On Sunday we heard about John baptising people in the Jordan and calling people to repentance and a new life. According to Matthew, John turns some people away – the Pharisees and Sadducees. Groups who were very much part of the establishment. He tells them to “bear fruit that befits repentance.”
As we left the morning service, men, women and children, dressed in their finest, with babes in arms, were being welcomed into church – a baptism party. Not regulars at St. George’s, but members of the community who had asked for a ceremony to be performed .
Symbols and symbolic acts are important. Rituals too. Like stories they connect us to other people, to the groups and communities we belong to and to society at large. Parents of newly born babies often used to talk of having him or her “done”, meaning baptised or christened. They wanted something formal to make things complete.
Even though, in John’s terms, baptism means consciously letting go the old way of being and embracing the new, does it matter that for many, it’s more of a naming ceremony? More akin to a school prom, or an 18th birthday. Or, through the ritual, has the baby been blessed in some way, formally welcomed into the world and the Christian community?
Chris Dawson