After the Flood: Life After Baptism

Acts 19:1-7
While Apollo was in Corinth, Paul passed through the interior region and arrived in Ephesus, where he discovered some disciples. He said to them, "Did the Holy Spirit seize you when you became believers?"

They said to him, "No, we haven’t even heard about the Holy Spirit."

Then he said, "So into what were you baptized?"

They said, "Into the baptism of John."

Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people thereby that they should believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus."

Upon hearing this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. Now there were about twelve of them in all.

When I was in college, after my first year I lived with two roommates who were very different from me. We got along well but we came from different backgrounds and we had very different interests. Bill was studying accounting and business and he was meant to be in that field. He had a head for numbers and he was a whiz with anything in that department. He was a homebody who didn’t like to go out much and who really didn’t like the outdoors but he was a good basketball player and he made a mean tuna fish casserole.

Mike was a hunter who loved being outside and didn’t care much for school. He loved country music and he had a big aquarium in his room, which he would have loved to have stocked with trout. He once got me to skip classes on a Friday so that we could drive to Chicago in the snow to get a Chesapeake Bay retriever puppy from a kennel out there. That’s what I remember about Mike.

What they remember about me was the guitar. I was learning a lot about myself all during those years and I was trying out talents I didn’t know I had. One of those explorations was musical. On impulse one day I bought a guitar and determined that I was going to learn to play this guitar. I was going to teach myself. So for months, every afternoon and most nights, I would sit on the back porch of our house and learn to play guitar.

It sounded pretty horrendous for a really long time. I had no rhythm and my strumming was very awkward. My roommates even years later could do a dead-on parody of my blues strumming – nah, nah, nah, nah, NAHN. And they could still recite the lyrics to my first song, "You live your life in a bottle…" It’s very humbling because I know it was very bad.

But then there was that day. There was that day when I got it. It probably would have come much earlier if I had had sense enough to take lessons, but it was a wonderful day when I "got" what it meant to play guitar. I knew what it took before that. I could read the books and talk about the theory of playing guitar. But that didn’t mean I was really playing guitar. When I "got it" this awkward, jerking strumming became easy and fluid and I suddenly felt that the guitar had become a real instrument, translating what I felt into something that resembled real music. No one was more grateful for that day than my roommates.

Why do I start with that story? Because "getting it" is not just a phenomenon of guitar playing. It’s not just the thing that happens when you really learn to inhabit a new talent or skill – like art or dance or carving. "Getting it" is the point of Jesus’ ministry. At least that’s what it looks like from the gospels.

Jesus goes to be baptized by John in the river Jordan. The Holy Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove and the voice of God calls out, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased." Then Jesus goes out into the desert and when he returns he has a new message for his people: The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. And that’s what gets him into trouble.

You see, good news is not always good news to people who think the old news is good enough. For people who have a lot invested in the way things are and the way they are, the message of change and a new order is a threatening message. For the religious leaders that Jesus confronted the message of the scriptures was clear. They had developed a body of directives that could cover most every eventuality. They knew what rituals to perform and how to observe the Sabbath. They knew when and how it was permissible to work and how to prepare food. They knew what relationships ought to look like. They knew who ought to be in charge.

But something was wrong. Though there was a lot of knowledge of God, there was also a real failure to "get it," to understand what God really asked of them, to really live out of a sense of being in relationship with a God who was transforming the world. It’s scary to live with a God like that. It’s hard to be synchronized with a God who is continually on the move. So when Jesus described the scribes and Pharisees he used the image of "whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside they are full of the bones of the dead" [Mt. 23:27].

What Jesus asked of those who followed him was that they get rid of all the old ways and to accept that their life in the new Christian community was going to look different. Those first disciples gave up home and work and comfort and old ways of thinking and old ways of acting so that they could be ready for the new. It was hard for them. They often didn’t "get it." When Jesus told them to give a crowd something to eat with no resources, they asked "How?" When they tried to keep foreigners and children and women with anointing oils away from Jesus he told them to let them come and they said "Why?" When Jesus told them that he would be handed over to the rulers of the day to suffer and die and rise again and that all of them would fall away, they said "No!" It was hard for those disciples to get it and to live as Easter people in a Good Friday world.

What they needed was the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was what Jesus had promised them. "The Holy Spirit," Jesus said, "will teach you what you need to know when I am gone. He will guide you into all truth" [John 16:13]. When they got discouraged, the Spirit would comfort them. When they got confused, the Spirit would guide them. When they forgot what Jesus had done and said…when they forgot who they were, the Spirit would be the presence of Christ with them.

That’s what happened to the disciples on Pentecost. The Spirit descended on them as they were sitting huddled together after Jesus had left them. And that’s when they "got it." Men and women who had followed Jesus and marveled at his miracles and wondered about his authority and were amazed at his teaching and overwhelmed by his resurrection suddenly found that they could do things they never thought they could do before. They were performing miracles. They were given power from a source beyond themselves. They were teaching the crowds. They were experiencing the resurrection in their lives and in their bodies and in their community. What they had known in their heads they translated into their lives. They got it!

So now when they traveled the land they weren’t satisfied to pass along a set of knowledge. They weren’t content until God was alive in the midst of their hearers, until Christ was not locked in a borrowed tomb but calling them together in a new community, until the Holy Spirit was filling them with a fire they had not known before. These new Christians were ferocious.

So we see Paul in the passage we read this morning, going to Ephesus and running into a dozen disciples – people who had heard the news of Jesus and who were convinced of the need to follow Jesus. They had heard the teaching of a previous teacher and they had even been baptized, repenting of their sin. But Paul must have seen that something was missing. Something was not quite right. So the first things he says to them is not a polite greeting but a piercing question that goes right to the heart of the problem: Did the Holy Spirit seize you when you became believers?

They are surprised. The Holy Spirit? They don’t even know what the Holy Spirit is.

"So into what were you baptized?" Paul asks.

"Into the baptism of John. Isn’t that enough?"

But, no, it isn’t. John had a following of his own, but many of his followers had misunderstood who he was. There were many that talked about John as if he were the Messiah, the one that Israel was waiting on. But John was the forerunner. He wanted the people to be ready and his baptism was meant to prepare them for the one whom would follow him, the one who would usher in a new age. John called them to repentance, but Jesus came to announce a new baptism by water, yes, but also by the Holy Spirit. And on the spot, the dozen disciples are baptized in the name of Jesus and when Paul laid hands on them, Pentecost happens again. They come alive and speak in new tongues and prophesy of God’s new kingdom. After all this time, they "get it"!

It is difficult for us to read these stories of the early church in the book of Acts because we envy them. Why can’t we believe like they believed? Why can’t we experience the power and miracles they experienced? Why can’t we be the disciples we perceive them to be?

We know what it’s like not to "get it", don’t we? We know how easy it is to accept the world’s definition of who we are. The world tells us that we are a bundle of needs and urges that seek fulfillment. The world tells us that there is no sense in worrying about the future, because what matters is only the here and now. The world tempts us to medicate ourselves or intoxicate ourselves or gorge ourselves in order to escape the gnawing sense of emptiness at our heart. The world tells us we don’t need God because believing in God diminishes us or oppresses us or enslaves us to old ideas and an outdated moral code. When we accept this definition of who we are, the early church seems like a fairy tale with its stories of power and life and community. But you know what? The world tells us all these things, but the world is wrong.

The world is wrong because it thinks too little of us. We are not just a collection of animal impulses, we are creatures of a God who has a destiny and a purpose for each of us. We don’t just live in the present, we stand with the future because we know that the story has an ending and the ending is God and the ending is good. We don’t have to shield ourselves from despair because despite the brokenness in our families and our communities and our lives, God is binding all the wounds and reconciling all things. Belief is not a retreat into oppression and restrictions, it is a leap into freedom, a freedom based on the love we know in Jesus Christ. The world is not just wrong, it is deluded. It denies God because it thinks God threatens who we are but the truth is that we can’t know who we are until we know God and confess that Jesus is Lord of anything and everything that opposes life.

How do I know this? Because of the water in that font. It’s not magic water and there is nothing magic about baptism. But the water is a sign. It is a sign that Christ is at work in me, transforming me and welcoming me into a new world and a new community. When we go through the water, Paul tells us, we die with Christ. We put to death all those things that need to die so that we can live. We leave behind the lies, the deceptions, the claims that the world and the devil would make on us. If we are united with Christ, sin has no power over us anymore. And when we come up from that water we live with Christ. We enter the life of the Holy Spirit. And in this life the broken pieces of our lives are collected together…the loose strands are brought back into the whole…the pointless wanderings of our souls are directed toward our soul’s author.

Now…If that’s what happens and if most of us have been baptized, why do we find it so hard to live like those early Christians? Why do we find it so hard to be filled with the Spirit? Why does life after baptism look so often like life before baptism?

Maybe it’s because we’re not seeking to grow in holiness. If we never take the risk of strumming clumsily on a guitar we never get to that time when it feels as natural to us as breathing. If we do not practice the means of grace…if we don’t read the Bible, and pray, and meet with one another in worship and study…if we don’t place ourselves in service to the world around us…if we don’t love one another…if we don’t dip our finger into this water and remind ourselves that we are baptized…how shall we grow? How will we "get it"?

We are people of the water. I’m not just speaking of us as Christians now. As people of the Eastern Shore (and I include myself in that now, even though I’m a ‘come here’), as people of the Eastern Shore we are a people of the water. It is all around us. Sometimes when I have been on the spine too long I go out to the water just to remind myself of where I am, and it never fails to remind me of who I am, too. This water is vast and mysterious and dangerous. But it is deep and profound and nourishing and it is full of life.

So is that water. We are people of the water and inheritors of the Spirit. Don’t forget who you are. You know…you know up here that God is seeking you out and inviting you to life. Now live it. Thanks be to God.