Baptism of the Lord
Acts 19:1-7
January 11, 2009

The Rest of the Story

In a few minutes you will be invited to take part in simple ritual. I will pour some water in a bowl, ask some questions, and invite you to reaffirm the vows of baptism. If you choose, you can also come to the baptismal font where you will be anointed with oil and encouraged to remember your baptism.

Whether you choose to take part in this ancient ritual is up to you, but whatever you decide, I want you to know that, despite the fact that water is the central symbol of all this, the reality is, we’re playing with fire. God willing, the Holy Spirit will be involved, and that could mean a heap of trouble – for you, for me, for this congregation, and for the whole world.

A heap of trouble and a heap of blessing.

I base my warning on the experience of some believers in Ephesus, way back in the earliest days of the church. Kelli read the story to you a few minutes ago.

It seems a young man named Apollos, a Jew from that sophisticated city of Alexandria, showed up in the town of Ephesus preaching a kind of gospel. I say "a kind of gospel" because, like a lot of young people, Apollos let his enthusiasm for a good cause get ahead of his actual knowledge of the subject. He arrived in Ephesus proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah and practicing a baptism of repentance advocated by John the Baptist, but he didn’t know the rest of the story.

Apparently he hadn’t heard, for instance, how the Holy Spirit had come upon Jesus at his own baptism, confirming him as God’s own beloved Son. He hadn’t heard about the Day of Pentecost, when the Spirit blew upon those disciples in Jerusalem, setting them aflame with news so good, it had to be shared in every language available.

Apollos just knew about sin and how to be sorry for it. That’s important, of course, and that’s certainly part of the gospel, but he hadn’t gotten the word about how the Holy Spirit works to transform our lives even before we repent. It’s as though Apollos had been invited to a wonderful feast, but left early, mistaking the appetizer for the whole meal.

Being well educated and a skillful orator, Apollos won over at least a dozen people who submitted to John-the-Baptist-style baptism, making them disciples of Jesus, but not yet full-fledged Christians. Call them proto-Christians if you like. The poor things just didn’t know any better.

An older couple named Priscilla and Aquila took young Apollos aside and did their best to fill in the gaps in his education. (A similar thing happened to me when I arrived in my first church fresh out of seminary and thinking I knew everything. That couple’s names were Bruce and Francis.)

Whether or not Priscilla and Aquila’s attempt at remedial education had any long-term effect, the Book of Acts doesn’t say, but it’s clear that when he moved on to Corinth, apparently the next stop on his preaching tour, Apollos left a mess behind in Ephesus.

Along comes Paul. He meets these proto-Christians and asks them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?"

"Holy Spirit? No, we hadn’t even heard there was a Holy Spirit."

This is what educators call a "teachable moment." Paul the Apostle becomes a bit like Paul Harvey and tells them the rest of the story. Jesus didn’t just call people to repentance. He opened up a whole new way of life. He showed people a God who welcomes beggars and prostitutes, a God who scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts, a God who yearns for the prodigal to come home and rejoices with the angels of heaven when a single lost sheep is found.

"You’ve only head part of the good news," Paul tells those half-baked believers. "Wait till you get a dose of the Holy Spirit. Then you’ll really have something to howl about."

Having heard a fuller gospel, these disciples ask Paul to baptize them in the name of Jesus. So that’s what he does. And as he’s laying hands on them, sure enough, the Holy Spirit shows up in person and they begin to speak in tongues and prophesy, just like the disciples in Jerusalem. It’s a kind of mini-Pentecost right there in Ephesus.

So let me warn you right here and now, the same thing could happen to you and me today. Once you start messing around these waters, there’s no telling what will happen.

Maybe you’ll start speaking in tongues. (It’s unlikely, but you must remember, the Holy Spirit is not a Presbyterian.)

Or maybe, like Peter, you’ll be driven out of your comfort zone to embrace people you’ve spent your whole life avoiding. Remember that story? Peter ran into some Gentiles who had already received the Holy Spirit and there was nothing left for him to do but to baptize them as well. His whole ecclesiology was turned on its head in that single blowing of the Spirit.

Maybe, like Paul, you will stand before government officials and declare that you must obey God, even if it means going to prison. That has happened over and over again when the State attempts to take the place of God. Stay away from this font if you don’t want to risk that.

Or maybe you’ll find yourself cheering for the opposite team at a high school football game in Grapevine, Texas. Did you hear that story? It appeared in Sports Illustrated, but it seems to me it could have come straight out of the Book of Acts.*

First, you have to know who’s playing. It’s the team from Faith (Faith Christian School of Grapevine, Texas) versus the team from State (Gainesville State School in Gainesville, Texas, about 75 miles north of Dallas). The players from Faith Christian are known as the Lions (There’s poetic justice for you.) and the players from State are called the Tornadoes.

Faith has 70 players on the squad, eleven coaches, all the latest equipment, and an army of loyal supporters who take their football very seriously. (I did say this was Texas, didn’t I?) Faith’s record going into the game was 7 and 2.

State has 14 players, one coach, plays with equipment that was new in Newt Rockne’s time, and has no fans or supporters, due in no small measure to the fact that Gainesville State School is a maximum-security correctional facility. All 14 players for the Gainesville team have been convicted of crimes ranging from drug peddling to robbery to assault. Going into the game, Gainesville was 0 and 8, with two touchdowns for the whole season.

Kris Hogan is the name of the coach for Faith Christian. He reckoned there wouldn’t be much doubt about which team would win the game, but being a baptized Christian and all, Coach Hogan thought Faith should send a message on game night. And here’s the message: "You are just as valuable as any other person on Earth."

So on the night of the big game, Coach Hogan split the hundreds of Faith fans – cheerleaders included – into two groups. One group cheered for the Lions and the other for the Tornadoes. The Tornado players didn’t know quite what to do when they ran out on the field. Forty yards’ worth of supporters had formed a gauntlet for them to run through.

When they got to their bench, there were hundreds of fans in the stands behind them – something they’d never seen before. "Go Lll . . . Go Tornadoes" they screamed. When the Tornadoes had the ball they shouted "Touchdown! Touchdown!" When the Lions had the ball they hollered "Dee-fense. Dee-fense."

That’s wasn’t all. They used their names. They called the players by name. "Go, Carlos. Get ‘em, Tommy. Go for it, Bobby Jack."

Well, the Tornadoes lost the game, even though Coach Hogan played his third-string guard at safety and his third-string cornerback at defensive end. The score was 33-14 in favor of the Lions.

After the game, before the Tornado players were led back to their bus in handcuffs, both teams gathered in the middle of the field for a prayer. A player from State asked to lead.

"Lord," he prayed. "I don’t know how this happened, so I don’t know how to say Thank You, but I never would’ve known there was so many people in the world that cared about us."

I’m not kidding you. That player’s name is Isaiah.

So, I’m warning you – Don’t remember your baptism unless you’re willing to cross over and cheer for the Tornadoes. Don’t say you renounce evil unless you really are willing to be changed. Don’t say you’ll be Jesus’ disciple to your life’s end unless you’re willing to follow Jesus to the other side of the field, because where the Holy Spirit just might show up

In other words, don’t mess with baptism unless you want to be in the rest of the story.

 

 

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*http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?section=magazine&id=3789373

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