew records John's query: "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But you who know well the beginning of the Book of Genesis recognise another echo too – the Spirit of God… moving over the face of the waters, as what emerges from the waters is God's own Son, revealed in this moment, by this sign. What emerges is good – and God saw that it was good… Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased…
The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters… I am back in this church now, standing where I habitually stand as I hold a child in my arms prior to its baptism. Does the spirit of God move over the face of these waters too? I think it does, and with a similar potent symbolism. For the Christian, the waters of Christian Baptism have always represented the tomb of Christ. When the child emerges from the waters of baptism, the emergence patterns Christ's resurrection from the tomb. From the chaos of death, God will bring forth the order of new and eternal life.
But this is only a babe in arms, at the beginning not at the end of its life, you may protest! Of course, you are right, but Christian Baptism is an anticipation, and the claiming of the life of a human being for God, which is a claim with an eternal dimension, even at the beginning of an earthly life… for if we have been united with (Christ) in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. So Saint Paul taught the Christians in Rome. If you have ever wondered why I hold a child so firmly in my arms prior to its baptism, it is not just for practical reasons. My silent prayer as I gaze at the face of the waters in the font is: The chaos shall not have you. You belong to God… eternally.
You do not need to watch your television news for long, or read your newspapers too closely, before you see how near the chaos still is. Sadly and paradoxically, it is now (and often) centred upon the land in which Christ was born and baptized. Upon which side do you stand? Well, if you are baptized, you stand on the side of the God whose will and work is always to bring order out of chaos. So, Christian people, your duty is to stand up and be counted in a chaotic world of man's disordering. God's own Son submitted to the chaos, for your sake – but it could not hold him. Neither shall it engulf you. The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters… it still is.