So much Christian truth is couched in symbolism, in sophisticated picture language, metaphor and in dramatic action. Holding on to our faith, or indeed any religious faith, isn’t always easy in modern times. But recognising we don’t have to take everything as literal or historical fact can help. Much religious and theological language is metaphorical, symbolic, but often highly effective in its godly appeal. So saying there’s a lot of symbolism involved doesn’t devalue it, but rather the opposite. Symbolism, like art or music, can have massive appeal to the wider aspects of our wider and deeper nature.
Take, for instance, the Christian sacrament of Baptism. Baptism is the focus of the second Evensong reading, as we celebrate the Baptism of Christ, and by implication in the first reading too. The two readings fit together.
Sort yourselves out, says Isaiah to his Jewish hearers in the first reading: get your priorities right. Sort yourselves out, says St Paul to his Roman readers in the second reading: get your priorities straight. Seldom are two biblical readings for the same service on such similar lines, albeit written for different readerships and over 500 years apart. Seldom, also, are two readings so cogent in their appeal to faithful believers or those who might become so. And, for Christians, or aspiring Christians, they are cogent in relating to baptism as a turning point in our lives, as it was for Jesus himself.
First, Isaiah and his symbolic utterance. He asks a brutal question. What are you spending your money on? And how genuinely satisfying is it? What about something much more valuable, yet totally free at the point of delivery? These are some of the words he puts into the mouth of God:
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters:
and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live.
So now, let’s assume we do want the food and drink that are priceless – priceless both literally and figuratively. How are we to get it? ‘Come to the waters, everyone who thirsts’, says Isaiah. It’s not clear what water he have in mind. Maybe it was the waters of the Red Sea, the route the Israelites took from slavery towards their promised land, and hugely symbolic for the Jews as the dramatic way to a fresh start. And certainly Isaiah meant fresh, clean water to revive, refresh and revivify in a hot, partly desert land.
Symbolic for us Christians, too, but with even greater associations. And for that we can turn to St Paul, as we heard him just now.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
Dying, being buried, being raised to new life: how dramatic can you get? Jesus himself was baptised by John the Baptist, along with other Jews wanting forgiveness, repentance and a new start in life. And from the earliest time, baptism has been the powerful start to a new Christian life. ‘Baptism’ literally means ‘dipping’, and for many Christians to this day, baptism entails baptism in a river or in a pool. I’ve not heard about baptisms in the River Itchen, but they may well have occurred. And there’s always a first time! I’ve certainly seen wild swimming in the Itchen in a couple of places, even in December. Here in the Cathedral, it would be difficult to dip other than a small baby in the magnificent 12th century Tournai marble font with scenes from St Nicholas’s life round the sides. But Christ Church parish church here in Winchester has a pool for adults within the church, and so no doubt has the Winchester Baptist church.
There’s a lovely story about such a pool. It hadn’t been used for some time, so a dutiful volunteer gave it a really thorough clean before the service. But he forgot to give it an equally good rinse. So when the priest and the candidate for baptism climbed in, the water frothed up so much with detergent that the baptism turned into a bubble bath. (I suspect the tale might be apocryphal)
Most of us here now were probably baptised as babies, with water poured over our heads. Our baptisms just as valid, even though we weren’t making our own promises of allegiance to Christ. Whenever and however we were baptised, it has the same symbolism and the same value. It does, too, for people not yet baptised, with baptism a hope and intention for the future.
St Paul wrote that going down into the water was, as it still is, a symbolic death and burial with Jesus, dying to an old or previous life and coming up forgiven and fresh from the water to a new sharing in Jesus’s new life. It’s sometimes claimed that when a person is drowning, he or she goes down three times but comes up only twice. The difference with baptism, of course, is that someone being baptised goes down into the water three time (or has water poured over his or head three times), and then comes up out of the water, not disastrously only twice, but a full three times, into the new Christian life. Another interpretation, valid and no less fulsome, is that baptism is a washing off of sin and an old life for a clean start in a new life as a Christian. But despite what Isaiah says about being thirsty, you’ll be pleased to hear that no-one is expected to drink the baptismal water. I hope there’s no first time for that!
At Jesus’s baptism, he had a dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit descending upon him, and of God’s voice, probably as an inner experience, confirming him in his role as his beloved son. For us, baptism is at some point followed by the sacrament of Confirmation, in which we make for ourselves the declarations of faith, and in which, through the bishop laying on his hands, God confirms for us our role as his beloved sons and daughters.
You probably know all this. But I hope you agree it never hurts to remind ourselves of our vocation as Christians, and of all the powerful symbolism of our faith. If you, whether present here in the Cathedral, or joining in online, if you’ve not been baptised and would like to consider it, then please do tell us or tell your local parish church.
Baptism and, traditionally in the Church of England, confirmation are the entry points for sharing in the bread and wine of the Holy Communion at the Eucharist. Isaiah refers to free wine and milk being on offer. Wine of course represents the blood of Jesus in the Holy Communion. However, the only milk generally on offer here is in coffee after the Sunday 11 o’clock Eucharist. Of course, the coffee is optional, but the refreshment are, to my mind, another form of holy communion between Christians, a bit like the sharing of the peace with one another during the Eucharist. Isaiah does refer to bread too. He warns against spending ‘your money for that which is not bread’. The legitimate implication of that is surely that the genuine, life-giving bread is available free of charge, and that, as you will know, is powerfully symbolic in the bread at the Eucharist of the body of Christ.
So there we have it. So much symbolism, so much picture-language. It is this, like poetry and like music, that can appeal as much as literal language, to the deeper side of us all, sometimes characterised as our souls. Faith can be difficult in this advanced 21st century. But it is made more difficult if we are too literalist, and fail to receive the powerful messages that are on offer from symbolic language and sacrament. The words and sacraments of Christianity are a gift to us. They exist for us to relax and receive for all that they can give to us and our lives, and for all they do to strengthen us in God’s service day by day.
May God bless us all.