Back to the Blueprints
Through the Waters…into a New Life
A Celebration of Baptism

June 6-7, 2009
Glenn W. McDonald
Acts 8:26-40

Our physical lives are all about water. Each of us needs to take in the equivalent of six to seven glasses every day just to stay healthy. Even though you may think of your brain as a solid object (except perhaps when you’re trying to figure out your own taxes), it is actually about 80% water. 71% of the surface of our planet is covered by oceans and lakes, and we are residents of the only place in the universe that we currently know for sure has liquid water.

In a very important respect, our spiritual lives are also all about water. In the second verse of the Bible, God’s Spirit is described as hovering over the waters of creation. Floodwaters during the time of Noah cleansed the world of rampant evil. God brought the Israelites through the waters of the Red Sea to get them out of Egypt, and then through the waters of the Jordan River to get them into the Promised Land. John the Baptist – or John the Plunger, as his name might better be translated – preached that people needed to be washed with water as a symbolic way of coming back to God. Coming into this world we pass through the waters of our own birth, while Jesus calls us to be born “of water and the Spirit” in order to be spiritually reborn.

Today our service is all about water – specifically the gift of baptism that God commands all of his people to experience. In the book of Acts, which we’ve been exploring chapter by chapter since the beginning of this year, there’s one prominent story about baptism that we would now like to tackle. To do so we need to turn back to Acts chapter eight.

Let’s do something a little different this time. Let’s begin at the end of the story. Look at verse 36: “As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?’” Why? Rabbis of that time would have come up with a laundry list of reasons why the particular person asking this question could not and should not have been baptized. Even today a number of church leaders would say, if they were hearing that question, “This is not the time or the place for you to be baptized.”

Today we believe that this is both the time and the place for you to be baptized if you would like to proclaim your trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, and to take your stand with others who have done the same. This is the time and the place for you to bring your little ones forward for baptism, proclaiming your firm intention to be the primary spiritual directors in their lives, guiding them – with God’s grace and help – towards the day that they might put trust in Christ all by themselves. But first let’s find out more about the two characters in this story, and why a chariot that pauses next to a body of water leads to one of the Bible’s truly memorable spiritual moments.

The first character is a man named Philip – not the Philip who was one of the twelve original disciples of Jesus, but a fellow who had been chosen as one of the seven deacons in the early Jerusalem church. Look at verse 26: “Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Go south to the road – the desert road – that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. [It’s intriguing to note that Philip the Jew is going towards Gaza in order to meet a Gentile, since the Israelis of our own time have been working to erect a wall of separation between them and Gaza]. So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship…”

Now who exactly is this second person? He is a Gentile. He is an African – a resident of the area we now call Sudan – and almost certainly his skin is dark. Significantly, he is a eunuch – a man whose testicles had been surgically removed in the pre-anesthetic era – something that clearly invites an explanation. Why would someone consent to such a thing? This Ethiopian had become a eunuch because he was an official in the royal court. Emasculated men were chosen to serve their queen because everyone knew they would never take advantage of her.

Typically this surgery left behind certain physical effects. Without a source of testosterone, eunuchs looked different. Their bodies were rounded. It was difficult to grow a beard. If hormone replacement therapy had been available, of course, such matters could have been addressed – and if eunuchs had kept on taking those supplements they ultimately would have hit a lot more home rooms than anyone else who played for the Ethiopian Yankees.

Now why does any of this matter? According to Jewish thinking as expressed in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) eunuchs were damaged goods. People who were physically or spiritually defective were excluded from the full blessings of God.

For instance, a priest with a crippled leg or a missing finger was not allowed to serve in the temple. If you were a rank and file Israelite but had committed adultery; or been abandoned by your spouse; or married a foreigner; or eaten the wrong foods; or lived in the wrong town; or been cursed by having the wrong parents, you were less than best. You were going to miss out on God’s greatest blessings. Only a few people were thought to be spiritual winners. Everybody else was a spiritual loser.

But then comes the big moment in spiritual history. Along comes Jesus. And everything changes. The walls come down between Jew and Gentile, between clean and unclean, between “deserving people” and those who are damaged goods. Jesus doesn’t dismiss the teachings of the Torah. Instead he goes out of his way to insist that we are all damaged goods for one reason or another, and therefore equally in need of God’s grace. All of us need his forgiveness and his help all the time.

While visiting Jerusalem this Ethiopian eunuch would have stood out as a Gentile, as a person of color, and as someone whose presence in the temple courts was expressly forbidden because of his particular surgery. His worship would have been from a distance. And yet…this is the day that he is going to find out that he is not second best.

Verse 28 tells us that he is on his way home, “sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, ‘Go to that chariot and stay near it.’ Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet.” The reason that Philip recognizes the text is that reading in the first century was customarily done out loud. So Philip asks a question: “Do you understand what you are reading?”

Look at the eunuch’s answer in verse 31: “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” A number of translators prefer, “unless someone guides me.” There is a world of difference between an answer man and a guide. Imagine going to a national park and learning that there is a particularly rugged but beautiful place that you can visit. It would be one thing for a ranger to hand you a map. It would be altogether different if that ranger said, “I’ll take you there myself,” and then helped you find the path.

That’s what the eunuch is seeking in verse 31. “So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.” Philip is not playing the role of theological expert. He’s taking a ride with another human being down a certain stretch of road for a certain stretch of time. He’s going to walk in the shoes of a man who appears to be unlike him in every conceivable way – all because the Holy Spirit arranged for this appointment in the desert, and because Philip was willing to pursue a ministry of conversation.

Providentially, the eunuch has opened his copy of the scroll of Isaiah to one of the most important Old Testament texts concerning the Messiah. Look at verse 35: “Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.” What we’ll find whenever we enter a ministry of conversation is that God has already been at work, long before we’ve arrived on the scene.

That brings us full circle to verse 36: “As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?’ The eunuch has come to believe that in the eyes of Jesus – and that’s the only person whose eyes really count – he is not damaged goods. He has not been damaged beyond repair. He is ready to give his life to Jesus, and to go public with that commitment. Reading on: “And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.”

This story can become your story today. You can choose to take your stand for Jesus. You can either be baptized or reclaim the promises that were made at your baptism. The part about the Lord “beaming up” the person who baptizes you, as happened with Philip – well, we’re not making any guarantees about that one. But you can definitely go on your way rejoicing.

We rejoice because Jesus has provided everything we need to experience new life in the here and now. He died for our sins. He took with him to the grave everything that might kill our life with God – all of the things that would seem to make us damaged goods. Then he rose from the dead and assured us that we can follow him along the same path. We can die to all of our baggage and go through the waters of baptism into a new life. It’s as if we have risen from the dead. The power of the Holy Spirit will live inside us and continue to change us into the persons God created us to be.

So how does this happen? What do we need to do? What role exactly does baptism play? And how might we respond here at the end of this service?

Back in Acts chapter two on the day of Pentecost you might recall that Peter said to the crowds in Jerusalem, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38). When we looked at that passage before we considered the fact that three things tend to travel together in the New Testament: Faith, repentance, and baptism. So how does one become a real Christian? An authentic Christian (or disciple or lifelong learner of Jesus) is the person who believes in Jesus – not just with the head but with the heart. A believer is someone who has concluded that Jesus is right about everything, and has consequently made a heartfelt surrender to his leadership.

Repentance means walking away from anything and everything that is inconsistent with the Jesus-following life. About three centuries after Christ, when the Roman emperor Constantine announced he was becoming a Christian, he commanded his soldiers to go down to the river and be baptized. The soldiers obediently submitted to being dunked, but historians tell us that quite a few of them held on to their swords and kept their sword hands, along with their blades, high above the water. In other words, they were willing to put up with the show of saying they believed in Jesus, but nothing was going to prevent them from doing whatever they wanted in the middle of a fight. That is not what it means to surrender your whole life to the Lord!

So what is baptism? It is a one-time event in which some amount of water is placed on our bodies as a way of saying that we belong to God – that we are taking our stand with other people who are counting on Jesus alone as the ultimate source of love and forgiveness – and that the story of our lives is going to imitate the story of Jesus’ life.

In your bulletin you received a bookmark that describes our one-chapter-a-day summer reading program of all the letters of the apostle Paul, along with the book of Hebrews. If you got started on June 1, then the chapter you’re due to read on Saturday this weekend – Romans six – includes the Bible’s most important statement about the meaning of baptism. It’s found in verses three and four: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

A baptized person is someone whose life story imitates the life story of Jesus. He died and was raised to a new life. By surrendering to him, we die to all the things that God wants to wash away from our lives, so that something brand new can happen within us – something that could never happen through our own efforts.

We’re not talking about perfect performance here. The British author Evelyn Waugh was a Catholic who fell well short of his church’s spiritual expectations. Someone once asked Waugh, “How can you call yourself a Catholic and be so badly behaved, so mean, such a jerk, so spiteful?” Waugh answered, “Just imagine me if I were not a Catholic!”

Now we may grade on the curve with each other. But God never grades on the curve. We all stand in equal need of Jesus. And baptism is the great equalizer. It’s the humble doorway through which all of us have to walk. We go through the waters – away from a life we cannot keep, into a life we cannot lose.

Does that mean that baptism saves people? No. The Bible is quite clear that baptism is a representation of what does save us – our trust in Jesus. Baptism without faith is little more than taking a bath. But that doesn’t mean that baptism is trivial. Jesus after all commanded his followers to go and make disciples and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

That brings us to three sticky questions. First, how much water does it take to be properly baptized? Regardless of what you might have heard from this teacher or that, the Bible honestly doesn’t say. Getting immersed is a way of covering your bets, so to speak, but there are no grounds to conclude that your baptism is anything less than best if you only got a light soaking. After all, it is the Holy Spirit who gives us a spiritual washing, not the water itself. That being said, we are more than willing to make special arrangements for an immersion baptism if you feel so led.

Second, who should be baptized? Is it right to baptize children, or should we wait until our kids have grown to an age when they can profess their own faith and understand the significance of what is happening? ZPC believes this is a matter of conscience. The great majority of the Christians who have ever lived have been baptized as little ones. Our desire is to provide freedom of practice and to honor the sensitivities of those on all sides of this question.

Finally, what about being baptized a second time? Some of us are impassioned about the fact that after being spiritually clueless for years on end, we have finally come to understand who Jesus is, and now we want to make a public declaration of our love for him, and to take our stand with those who intend to live for him. Those of us who were baptized as infants have no memory of that event – except perhaps an incriminating photo that shows us swallowed up in the traditional family christening gown. Shouldn’t we seek an adult baptism that we can always remember and cherish?

Our answer – which is consistent with orthodox Christianity over the centuries – is no. The power and the validity of your baptism does not depend on how old you were, whether your parents actually believed in Jesus at the time, or whether the person who baptized you turned out to be something of a spiritual dork. In points of fact the only people available to baptize others will always be spiritual dorks. What matters is that God was present at your baptism. And God keeps his promises, even when people do not. We recognize the validity of any prior baptism, and are glad that God hasn’t given us the burden of trying to go back in time to sort things out in our own wisdom.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the opportunity today to shout yes once again to Jesus – an experience we really can remember and cherish. In a few moments you’ll be invited to come forward to reclaim the reality of your baptism. This basin of water can remind us that God has called us to come through the waters into a new life. He has chosen you. He has marked you as his own. He is now growing you into the person he created you to be.

As you feel led you can walk to this place. Put your hands into the water if you’d like; wash them perhaps, or even bring them up to your face. God aims to cleanse you of everything that stands between you and him. In the bottom of the basin there are small beads. Take one if you wish so you can be reminded of the purity that God is progressively bringing about in your life because of his work.

What if you have never been baptized? Look, here is water! Why shouldn’t you be baptized today, or present a child to receive this gift from God? A few minutes from now we’ll all have the chance to speak aloud the words of commitment that are essential to binding our hearts to God. After that you can walk forward as well, coming to these steps so that we might learn your name, inquire about your faith, and provide this gift on God’s behalf.

Mortimer Adler was one of the great Western thinkers of the twentieth century. For decades he was convinced by sterile philosophical arguments that in all likelihood there must a God. How else could we account for the existence of the universe, its astonishing design, and the sense of right and wrong in human beings? But he did not worship this God, because he was unconvinced that God was good and therefore interested in him. As one author put it, Adler believed in God the way he believed in the ozone layer.

One day as an old man, however, as he lay sick in a hospital room, he welcomed a friend who came to visit him. The friend prayed. And during that prayer something broke inside him. Mortimer Adler began to weep. And he himself began to pray. The only prayer he knew was the Lord’s Prayer. He said it day after day…and found himself, for the first time in his life, believing it.

Giving ourselves to Jesus means traveling the longest 18 inches in the world – from what we know in our heads to what we trust in our hearts – and saying yes to him as best we know how. Will you do that once again or for the first time this evening?

Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil in all of its forms in this world?
I DO!

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and Savior, trusting in his grace and love?
I DO!

With God’s help, will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying his Word and showing his love?
I WILL!

By God’s grace, you will be a Great Commission Christian, shining his light wherever God sends you in the world?
I WILL!

And now, by God’s grace, let’s go on our way rejoicing,
making real in our lives what God has already accomplished for us in baptism.
Go and live the life for which you were claimed by God.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen!