3 June 2018
Matthew 28.18-20; Acts 10.44-48
Romans 6.1-5;
Ephesians
4.1-6
Here at Bloomsbury
we tend to think of ourselves
as a modern, liberal-minded,
pragmatic people,
who relate well to our ecumenical
partners in other Christian traditions,
and indeed take a positive stand in
our inter-faith relationships.[1]
We are part of
Churches Together in Westminster and Churches Together in England,
and the ministers from Bloomsbury
meet each month
for
breakfast with clergy from other West End churches.
The Meet The
Neighbours events see people from Bloomsbury
visiting a variety of different
Christian traditions in our area
to share in worship and to learn
more about each other.
We will shortly
be welcoming
The Revd Canon Mark Oakley, Canon
Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral,
to preach at our Church Anniversary
service on the 1st July
(you do have it in your
diary, don’t you!?),
which is a reciprocal visit for the
service last year
when I was invited to
preach at St Paul’s
(have I mentioned that
before? I might have…).
I’m part of the
Interfaith Group For Dignity in Dying,
alongside Jews, Unitarians, and
other Christians;
and I represent
Bloomsbury as part of the interfaith chaplaincy team
at King’s College London.
In addition to
this, we’re deepening our relationships
with other churches, synagogues, and
mosques
through our involvement with London
Citizens,
and our
occasional series of Seth Stephens Lectures
has seen us hosting a variety of
events looking at inter-faith issues,
including one where Archbishop Rowan
Williams
sat here on this platform
and had a public conversation
with Mona Siddiqui, the professor
Islamic studies at Edinburgh University
So, it can come
as something of a surprise
when you drill down into what we
actually stand for as a Baptist church,
to discover
that at the core of our identity
remains a practice which is both
fundamental and exclusionary.
I’m talking, of
course, about the practice of believer’s baptism.
And it’s not
only our church which is named after this ritual.
We’re part of Baptists Together,
which is the new and
apparently trendy name
for the Baptist Union of
Great Britain,
and we support BMS World Mission,
which is the new and
apparently trendy name
for the Baptist
Missionary Society.
We are linked with the European
Baptist Federation
and the Baptist World
Alliance.
We are, in case
you hadn’t noticed, Baptists.
Historically speaking, the Baptists fit into the general
category known as Separatism,
which is a technical
term for the kind of churches
set
up in England in the early 17th century by the Puritans
who,
impatient for a thoroughgoing reform of the British church
along
what they regarded as Biblical principles,
separated
themselves from the Established Church of England.
It was out of this Separatist tradition
that the
earliest English Baptists were to emerge.
And it’s from Separatism that Baptists derive their key
distinctives
of: a
commitment to scripture,
a
gathered church confined to those
who
have professed faith in Christ,
a practice
of congregational church government,
and
a focus on simplicity in worship
without
resort to ceremony and ritual.
But Baptists went beyond the Separatists
in
confining Baptism to believers,
and
insisting on full religious liberty for all, not just for themselves.
We’ll be coming back to some of these distinctives in future
months
as we
continue our series of monthly Communion Sermons
looking
at the nature of the church.
But today we’re going to stick with the practice of
believer’s Baptism.
One of the key
figures in the emergence of the Baptists from the Separatists
was a wealthy lawyer called Thomas
Helwys (1550-1616),
who left England for Amsterdam in
1608 to escape persecution under King James I.
Together with a
man called John Smyth,
Helwys became a leader in an
English-speaking Separatist congregation
in Amsterdam.
In 1609, this
group became the first ever Baptist Church,
when Smyth baptised himself and the
other members,
having
concluded that the true church had died out
and needed to be re-started.
Two years later
Helwys produced his now famous pamphlet
the Declaration of Faith of English People (1611),
setting out the
view that each congregation
‘though they be but two or three,
have Christ given them’,
and that therefore they ‘are the
body of Christ’.
This was, as
I’m sure you can appreciate, radical stuff,
because in one short sentence
it challenged
the entire basis of the established church,
the episcopacy of church government,
and the authority of the monarch as
the head of the church.
Helwys, along with some others, decided to return to England
where in
1612 they established a Baptist church in Spitalfields,
outside the
city of London,
and this was the first Baptist church on English soil.
And the practice of believer’s baptism as they enacted it
had two key
distinct emphases:
Firstly, it was for those who were already believers,
and
secondly it was by full immersion.
They claimed, as Baptists have claimed ever since,
that the
basis for this practice of baptising believers by immersion
is
to be found in the New Testament.
It is, Baptists claim, the biblical option,
as opposed
to the practice of other Christian groups
which tend to hold church tradition alongside their reading
of scripture.
And it is on this practice of baptism for believers
that we
have tended, historically speaking, to take our big stand.
However, while we are generally quite clear
about what
we do, and don’t do, at baptism;
we are
often less clear about why.
Baptists have typically not been so good at the theology of
baptism,
as they
have been at the practice of it.
Ruth Gouldbourne has often said that Baptists are
pragmatists,
we do first, and think about it afterwards.
So we adopted believer’s baptism, and went to the stake over
on occasions,
but didn’t
necessarily think through the significance
of
this dramatic break from the practice
of
almost every other Christian tradition.
And the problem with our rather unswerving adherence
to what we
claim as a ‘biblical’ position on baptism
is that we end up, historically speaking,
struggling
to know where we stand in our ecumenical relationships;
we don’t always know how to relate to other Christian
traditions.
The hard-line position is one of ecumenical non-engagement,
where
Baptists simply assert that they are right,
and
that everyone else is wrong;
or even
that we are the only true church
and
that everyone else is apostate.
This was kind of the Smyth and Helwys position,
which led
to John Smyth baptising himself to re-start the church.
Whilst you do get this approach here in the UK,
especially
amongst the Strict, Particular, and Grace Baptists,
it has become the mainstream position for certain groups of
Baptists of the United States,
and the
many Baptist churches worldwide
which have
been heavily influenced by the American Baptist missions.
Of course, thinking that you, and you alone, have the truth
and that
everyone else is wrong,
is a very
attractive and secure place to be.
The lure of fundamentalism is strong,
as people
search for certainty in an uncertain world.
It’s one of the reasons that churches which offer
strong and
definitive answers to life’s questions do so well.
Churches like ours, which invite honest questioning
and
intelligent engagement with faith,
can suffer here because those looking for easy answers
will end up
looking elsewhere.
But as a thoughtful Baptist church we are more in step
with the
other, second, approach to ecumenical engagement.
Rather than adopt a hard-line, we’re-right-you’re-wrong
position,
most
Baptist churches in the UK tend towards
a softer
middle-ground approach on Baptism,
where we still assert that
on the
basis of scripture we think we’re right;
but we temper this with a recognition
that other
Christian traditions don’t see it the same way,
and that we
should all agree not to fall out over it.
So in common with many other British Baptist churches,
we have
open rather than closed membership,
where we welcome as members
those whose
initiation into faith
took place
in a tradition other than our own,
and we do so without requiring them to be baptised
according
to our convictions.
But of course, we are more than willing to offer believer’s baptism
to those
whose early life included infant baptism,
should they
request it.
And we hold that we can do this without compromising our
commitment
to there
only being one baptism,
because deep down we still don’t really think that infant
baptism is truly baptism;
it’s just
that we’re just too nice to make a fuss about it.
However, we might take some comfort here from the fact
that there
is strong historical precedent
for this
position of pragmatic compromise.
The early British Baptists didn’t exist in isolation
from the
other Separatist traditions of the early seventeenth century,
and from the very beginning they had to work out
how they
were going to relate to other Christians
whose
baptismal practice was very different from theirs;
and we are the heirs to this tradition of compromise,
just as the
American Baptists are the heirs to the hard-liners
who
could not live with compromise and set sail for the New World
looking
for a fresh start where everyone could get it right
and
compromise would be unnecessary.
The early British context was further clouded by the civil
war period,
when
Baptists found themselves on the same side
as other
radical protestants who were all aligned with Cromwell,
but
who differed on baptismal practice;
and to have declared them
to be un-Christian
would have
been politically disastrous.
And so we learned to live together with difference on this
issue,
a skill
which has stood the Baptists in good stead down the centuries
as we have negotiated other theological differences
from
Calvinism, to women in ministry, to same sex marriage.
The conviction that what we have in common
is stronger
than what would divide us
has also helped us negotiate our baptismal practice
difference
with other
denominations,
to such an extent that the Baptists have often played key
roles
in
establishing major ecumenical initiatives
including the Dissenting Deputies, the Bible Society,
the London
Missionary Society, and a variety of anti-slavery societies.
The upshot of all this
is that we
find ourselves in a strangely anomalous position as Baptists.
On the one hand, in theory,
we are
radically committed to the baptism of believers
as
the only biblical mode of baptism,
and
as the sacrament of initiation into the true church.
While on the other hand, in practice,
we simply
aren’t that committed to it.
Steve Holmes sums up the situation:
“British Baptists find themselves
in a curious position
as
a result of this tradition of ecumenical openness:
they are, in practice, less
committed
to
the importance of baptism in ecclesiology
than
almost any other mainstream denomination.
In most British Baptist churches
a
person may be in membership or even leadership,
and
may receive or even celebrate the Eucharist,
without
being baptised, either as a believer or infant.
No other British denomination
(excluding the Salvation Army, of course)
is
as lax in its baptismal polity
as
the main line Baptists.”[2]
What this has led to
has been an
attempt by Baptists over the last few decades,
really
for the first time in our history,
to start
doing proper theology
around
what on earth we think is going on in baptism?
Is there some theological common ground
that we can
find between our absolutist origins in a river in Amsterdam,
and the traditional practice of infant baptism
as it is
found in almost every other Christian church;
or is the best we can hope for
a
continuation of pragmatic co-existence and mutual respect?
The conclusion of a Baptist report published in 2005,
called
‘Pushing at the Boundaries of Unity’
suggested that Baptist congregations
‘might
recognise a place for the baptism of infants
within
the whole journey that marks the beginning of the Christian life’,
as well as
challenging the practice of some churches
in
requiring a re-baptism of those who had been baptised as infants.
I was present at the Baptist Union Council in 2006 which
received this report,
and it
wasn’t universally well-received.
Some welcomed it as a good way forwards
in
negotiating our baptismal differences with our ecumenical partners,
while others felt it to be compromising our core belief
that
baptism should be for believers by full immersion.
So, I wonder, what do you think?
What’s your
understanding of your baptism,
if
you’ve been baptised?
And if
you’re sitting here and you’ve never been baptised,
do
you know why you haven’t?
It may help if I share something here of my own story,
and please
accept my apologies if you’ve heard some of this before.
I started attending a Baptist church before I was born,
and I
honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t have faith.
Just as I never needed to be converted
to the
conviction that my Mum loved me,
neither did I need converting to the love of God.
When I was ten years old, I was attending a baptismal
service,
which in
those days were held on a Sunday evening.
The church was full to overflowing,
and I was
up in the balcony,
sat at the
back leaning against the large leaded window.
We were singing the old hymn, ‘Just as I am without one plea’,
and the
baptisms were taking place in between each verse.
When we got to the verse,
“Just as I
am, of that free love
the
breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,
here for a
season then above –
O Lamb of
God I come”,
I just knew with absolute conviction
that I
needed to take a step of faithful witness,
and to seek
baptism as the next step in my walk with God.
For me, it was an act of obedience,
and also a
marking of a definite commitment
to
faithfully seek God in the life, teachings and witness of Jesus.
So I went to speak to the minister after the service,
and he told
me that I was far too young,
and that I
should come back if I still felt the same when I was 14.
He then said something very interesting,
which was
that I could start taking communion if I wanted to.
Well, whether he knew it or not, and I suspect that he did,
this
distinction he was making between admission to the table,
and
admission to the pool,
has been
one of the key areas of disagreement
between
Baptists over baptismal practice.
We’re going to come back to communion in a future sermon in
this series,
so I won’t
go into it in depth now,
but just as we’ve already mentioned Open Membership
(whether
you can be a member of a Baptist church
without
undertaking believer’s baptism),
there is a parallel debate in terms of an Open Table,
and whether
you should be admitted to communion
if you’re
not baptised as a believer.
My minister at the time had trained at Spurgeon’s college,
and the
offer he made me,
of
taking communion whilst still un-baptised,
could have
come straight from the mouth
of
the great nineteenth century preacher Charles Spurgeon himself,
because Spurgeon
believed in closed membership
but
open communion.
However, to finish my story, I declined the offer.
I can
remember thinking, with all the logical clarity of a ten year old,
that
if I wasn’t old enough to be acceptable to Jesus in baptism,
the
same must surely also apply to communion.
So for the next four years I sat there
staring
fixedly at the minister every time we had communion,
firmly
passing the bread and wine with my mouth clamped shut,
and shortly after my 14th birthday
I went back
to see him,
and this
time my request for baptism was accepted.
So what changed for me at my baptism?
I certainly
didn’t become a Christian in the water,
and neither
did the Holy Spirit descend on me in a new and definitive way.
To the best of my memory I just felt wet and cold
afterwards.
But
something definitely changed.
I had made
my promises and intended to keep them.
I often describe baptism as being a bit like a wedding,
because
both are places where people make promises in church.
And the thing about a wedding
is that
you’re no more in love after you’ve said ‘I will’
than
you were before;
and in fact
a wedding which is not built on a foundation
of already existing love is probably
deficient.
But nonetheless something changes:
the
unmarried become married.
And so with baptism.
At one
level nothing changes,
faith is already present (and if it
isn’t, then the good Baptist in me
still
wants to argue that something is deficient),
and words of commitment spoken
before God and a congregation
don’t
change that.
And just as
the exchange of rings doesn’t make a marriage,
neither does the action of immersion
into water make a Christian.
But promises and action do still make a difference.
Some Baptists argue that baptism is simply a symbolic act,
an enacted
sermon, which witnesses publicly
to the faith of the person being
baptised.
However, whilst I’m sure that that baptism does do this,
I don’t
think this is all it does.
It seems to me that there is more to baptism than mere
symbolism.
I find something deeply sacramental in the act,
which takes
us beyond what we do in obedience to
Christ’s command,
into a
consideration of what God does in the
moment of baptism.
Have you heard the classic definition from St Augustine
of a
sacrament as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace’?
Well, we may not have the full seven sacraments of the Roman
Catholic tradition,
but I still
think that even within the Baptist tradition
there exist
those moments where God meets us in our action of obedience,
active by his Spirit to bring to bring
an act of grace into our lives.
I do think something changes in the person being baptised,
at the point of baptism;
just as
something changes in a person at the point of their wedding vows.
The old has gone and the new has come.
And one of the significant outworkings
of a more
sacramental understanding of baptism
has been on the Baptist engagement with our ecumenical
relationships
that I was
speaking about earlier;
where we are discovering more common ground than had
previously been found
with those
who also stress the action of God in baptism
either
alongside, or indeed over and above,
the action
of the baptismal candidate.
And so we will come, next Sunday morning, to an open pool,
and we
shall be sharing with Tommaso in his baptism.
It is not, quite, too late for anyone else to join him in
the pool,
and if you
would like to explore this
please
speak with me afterwards.
But back to today.
I started this monthly Communion sermon series by looking at
baptism
because, as
we shall see, it informs many of the other themes
we’ll be
exploring over the coming months.
It is the starting point for our understanding of what it means
to be a
church like Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church.
And now, as we come to share communion,
the meal that
sustains us as a church,
I shall be inviting all those who love God and seek him in
Christ Jesus
to join in
sharing bread and wine,
as once again we are re-created and re-membered as Christ’s
body.
Add the Quakers to the Salvation Army as a denomination that does not practice baptism.
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