Singing in the Dark

Readings: Isaiah 43:1-7, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, True Christianity 684 (see below)
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Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash


Let’s talk about baptism. How many of us remember our baptisms? Any of us baptized as babies very likely do not. Any of us baptized as adults probably do. Perhaps some of us participated in rituals that “confirmed” our infant baptisms. For those have not been baptized at all, from a Swedenborgian point of view there is no need to panic! Baptism is simply a sign, a representation, that the ongoing work of regeneration is being attempted in partnership with the Lord. Such spiritual work absolutely can and does occur without baptism happening. However, for many people, there is a lot of power in the experience of baptism, and in any spiritual experience that demarcates a new space in time, a new day, a new way of thinking or living.

We ourselves right now, by simply by living in January, are baptizing for ourselves a new year. Our calendar is somewhat arbitrary, after all. Time flows pretty uniformly, at least at the Newtonian level at which we exist in our day to day. But on January 1st, we declare the year is new. We declare that the previous year is over. We draw a line in the sand and step out into possibility. We may have many feelings about such threshold times. We might be glad to let go of a difficult year. We might be sad to leave a year that once held something or someone we have lost. We might be excited and curious to see what a new year holds for us. Or we might feel overwhelmed at all the open space and uncertainty ahead.

To me, that jumble of feelings is captured in part by this poem by Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet and philosopher. He wrote:

Faith
is the bird
that feels the light
And sings 
when the dawn
is still dark.

All of our futures are uncertain, we are all in the dark on that point. Yet, faith, that beautiful bird, “feels” the light, anticipates that the light is coming, and sings anyway.

Our text today pictures Jesus in one of those threshold moments. The people, responding to John the Baptist’s preaching, were filled with that bird-faith singing, filled with expectation for a bright and liberated future. And they wondered what that future looked like? Did it have within it a Messiah? Was John that Messiah? No, I’m not, says John, as he points them even further forward towards Jesus. John’s particular gift was shaking people awake, revealing the truth to them, opening them up. This is represented by his baptism of water, the water providing a metphor for the process of spiritual washing, of purifying ourselves from evil and falsity. While the language of religious purification, and words like “evil” and “falsity” can sound kind of austere or fantastical, all that really means is identifying and removing self-serving desires and ways of thinking that prevent us from loving others. Hence John’s baptism is also called the baptism of repentance. Repentance as a process involves a revealing of truth which causes us to change our minds, to turn around in our perspective. And this ability, this willingness to really entertain personal accountability, is a cornerstone of our spiritual growth. But even so, there is one step more. There was one coming, said John, who would give them baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. After the turning around, we actually need to embark on a new way of living. As we heard in our reading, Swedenborg writes of this baptism of holy spirit and fire: 

The Holy Spirit here means divine truth that is related to faith; the fire means divine goodness that is related to love and goodwill. Both emanate from the Lord. It is through these two things that the Lord carries out the entire process of regeneration. 

The Holy Spirit unfolds its wings of truth within our minds, and the divine fire of love burns within our hearts, and these two things *together* propel us forward again and again into our new life, singing for the dawn even when it is dark. And this baptism of spirit and fire requires engagement, it requires work, and thus is pictured by the winnowing fork. Our old ideas, our old identities and habits of being are winnowed; the lies and the half-truths and the justifications fall away down to the threshing floor, and hopefullly only that which is nourishing to our spiritual lives remains. Thus, through the work of the winnowing fork, we are left with the grain, ready to grow a new plant, or ready to be transformed into bread that will nourish our body, and our souls. 

So in church, at whatever time of life it comes to us, we might share a baptism of water with our family and friends, and they witness the newness and the holy possibility. It is a ritual that signifies the beginning of a process. The baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire that is still to come is the rest of our life. Our baptism of water is like a spiritual January 1st, full of bright opportunity and invention. The baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire is like the rest of the year, full of ups and downs and winnowing and learning and working.

Jesus also receives a baptism. We heard from our reading: 

The Lord himself was baptized by John, not only so as to institute baptism for the future and set the example, but also because he glorified his human nature and made it divine in the same way that he regenerates us and makes us spiritual. 

Jesus’ experience was to be analogous to ours; a partnership with God, which in his case was a partnership with his own divine soul. This partnership initiated a spiritual blossoming and necessitated spiritual trial, but also culminated in a union of humanity and the divine. At Christmastime, we just celebrated the fact of God being born into the world. What is just as miraculous is that throughout his life, Jesus was reborn again and again into truth and love, just as we are.

Thus, we read in Swedenborg’s Secrets of Heaven(2) that a “dove” represents the truth and goodness of faith in one who is being reborn. Jesus didn’t know exactly what his future would be but that dove was a representation of feeling that faith-light and singing in the dark before the dawn, a representation of the divinely ordained work to come. There was much that was dark in Jesus’ time, as in ours. But he believed in the dawn that was coming because he knew who God was, and what God was doing.

So here we are in the bright open space of the beginning of the year. We don’t know what will happen with this year. It certainly doesn’t feel like it is starting off well, and I know I am holding, as you may be, a foreboding sense that things might get worse, in our country and in our world. But to enter into uncertainty is also to enter into possibility, and to enter into new possiblity with faith is one of the holiest acts of worship. For me, I can only conjure up that faith because of how God speaks to Jesus in that baptism moment: This is my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased. When uncertainty and overwhelm and fear makes us feel small and powerless, we can remember that God’s possibility for us is held within an unceasing love. From Isaiah we read: …you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, says the Lord. The future might be uncertain, but we are always enfolded and cherished within God’s arms. All our all striving and trying will always be held within the context of God’s love, purposes, and promises. 

The baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire asks much of us, it asks that we give up our precious ego and our precious pride, it asks us to transform ourselves, and to have faith in newness and love when it is so much easier to have faith in self-regard, material things, and being right. We might be afraid to step out into what God calls us toward, but we can try and fail and begin again, we can stretch and reach and leap, because we *always* have those divine arms to come back to.

So today, I have filled the baptismal font with water. If you like, during the reflection time, or after the service during the postlude, you are welcome to come forward to anoint yourself with the water in remembrance of all the moments we are called to newness, in remembrance of your baptism or some other occasion. We feel the water and we remember; we remember our Lord, praying under the wings of the Holy Spirit, we remember the faith-bird that sings, sings when the dawn is still dark. 

Amen.

1. Emmanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #869

Readings:

Isaiah 43:1-7

1 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. 4 Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. 5 Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; 6 I will say to the north, "Give them up," and to the south, "Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth— 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”


Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

21 When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” 


True Christianity 684

The Third Function of Baptism, and Its Ultimate Purpose, Is to Lead Us to Be Regenerated…

This is the same as the point made about the Lord that "He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” The Holy Spirit here means divine truth that is related to faith; the fire means divine goodness that is related to love and goodwill. Both emanate from the Lord. It is through these two things that the Lord carries out the entire process of regenerating us. 

The Lord himself was baptized by John, not only so as to institute baptism for the future and set the example, but also because he glorified his human nature and made it divine in the same way that he regenerates us and makes us spiritual.