Texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19: 1-7; Mark 1:4-11
I am now in my twentieth and last year of regular preaching – my retirement year; and I am reminded of a man who had worked in the Public Service for many years in a high position, who told me that a retirement year properly used was a wonderful thing. Firstly, if you are ever going to have anything useful to say it is likely to be when you are at your most experienced. And secondly, you can now say all the things you have always wanted to say, because you no longer have any future ambitions to jeopardise, and the worst thing that anyone can do to you is to hasten your retirement by a few months. You have been warned!
I don't intend to take my friend's advice too far; but having preached my way through six and a half three-year cycles of the Lectionary, and having preached somewhere around 1200 sermons, I am tempted to use this last year from time to time to sum up one or two key themes, and to do so against the backdrop of a real question mark over the future of the Church in a secular state such as New Zealand, and, in particular, over the future of the Anglican Church in this diocese.
Today we celebrate The Baptism of Christ, and so where better to start than with the fundamentally important issue of baptism? The first thing to say about Jesus' baptism is that it didn't happen in his infancy; he was about 30 years old at the time. It was not the start of his faith journey, but a very important confirmation of it. It was only after he had been baptised that he began his public ministry. And when he began his public ministry, he addressed himself to adults – he set out to convince adults of the truth of his gospel, to convert them – and only when they were convinced and converted, they would be baptised.
That's the basic model we see in the Scriptures; that's the basic model followed by the Apostles, and by the early Church right through until the fourth century when the Emperor Constantine and his successors radically changed the rules of the game. By "establishing" the Church as the official religion of the State, they changed it from a religion of personal conviction and choice, to one of social necessity and convention. Nations were recognised as Christian nations, their citizens being Christian by birth and descent. Baptism became Christening, a ritual recognition of a pre-existing status. The norm became infant Christenings instead of adult baptisms.
And it stayed that way for centuries in the Western world, a necessary incident of what we know as Christendom. Today, we might argue about when Christendom ceased to exist, but most people recognise that it has happened. We no longer believe that nations are Christian; we believe in diversity of religious belief, and atheism carries little if any social stigmatism today. And within the Church we say that we recognise that Christendom has gone for ever, and we (or some of us!) even say we are glad it has; yet we are still behaving as though nothing has changed. And this is especially the case with our baptismal practices, and our present obsession with ministry to children and young people; or, rather, our present panic over the absence of such ministry.
I want to say three things about that. Firstly, I do not share the view of the Baptist Church and others that there is no authority for infant baptism. Our baptismal liturgy quotes from Peter's so-called Pentecost sermon, in which he says: Repent and be baptised, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children... There's the pattern that I believe the Church followed in its first 300 years, before Christendom was created by imperial decrees. Adults were convinced of the truth of the gospel, were converted, were baptised and their children were baptised, too.
But that is not the pattern we follow today; and it is not even the policy we advocate. We are constantly told that the future of the Church depends on the children and youth of today: that they ARE the future of the Church; and that unless we reach the children and youth of today we will have no church in the future. Well, let's examine that claim a little more closely.
As I have already said, that is not how the Church grew in leaps and bounds in the first three centuries of its existence. Jesus did not emerge from the desert to set up small groups for young mums and their children – he knew nothing of music and movement for pre-schoolers – he set up no Sunday Schools or youth groups. His ministry was to the adults, who were then expected to minister to their own children, to bring them into the fold with them.
Secondly, the present approach in my view devalues children and youth in two major ways. It implies that the children and youth are not really members of today's Church; they are sort of members-in-waiting of the future Church. They are to the Church what the age- grade teams are to the All Blacks – not present All Blacks, but All Blacks of the future. Well, I want to say that the Maisy's of the world are as much members of the Church of today as any of us. She has been baptised; she takes communion; she and all others of her generation within the Church now are today full members of the Church.
But there is a darker side than this to our present advocacy of ministry to children and youth. It smacks of the old idea of getting them when they're too young to think for themselves in the hope that they will stay with us for the rest of their lives. A few years ago the Bishops increased the preferred minimum age for Confirmation from 11-12 to 16, and there was a terrible hullabaloo. As predicted by their many critics at the time, there was a sharp fall off in the number of candidates for Confirmation. Why? Because the sheep-dip approach of former years was replaced by the inquiring minds of individual teenagers. Instead of large numbers of youths leaving the Church soon after Confirmation (it was sometimes known as the 'passing-out parade'), a large number left before Confirmation. By the age of 16 they were far less likely to be confirmed because of family pressure; those who went ahead did so because they wished as thinking individuals to make a genuine public commitment to follow Christ.
I believe that if we want the Church in this country to have a future we should put our time, energy and resources into the adults, rather than the children and youth. Bring the adults into the Kingdom of God, and they will bring their own children and young people with them. To do this we need to believe again in the power of the Holy Spirit to take the Word of God properly and convincingly proclaimed deep into the listening hearts of those to whom it is proclaimed. I do not believe that it was ever God's intention that all people, or even a substantial majority of people, should become members of the Church, any more than it was ever his intention that all Gentiles should become citizens of Israel. Just as Israel is to be a light to the nations, so the Church is to be a light to the world to show them the Kingdom of God.
The Spirit will call some into the Church to share in its mission, just as Christ called a few disciples to share in his ministry. Those whom the Spirit calls, let those be baptised and confirmed. And let them bring their children with them for baptism. What we can do for the children and youth of today's church is what we should do for the adult members of today's church – encourage, nurture, teach, and challenge. What we can do as parents and godparents is to take seriously our responsibilities to fulfil the vows we make when the children are baptised – I will love this child and share my faith with him/her. What we can do as a congregation is to remember the words addressed to us when a child is baptised here:
As the community of faith we rejoice at this baptism and will share with this child what we are ourselves have received: a delight in prayer, a love for the word of God, a desire to follow the way of Christ, and food for the journey.
To sum up: our ministry of proclamation in word and deed should be addressed to adults. When they are convinced by the Holy Spirit of the truth of the proclamation, they should be baptised. Adult baptism should be the norm. The very word "Christening" should be struck out of our vocabulary. Only the children of members of the congregation should be baptised; and the congregation should accept joint responsibility with the parents and godparents to raise the child as a member of the worshipping community.
I must add that not much of that is the present policy of the Anglican Church in this diocese. Until it is the real question mark over our future will remain.
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