There are many phases of our lives that seem like a rite of passage. As we move through childhood into adulthood our engagement with the world changes. More is expected of us, morally, spiritually, educationally… and indeed, our own personal expectations start to change and develop. When I was teaching in full-time academia I was acutely aware of the transition that students make when they arrive at university. For many this can be an experience that is both daunting and exciting. It means turning your back on family, familiar friends and home comforts. Going away from home is an initiation into a new life of independence – facing new people and new situations and being vulnerable to all sorts of temptations. Entering into university life is a rite of passage - a kind of ‘secular baptism’.
From a teaching perspective, students tend to fall broadly into two categories: Those who become fully engaged with their studies – highly-focussed, eager to embrace new knowledge and be challenged in a spirit of openness. They want to grow. They want to be stretched and move forward. By contrast, although not always dramatically so, there are those who are not so open to new challenges or ready to creatively push themselves. Such students are not necessarily lazy or lacking a positive outlook, they are often quite competent and there maybe insecurities, problems of self-confidence or other complex reasons for their under-achievement.
Sometimes it seems that some people, young and old, go to university, not to be transformed or developed, but to have their prejudices confirmed. It is as if they are trying to have their old patterns of living, belief and practice, validated and affirmed and get a qualification into the bargain that will say more to them than it will say to the world. The message is: the old me and everything that goes with it, is OK after all! I don't need to change. Life will always have its ‘coasters’ who take the line of least resistance. They have everything to play for, yet so many golden opportunities are lost. As all educationalists know, one the greatest pastoral challenges and delights, is to turn such students around. Sometimes quite unexpectedly, weaknesses can be turned into strengths. But facilitating such transformations often needs a good deal of understanding and empathy to genuinely identify with them and their needs and the problems that hold them back. That is the real challenge.
Here we may learn something from the baptism of Jesus. Was that what Jesus was attempting to publicly do in his baptism? Was he attempting to identify with the people he had to come to minister to? By submitting himself to baptism he was confirming and affirming the messianic character of his ministry, and as such, it was a point of departure - there was no looking back. But above all it was a demonstration of his solidarity with others, identifying with them in their transgression and in their weaknesses.
Jesus’baptism opened up a vision of new hopes and new possibilities and opportunities. When we receive this sacrament and through the rite of confirmation, we move from one state to another. We cross a threshold from a material to more spiritual life. It is sometimes desirable to reflect upon our baptismal vows and to renew them to remind ourselves that baptism isn't just a one-off event but a continued characteristic of human living. We should talk more than we do about living out a 'baptismal life' rather than only talking about the act, the rite of baptism.
Since medieval times, baptism has always been persistently at the centre of folk-religion. This is the one Christian sacrament which still has a powerful grip on many sections of the population, unfortunately giving rise to many odd beliefs and perceptions. Parents still feel a need to bring their children to be baptised - to "be done". In this scheme of things, the child is not only named, but in a very real sense is 'protected' or defended from evil forces. The ritual is seen as an end in itself. Although the child is somehow changed for the better, there may be little future commitment to any real development of the child's spiritual life. Superstition has become a distraction from the real purpose of baptism - initiation into a new life in the spirit given in the midst of the present world.
I was both baptised and confirmed as an adult and I recall that for some time afterwards, privately I felt a kind of spiritual emptiness - nothing had apparently changed within me. I didn't feel any different. I am not sure quite what I was expecting to feel. I was a lot more conservative in my thinking then, but I soon realised that I had missed the point. Being baptised in the Holy Spirit, is not like getting a shot of some life-enhancing drug; it is something you have to do and something you have to be. Baptism is really the beginning of a process of participation.
Just as Jesus was seized by the spirit of God, and lived, spoke and acted in this spirit, so we are called to do the same. This is what the reality of the Holy Spirit means to me. We have to live in a spirit of openness - allowing ourselves to continually be infected by the spirit and character of Jesus Christ. This will manifest itself by our living in a more trusting and generous way, free from anxiety and a greater readiness to love those around us - family, colleagues, friends, the stranger. We can identify with them in their joys and sorrows, strengths and weaknesses, in a spirit of freedom and love. This is the 'baptismal life'. Baptism is a point of departure.
It is dangerous to believe, as so many people do (including many committed Christians!) in a populist way, that the rite of baptism is a once-and-for-all time end in itself. The words of Friedrich Rest are helpful to our understanding: "In baptism, the direction is indicated rather than the arrival". But this direction - this way, is of course fraught with difficulties. Sometimes, deep-down, we don't really want to change or to be changed. It is hard to shake off the old order - old patterns of life and thinking that still hold fast. Human nature gets in the way and radical change is not always an attractive option. There are many times when it is much easier to take the least line of resistance and coast through life, trying to confirm our prejudices rather than engaging wholeheartedly with living and opening our minds to a new vision with new possibilities. We must be beware of becoming like under-achieving students - who, instead of fitting into a course of study and all that it offers, make the course programme fit around them. We have to be careful not to make the baptismal life fit around us, but instead, offer ourselves fully into the new programme to which we are called. So many golden opportunities may be otherwise lost.
Jesus' baptism was both an arrival and a direction and it becomes our model. It confirmed his ministry and it pointed the mission in the hard path he was to follow. Indeed, the entire ministry of Christ from the River Jordan to the Cross may seen as a kind of 'baptism-ordeal'. Our baptismal life may come no where near the life that Christ set before us, but through baptism we find a home and a place to belong. We become part of a community with which we can identify, where we can come together in a new relationship, and where we are called to live in a spirit of openness so that we may truly receive the spirit.