Parallel time: baptism from the inside out
04 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
In accordance with God’s promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.
When I was in elementary school I used to rush home every day in order to get there by 4:00, to watch “Dark Shadows.” For those of you who have never heard of Dark Shadows, or who have heard of it but never watched it, or who used to watch it but have chosen to deny any knowledge of the show whatsoever, it was a genre of soap opera that never quite took off in the pre-Twilight era: a “Horror Soap.” This meant that in addition to the usual stuff of romance and family intrigue, about half the characters were in some way related to the local vampire or werewolf, or had some other macabre and magic powers.
For a while, one of the show’s subplots was something called “Parallel time.” In one wing of the mansion where much of the action took place was a pair of massive oak doors. Sometimes, one would open the doors and find a dark, dusty, empty room. Other times, they would open the doors and find they had entered into another drama entirely. Familiar characters seemed to be dealing with whole new sets of problems, or none at all. As the newcomer began to take all of this in, he or she would realize that this parallel time had been going on all along; it existed alongside of that person’s day-to-day existence, and yet at the same time, once aware of this other world, he or she became part of it.
Incarnation—God’s fleshiness, which we celebrate at Christmas—is all around us in this moment in time. If you walked into our building last Friday afternoon, you would have been greeted by the smells of delicious home-made soup prepared by Food Not Bombs. You would’ve heard children lovely violin music. If you came back Saturday morning, you would’ve smelled more deliciousness coming from the kitchen, as two of our prize-winning bakers were cooking up treats for this afternoon’s party. In the lower level, you would’ve seen people from all walks of life learning to make jewelry in the art studio. This afternoon, the Voices Unlimited Choir, who announce the kingdom of God by welcoming people of all abilities into their midst, will offer a traditional service of Lessons and Carols, and then we’ll all eat and drink and listen to more great music in the St. Nicholas party. God’s fleshiness, in a particular moment in time.
In our Advent worship, in our readings, and in the activities of our own December lives, we are all getting ready for a particular moment in time, the moment described in the story we hear every year on Christmas: the journey to Bethlehem, the overcrowded inn, the swaddling clothes, and the angels’ glorious announcement to the shepherds.
At the same time, we know that the story of the birth of Jesus, which we anticipate throughout Advent, is part of a completely different and eternal story.
John the Baptist knows this. Mark the Evangelist knows this. Mark doesn’t even bother with the shepherds and the swaddling clothes; did you notice that? For Mark, the Good News begins with John’s baptism and moves immediately to the grown-up Jesus.
I will baptize you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
I would like to suggest that in today’s gospel, John the Baptist opens a door onto parallel time. Imagine that we are standing on the threshold.
In one direction, we see John the Baptist appear and proclaim a baptism of repentance. He is there in a specific time and place, as familiar to Mark’s readers, then, and now, as this time and this place is to us. We know what John is wearing and what he’s eating. He’s an earthy, in-your-face, here-and-now kind of guy. We know what scriptures he’s been reading, and we know what he has to offer: baptism in the river Jordan, for the forgiveness of sins. An opportunity for the people of Judea to cleanse themselves and to turn with openness and hope toward the promise of someone much greater than John.
On the other side of the threshold, we see the time that stretches from the prophets to this moment, right here. In one line—I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit—John the Baptist tells the whole story. The story that began in creation moves through the lives of the people of Israel, broken and desperate for the glad tidings we heard from Isaiah. The story has no end: it continues with the One who is coming after John, the One for whom John is only a messenger, the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
We have no record of Jesus ever actually baptizing anybody. So what is baptism with the Holy Spirit?
I would like to suggest that baptism in the spirit is baptism that will change us from the inside out. If John’s baptism with water is a baptism of repentance, of changing our ways in a particular time and place, the baptism of the Holy Spirit brings us into a new relationship with God, always and everywhere. This new relationship exists both within time, here and now, and in the world without end.
By his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus transforms the nature of baptism. It is no longer something we do to signify a change of heart. It is that, but it is more than that. The baptism of Jesus in the Holy Spirit is baptism into who we are. It is baptism into the faith community that shares, through time and beyond time, the whole story.
At the conclusion of the Chronicles of Narnia—another wonderful story of “parallel time”—C.S. Lewis writes about
“the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever, in which each chapter is better than the one before.”
No one ever has read this Great Story. And yet we tell bits and pieces of it every Sunday. We tell the story of God’s presence in history, in the lives and witness of our ancestors in faith. We tell this story in the Holy Eucharist, which is another example of a particular moment in time, bread and wine we can taste and see, which also contains the stuff of eternity for which we cannot even find words.
We are standing on the threshold between this moment, the Second Sunday of Advent, 2011, and the eternal time that the prophets are forever promising us.
Unlike the characters in Dark Shadows, we don’t have to leave one kind of time in order to be present for the other. Baptism in the Holy Spirit means that we can have it all. We can move through our lives, grappling with the day-to-day intrigue of being human. At the same time, we live as participants in that great story that has been going on before time. From both sides of the threshold, let us greet with joy the coming of Jesus.
