Water and the Spirit

Baptism of the Lord Sunday
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

“By the baptism of his suffering, death, and resurrection you gave birth to your Church, delivered us from slavery to sin and death, and made with us a new covenant through water and the spirit.” Those should be familiar words. We hear them each month when we celebrate communion. A new covenant through water and spirit. And this morning, during our reaffirmation of baptism, we heard these: “Through the Sacrament of Baptism we are initiated into Christ’s holy Church. We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit.”

Somehow those two things, water and the Spirit, are indelibly linked in baptism. But how, exactly? Does the gift of the Spirit come along with water at baptism? Does the Spirit only come after the baptism with water? Or must one wait for the gift of the Spirit before one can be baptized? Considerable time has been spent debating these questions. Denominations have been split, families have been broken, even wars have been fought over the meaning of baptism and the connection of water and the Spirit. So let’s take a close look at what the Bible has to say about it.

First, let’s look at the story from Luke’s Gospel about Jesus being baptized. John the Baptist tells us that when he baptizes, it is only with water, but that when Jesus comes to baptize, he will do it with the Holy Spirit and with fire. In this case, water and the Spirit are separate. John is capable of giving water, but he isn’t able to impart the gift of the Holy Spirit. He thinks that only the Messiah, only Jesus, can do that.

Interestingly, though, Jesus himself comes to the banks of the Jordan for baptism. Just like everyone else in the crowd, he steps down into the water and is taken under by John. And after Jesus gets up out of the water, when he is off by himself praying, he has an amazing experience. He sees the heavens torn open before him. He hears a voice from heaven that declares him to be God’s beloved Son. And he sees the Holy Spirit descending upon him like a dove.

For Jesus, the gifts of water and the Spirit are very closely linked. He is baptized with water, and shortly after, while he is praying, he receives the gift of the Holy Spirit. The first seems to have initiated the second. Baptism with water and baptism with the Spirit come together.

It’s quite a different story in our lesson from Acts. The Apostles Peter and John go out on a mission to the region of Samaria. They’ve heard that a group of Samaritans have accepted the good news of Jesus. Samaritans aren’t Gentiles, but they aren’t exactly Jews either. They believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but according to the rest of the Jewish community, they don’t worship God properly.

In any case, this particular group of Samaritans has been baptized, but they haven’t received the gift of the Holy Spirit. So John and Peter go down to try and remedy the situation. They pray for the new converts, and they lay hands on them. And after the apostles’ ministrations, sure enough, the Holy Spirit comes upon them.

These believers receive the baptism with water, but it doesn’t immediately result in the gift of the Spirit. So what happened? Was the baptism not performed properly? Is it that it was only in the name of the Lord Jesus and not in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Or is it that baptism doesn’t really result in the gift of the Spirit?

But perhaps baptism is still a prerequisite to receiving the Holy Spirit. After all, Jesus received the Holy Spirit after he was baptized. These Samaritans, too, only receive the Holy Spirit after they are baptized, although they do need some additional intervention. So maybe that explains it. Baptism doesn’t necessarily immediately lead to receiving the Spirit, but you can’t receive the Spirit until you’ve been baptized.

But I think we need to look at one more story, just a couple of pages later in the Book of Acts, at the end of chapter 10. Peter is preaching to some Gentiles, people who were considered outside of God’s realm. As he’s preaching, suddenly, the Holy Spirit comes upon those who are listening. It’s quite surprising. Peter never would have expected that the Holy Spirit would have come on Gentiles. But after it happens, he realizes that God’s grace is broader than he thought it was. Peter says, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” And then he has everyone baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. So this time, the gift of the Holy Spirit comes first, and baptism with water comes only afterward.

It’s terribly confusing. We have three stories, all recorded by the same author. In the first, baptism and the gift of the Spirit come at roughly the same time for Jesus. In the second, a group of Samaritans are baptized, and only later do they receive the Holy Spirit when the apostles pray for them. And in the third, Peter’s audience receives the Holy Spirit first thing, and then it’s followed up with baptism. How are we supposed to make sense of it? There doesn’t seem to be any predictable connection between water and the Spirit.

But I guess that’s the interesting thing about the Holy Spirit: it’s never been very predictable. We can pretend the we understand how the Spirit works. We can try to set up formulas to tell us what the Spirit will do. We can try to establish boundaries for where and when the Spirit can and cannot act. But when it comes down to it, the Holy Spirit shows up where it feels like showing up, and where it feels like showing up might be just about anywhere, just about any time.

The truth is that there is a diversity to the way that the Spirit works in baptism. Some people feel a deep connection with God right in the midst of their baptism. Some people are baptized but don’t feel that connection with God until much later. And some people wait until after they have found that deep connection with God before they even consider baptism.

Each one of us has a unique journey of faith, with twists and turns that are all our own. Some of us have grown up in the church and can’t remember a time when we didn’t feel connected to God. Some of us have had dramatic, life-altering conversion experiences. Some of us have had to travel through long periods of doubt before we have returned to faith. And these are all normal ways to come to faith, because the Holy Spirit works in a variety of ways. There is no one, single, formulaic plan for how to come to Jesus. We must each come to faith in our own way. And we must recognize that the person next to us will probably not come to faith in the same way that we will.

But regardless of the style or the sequence, regardless of the where or the when, regardless of the length or the speed of our faith journeys, we do all share in one thing. We share in the new covenant. We share in the story of God’s mighty acts of salvation. We share in the new birth. We share together in water and the Spirit.