Today we continue our series of reflections on Rowan Williams’s book, Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer
As we continue to hear what Williams has to say about baptism, he reminds us that, being baptized into the life of Christ, we partake of and grow into his identity. One classic way of thinking about the identity and calling of Jesus is to consider the three roles of prophet, priest, and king.
For many centuries the Church has thought of Jesus as anointed by God to live out a threefold identity: that of prophet, priest and king. The baptized person identifies with Jesus in these three ways of being human which characterize and define his unique humanity. As we grow into his life and humanity these three ways come to characterize us as well. The life of the baptized is a life of prophecy and priesthood and royalty. (p. 12)
To speak of our lives like that certainly sounds heady, but in fact, this baptismal identity works itself out in down-to-earth ways.
As those who share the life of Christ the Prophet, we “express and ask important and readily forgotten questions” (p. 14) of ourselves, the church, and the world in which we live.
As those who share the life of Christ the Priest, we “are called upon to mend shattered relationships between God and the world, through the power of Christ and his Spirit. As baptized people, we are in the business of building bridges. We are in the business, once again, of seeing situations where there is breakage, damage and disorder, and bringing into those situations the power of God in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in order to rebuild something” (p. 15)
As those who share the life of Christ the King, we find that our “‘royal’ calling is about how we freely engage in shaping our lives and our human environment in the direction of God’s justice, showing in our relationships and our engagement with the world something of God’s own freedom, God’s own liberty to heal and restore” (p. 16).
As we saw in our recent series on Genesis, baptism restores us to our original human vocation, which is that we should represent God in the world and live within his blessing, so that we will flourish upon the earth, take care of creation as God’s stewards, and also actively engage and overcome evil. This is exactly what Rowan Williams is saying when he says we are baptized into the life, identity, and vocation of Jesus Christ.
God created this world for shalom. Jesus came to restore shalom. Now, in his name we are baptized so that we may begin to experience his shalom in our lives and participate with God in making shalom a reality throughout the world.
We arise from the waters of baptism to be shalom-makers. And blessed are the shalom-makers, for they will be called the children of God.
The Internet Monk Archives 
Fighting a Social Gospel without Personal Salvation with a Gospel of Personal Salvation and ONLY Personal Salvation.
Communism begets Objectivism.
Total opposite, equal fanaticism.
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Yet another result of a Gospel of Personal Salvation and ONLY Personal Salvation.
What about you, me, everything else?
“It’s All Gonna Burn(TM)…”
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When you encounter that attitude, it usually means full-water immersion Baptism is a tribal recognition marker.
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Has anyone read Scott McKnight’s new book “It takes a church to baptize”?
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When I became a Christian, a CofC believer that I worked with proceeded to tell me that I needed to – NEEDED to – get a full water immersion or I wouldn’t be saved. I was like…”What???”
His insistence so turned me off that I decided I wouldn’t get baptized until I felt the time was right. That time didn’t come until ~27 years later…LOL.
People can be so frickin’ weird with their beliefs!
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I was raised in the cofC. My baptism (by immersion of course) was a “one-off” which “saved” me from hell and added me to the one true church. After baptism it was my responsibility to stay “saved”.
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Michael Green was a charismatic, Anglican Evangelist. Which kind of explains why he had a charismatic Anglican Evangelist perspective on Baptism.
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Green’s book sounds like it’s very thorough and reasonable, pays attention to Scripture, and can connect with Christians in western traditions. Too bad he didn’t investigate what the Orthodox Church has to say about it…. just for completeness of information, if nothing else.
https://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/doctrine-scripture/the-symbol-of-faith/sacraments
https://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-sacraments/baptism
In the Orthodox Church, Baptism is followed immediately by Chrismation (anointing for the gifting of the Holy Spirit, somewhat analogous to “confirmation” – though of course the Holy Spirit has been active all along in bringing people to the Lord) and the reception of the Eucharist – all three at once, even for infants & children, as the full incorporation into the Body of Christ. A link at the bottom of the second-linked page above takes you to Chrismation, and then at the bottom of that page to the Eucharist.
I agree completely with Chaplain Mike’s comment at 5:43, just for the record.
D.
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–> “The fact that it doesn’t always happen that way is testimony to the wideness of God’s mercy and the foolishness of our efforts to build boundaries around his grace.”
AMEN!
I’ve never been bothered by my own “baptismal” testimony, but I’m sure it causes some to feel great anguish…LOL.
In fact, my own testimony has helped others to wait for their own baptism until a “time that you’ll know is right.”
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“and all” = “are all”
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I was greatly influenced by Michael Green’s book: Baptism: Its Purpose, Practice, and Power which he wrote (and I read) in 1987. Here is a very good summary from an Amazon Review:
I remember all these years later, him writing (and I paraphrase)… “Trusting Jesus for Salvation, Water Baptism, and being filled with the Spirit, and all very necessary things for the Christian to experience… Though they may not happen in that particular order.”
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God is bigger than any one route. As I’ve said often before, baptism is designed to be the ordinary entrance into salvation, the Christian life, and the church. The fact that it doesn’t always happen that way is testimony to the wideness of God’s mercy and the foolishness of our efforts to build boundaries around his grace.
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You Baptists and former Baptists might either cringe or chuckle at this, but I didn’t get baptized until ~27 years after following Christ and being “born again.”
So the REAL question is…
Was I not “baptized” until then? I think I was a “shalom-maker” and a Spirit-filled-fruit-bearer for a number of those 27 years, despite not having arisen from actual baptismal waters.
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Rightly or wrongly, I didn’t read that angle into Seneca’s words. Odd, too, since I’m usually pretty cynical.
😉
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Big difference in my mind. One suggests that you need to be humble, perhaps to the point of death. The other suggests you need to get strong and be prepared to fight.
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Rick Ro.,
I agree that the “man up” attitude is deficient 🙂 but I think Seneca was reacting to what he might term as social justice-focused “liberal” churches. I may be wrong.
Dana
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Michael,
It’s good you came back to it again and again. And you’re different from most.
I was in baptistic Evangelical churches for +20 years. All the ones I was part of were as Chaplain Mike describes.
Real question: How did you understand God as active in your being in the water, right at that moment – *not* God leading you to take such a step, or wanting to be obedient to Jesus, or in any emotion you felt, but in what was happening as you were being baptized?
Dana
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Whatever happened to “Saved FROM sin FOR service”?
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What’s so different between this and “take up your cross and follow Me”?
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Chaplain Mike and Dana,
A lot of speaking for Baptists here.
When I proclaimed through Baptism “I stand with Jesus”, it wasn’t a one off, but something that I came back to again and again.
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I see where Seneca was coming from, as my reaction to some of the content was similar. Kind of a sense of “Now that you’re baptized, time to Man Up!”
Nah. I’ll try to bear fruit and be a Shalom-maker, but “manning up”? Not so much.
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Also in such churches, God doesn’t do anything in Baptism. It’s all about us, OUR choice, OUR decision to be obedient to Christ and get baptized. But why would Christ ask people to do such a thing if Nothing Happens except that a person gets wet? What is the action of God in it? (And a begged question: where is the Church?)
Dana
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It’s not about “saving the planet”, Sen. It’s about becoming more human and living as the Icon of Christ in one’s sphere of influence, even if that sphere is quite small – which it is for the vast majority of people.
Dana
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I was raised in the baptistic evangelical tradition. I regarded baptism as pretty much a one-off event. I pushed my way through Ben Witherington III’s “Troubled Waters” when it was published about ten years ago. It was a bit over my head, I emerged somewhat confused, and I haven’t seriously attempted to revisit the subject.
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The photo reminds me of when I was about 11 years old. We would visit the Cumberland Gap. My brothers and I would yell across that river to the sheer rock face on the other side. To my memory it would take about 3 full seconds for our “HELLO” to echo back. That was very cool.
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–> “Now, in his name we are baptized so that we may begin to experience his shalom in our lives and participate with God in making shalom a reality throughout the world. We arise from the waters of baptism to be shalom-makers. And blessed are the shalom-makers, for they will be called the children of God.”
I like those closing words of this blog post. One of the things I consistently see as I lead studies on the gospels is that we believers are to image bearers of Christ. To me, that means bearing fruit of the spirit as referenced in Galatians chapter 5. Fruit-bearers = Shalom-makers.
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Your reply is evidence of one of the weaknesses of baptistic evangelical churches. One thing that attracted me to the Lutheran tradition was its emphasis upon remembering and living out our baptismal identity every day of our lives. Baptists on the other hand see it as a one-off.
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I hear you, Senecagriggs. Rowan Williams is an Anglican and it might help explain the post a bit more if you take a look at the Anglican liturgy for holy baptism:
https://www.bcponline.org/Baptism/holybaptism.html
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I just wanted to get dunked and say, “I stand with Jesus.” Not sure I would have voluntarily signed up for trying to save the planet.
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” . . . baptism restores us to our original human vocation, which is that we should represent God in the world and live within his blessing, so that we will flourish upon the earth, take care of creation as God’s stewards, and also actively engage and overcome evil. This is exactly what Rowan Williams is saying when he says we are baptized into the life, identity, and vocation of Jesus Christ.”
(Rowan Williams)
I find Rowan Williams’ SHALOM concept in baptism to be similar to the nature of Incarnation as seen by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in this way:
““” We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate lord makes his followers the brothers and sisters of all humanity. ” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
We are invited ‘in’ to a union with Christ in order to help ‘repair’ what has been wounded and broken:
we are invited to ’embrace the leper’, we are invited to come alongside those with burdens and help them, we are invited to be ‘with’ those who suffer and grieve. . . . .
Rowan Williams’ concept of baptism seems deeply ‘sacramental’ in so many ways.
“So baptism means being with Jesus ‘in the depths’: the depths of human need, including the depths of our own selves in their need—but also in the depth of God’s love; in the depth where the Spirit is re-creating and refreshing human life as God meant it to be.
If all this is correct, baptism does not confer on us a status that marks us off from everybody else. To be able to say ‘I’m baptized’ is not to claim an extra dignity, let alone a sort of privilege that keeps you separate from and superior to the rest of the human race, but to claim a new level of solidarity with other people. It is to accept that to be a Christian is to be affected—you might even say contaminated—by the mess of humanity.
This is very paradoxical. Baptism is a ceremony in which we are washed, cleansed, and re-created, it is also a ceremony in which we are pushed into the middle of a human situation that may hurt us, and that will not leave us untouched or unsullied. And the gathering of baptized people is therefore not a convocation of those who are privileged, elite and separate, but in the heart of a needy, contaminated messy world.being-christian
To put it another way, you don’t go down into the waters of the Jordan without stirring up a great deal of mud!”
(Rowan Williams)
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