In 1736, John Wesley and his brother Charles came to the colony of Georgia, having been invited by James Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony, to preach to the English and native populations. When they arrived, they found things to be different than they had expected, and Charles returned to London after just a few months. But John decided to stay and began to fall in love with a member of his congregation by the name of Sophia Hopkey. Although most people expected them to get married, through a series of miscommunications, Sophy ended up marrying someone else, whom she had apparently also been seeing. As you might imagine, John was a little less than pleased, and when she showed up to church John took the opportunity to publicly rebuke her and then refused to serve her communion. This caused quite a stir, and her husband brought charges against Wesley for defamation. And then it gets even worse because not only was the judge of the colony known to be an ill-tempered despot, but he also happened to be Sophy’s uncle and allegedly bribed the grand jury to make sure that charges were brought. Wesley rightly reading the tea leaves decided to leave Georgia soon thereafter. And that story becomes important because later Wesley himself will also be denied communion, although then it will be because he was not considered to be a true Christian, which will impact Methodist theology on the sacraments.
We continue in our series on what Methodists believe. And while I said last week that we were only going to look at stuff that was unique to Methodism, rather than all our beliefs, that’s not really true for today, or not fully true, because there are some things that we believe as part of the sacraments that are broader than just Methodism. When it comes to the sacraments, we, along with most Protestant churches practice two, communion and baptism. That stands in contrast mainly against the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches which have seven sacraments. Protestants practice just two because during the protestant reformation Luther said he sought to follow only those sacraments in which Jesus participated and also commanded us to do. And while a lot more could be said about that, I’m not going to, so we can get into beliefs about baptism, which could be its own message as well.
Baptism serves many different purposes, or different things
we believe it does. The first is that it is an initiation right. No one is born
a Christian, you come into the faith through the waters of baptism. That’s not
unique to us, that’s a near universal belief. Now Wesley, reflecting his
Anglican tradition, said that baptism is an outward and visible sign of an
inward and spiritual grace. That is God acts through the waters of baptism in
conveying grace to us, and God is the actor who does all the work. People argue
about how much water has to be used, and we’ll get to that in a moment, and you
might have seen recently that all the baptisms that a Catholic priest in
Arizona had done were deemed invalid because he used the wrong words. But for
us that places the primary emphasis in the wrong place. It places it on the
officiant, or the water, or the situation as being the thing that saves or
conveys the grace. But it is God who saves, and God who acts, and it is also
God who is the other part of the covenant that is made through the water, which
is the reason that Methodists only baptize once.
We don’t rebaptize because God is forever faithful. The
official statement on baptism for the UMC says “we may live in neglect or
defiance of the covenant, but we cannot destroy God’s love for us. When we
repent and return to God, the covenant does not need to be remade, because God
has always remained faithful to it. What is needed is renewal of our commitment
and reaffirmation of our side of the covenant.” (By Water and the Spirit)
That’s also why we don’t require people to be rebaptized as they join Methodist
church from other denominations, because the grace conveyed in baptism has
everything to do with God, and nothing to do with us. The only exception would
be for those baptized in a non-trinitarian, or non-orthodox church.
And so, we believe that there are many things that happen in
baptism, and I’m just going to mention some of them and not go into detail. But
first, as already said, it’s a means of God’s grace given to us. In the waters
of baptism, we are cleansed of our sins and given forgiveness. This is not only
the sins we have committed, but it offers us forgiveness for what we have yet
to do, when we seek that forgiveness through repentance. The second thing is
that we are adopted as God’s beloved sons and daughters. As we are reborn
through the waters of baptism, dying to our old self, God claims us as God’s
own. Third, not only are we given new life here and now, but we are given the
promise of eternal life, as we receive the water of life. Fourth, we are also
given the Holy Spirit. One of the acts of baptism is to lay hands on the person
being baptized and ask for the Spirit to come upon them, just as it came upon
Jesus at his baptism. And finally, baptism incorporates us into the body of
Christ, the church. Baptism is a communal activity and brings us into
community.
Now the two other pieces to tackle around baptism is that of
the water, or the amount thereof, and infant baptism versus believers’ baptism,
and I’ll start with the easiest first. In the United Methodist Church, we can
conduct baptisms by springling, pouring or full-immersion, although certainly
sprinkling and pouring are the more prevalent of the three. And to just get to
the point, this practice goes back to the earliest days of the church. In a
work known as the Didache, or sometimes called The Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles, which is normally dated between the year 60 and 110. It says,
“Regarding baptism. Baptize as follows:
baptize in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit, in
running water. But if you have no running water, baptize in other water; and if
you cannot in cold, then in warm. But if you have neither, pour water on the
head three times in the name of the father, and of the son and of the Holy
Spirit.”
So as early as 30 years after Jesus’ death, the church was
saying that while full immersion was preferable it was not necessary. And why were they saying that? Because they
understood the imagery in being washed clean and in dying and being reborn is
better when using full immersion, but they also understood that the water is
not the acting agent. The amount of water doesn’t matter. It would be like saying that if you are
baptized in the ocean then you are more baptized then if it’s done in a
pool. The early church understood that
baptisms that were not done full immersion were okay, and that has been the
practice for nearly 2000 years, and we understand that the quantity of the
water does not make a difference because the water is merely a symbol, it is
not what actually cleanses people, that work is done by God not by the
water. So that leads us to the issue of
infant baptism.
This too has precedent in the early church, and perhaps even
scriptural witness. We have three occasions in scripture in which we are told
that someone is baptized, and their entire household is baptized along with
them. We can find two of these stories
in Acts chapter 16 in which Paul baptizes Lydia and her household and also the
jailer and his household. There are
multiple words for a household in Greek, depending on what that household
entails. The word for household used in these stories in Acts usually included
children, but that of course does not mean that it included infants, but it
does not say that Paul baptized the household except for those who were under
the age of 10. Additionally, in the second century, in response to those who
opposed infant baptism, Origen said that infant baptism had been practiced by
the apostles. In 254 the Council of
Carthage said that infant baptism went back to the apostles. Augustine, who is
foundational for much of church theology, including those who oppose infant
baptism, supported infant baptism and said that it was practiced by the
apostles. At the time of the protestant
reformation, both Martin Luther and John Calvin said that they were going to
remove any practice which did not meet scriptural witness, and they removed a
lot, but they practiced infant baptism. One of the objections given is that
infants cannot understand, or even given their opinion, and so when Wesley was
asked how God’s grace worked through baptism in infants, he said that he could
not comprehend it, but “neither” he said, “can we comprehend how it is wrought
in a person of riper years.”
The other piece that goes with this is that we do not
believe that if an infant is not baptized that they are not incorporated into
God’s grace, or to be more blunt that they are condemned. It really comes down
to the fact that if baptism is the incorporation into the promises of God and
the community of Christ, then where do infants belong if they can’t be baptized?
For those who still may have a problem with infant baptism, or with pouring,
that’s fine. I merely want you to understand that we do not practice these
things because we don’t know what we are talking about or have no theologically
basis for doing so, and for those who do support them I hope you now have a
better understanding of them and why we do them so that you can better engage
in conversation with those who question you about the process. The water does not convey God’s grace. The
person performing the sacrament does not convey God’s grace. The age of the
person receiving baptism does not convey God’s grace. When we begin focusing on
those things as being important than we move the action away from God and say
that the power of baptism is found in the things of baptism. God is the actor,
and we are the recipients, which then leads us into another means of grace, our
second sacrament and the only one that can be repeated and that is communion.
In the United Methodist Church we use grape juice rather
than wine because of our historic position in opposition to the use of Alcohol.
In the time of Wesley, he used wine simply because pasteurization of grape
juice wasn’t yet a thing. That didn’t come until Dr. Thomas Welch, yes that
Welch, who was a communion steward at his Methodist church in New Jersey was
the first to pasteurize grape juice so that they wouldn’t have to use wine in
communion. While there are now other denominations that do the same, or at
least offer grape juice, this began in the Methodist church.
One of the other things that is argued over is what, if
anything, happens to the bread and the wine when the words of institution are
said, that is when the priest says, “may these be the body and blood of
Christ.” At the fourth Lateran council
in 1215, the church said that during the liturgy that the elements literally
become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and although they still appeared to
be bread and wine, this was merely an accident of appearance. This idea is
called transubstantiation. At the beginning of the Protestant reformation, one
of the things that the reformers wanted to do was to change the theology of the
Eucharist. Martin Luther rejected the idea of transubstantiation, and instead
said that the elements were both the literal body and blood of Christ and also
just bread and wine. This is commonly
referred to as consubstantiation. Another reformer at the same time, whom you
have probably never heard of, was Ulrich Zwingli, who said that communion was
only a remembrance of Christ’s actions on our behalf, and he rejected both
transubstantiation and consubstantiation.
Now the official position of the United Methodist Church is
closer to that of Zwingli, which is that it is a meal we celebrate in
remembrance. But that is not the same as saying that God, or Christ, are not
present in communion because they are. John Wesley described the Lord’s Supper as
“the grand channel whereby the grace of his Spirit was conveyed to the souls of
all the children of God” He said that Christ is present for us in communion,
not through the elements, but through the act of joining together as the body
of Christ and participating in an act which conveys “pardoning and transforming
benefits.” Communion is a way that we
allow Jesus in us as we abide in him. We receive Christ simply through the
partaking of communion in its entirety.
And Wesley encouraged people to partake of communion as
often as they could. He would normally receive 4 to 5 times a week. The
practice of only receiving monthly, or less often, is an accident of history in
the Methodist church, not one of theology, and the official position of the
church is that we should receive communion in every worship service. To show
their seriousness, John and Charles published a hymnal with nothing but songs
on communion that dealt with the various aspects of communion including grace,
sacrifice, forgiveness, the presence of Christ, mystery, healing, nourishment,
holiness, the pledge of heaven and the power of the Holy Spirit nourishing
those who partake.
And that leads back to the story that opened this message
with Wesley denying Sophia Hopkey communion, and then himself later being
denied communion, which caused him to change his opinion and practice. And so,
we, as Methodists, practice an open communion table. I’m sure that many of you
have gone to a Roman Catholic church in which communion, or mass, is only open
to Roman Catholics, although how that is enforced is often dependent upon the
priest. Other churches may say that the table is open if you are baptized,
although some will be even more specific that it is only open if you are
baptized in their church. And just so you know, I honor whatever the practice
is in other churches I attend. If I am invited, I will partake, and if other
rules are stipulated then I follow those and will refrain if that is the
situation. But as Methodists we practice a truly open table. It doesn’t matter
if you are member, or even if you are baptized for all are welcome at Christ’s
table, because it belongs to Christ and not to us.
Wesley said this was important to remember because communion
could be a converting sacrament, something we still believe. That is in
receiving the bread and the cup that someone could experience God’s grace and
love, come to know of that prevenient grace, and move to justifying grace in
that moment, and if in receiving communion a non-Christian could be converted
then who was he to stop it. He did not want to be the gatekeeper of the table.
That openness also extends to age, in welcoming children to the table. Occasionally
when people object to me about that it is often because they say that children
don’t understand. My response is that just as I don’t test adults on the
meaning of communion before they partake, I don’t for children either, besides
for the fact that we consider what happens in communion to be a holy mystery
and children understand and accept and embrace mystery much more than adults
do, and so perhaps we should be approaching the table as children, rather than
thinking that the children should become like adults. And so, to paraphrase
Wesley on baptism, just as we cannot explain how the mystery of communion works
in children neither can we explain how it works in adults.
And really the mystery of communion is also true with the mystery of baptism. They are means of God’s grace, which is beyond our comprehension and the more that we seek to tame them and control them, or even to say exactly what happens and how and when, the more we lose not just the mystery, but also God’s presence. Because while we might say the words and do the movements and perform the acts, God is the ultimate actor in the sacrament. God is the one who performs the miracles and does the saving. God is the one who gives the grace and forgiveness. It is God’s love that is being conveyed. The sacraments are merely the outward and visible sing of an inward and invisible grace that is given by God because of God’s love given through the saving actions of Christ. I know that it is so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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