Baxter doesn’t like to get wet. He puts up with it because he likes to drink from the faucet in the bathtub. But in Baxter’s mind, water is for drinking not for bathing or dunking. It goes inside the body not on it. When it does get on him, he resists it. He shakes it off and lets me use a towel to dry him off. For Baxter, water isn’t something to wear. It is meant to get inside us and quench our thirst.
Jesus understood the waters of baptism in the same way. Although He was baptized in the waters of the Jordan by John the Baptist, and He instructed His disciples to baptize future believers, the ritual of baptism is not an end in itself. It points to a deeper and life-long reality, one we carry with us after we have dried off, one that interiorly sustains us and helps us grow in grace.
While we are baptized with water only once in our lives, we are called to live our baptisms each and every day of our lives.We enter the mystery of dying and rising more deeply as we move through the trials and challenges that life brings. At times, we can feel soaked by the losses, pains and sorrows that come our way. These waters keep coming, and we are forced to pass through them. They weigh us down. We wonder if we will ever get free of these burdens. We feel water logged rather than refreshed by the waters of life. We fear we may drown in them.
Baptism doesn’t take us out of these waters. It makes us buoyant in them. That is what it means to rise with the Lord. We are never defeated by the negative forces of life. In trials and challenges, we have hope that they will end and make us stronger for the future. In losses, we are grateful for what we once had and how it has shaped us forever. In pain, we find comfort in knowing we are not alone, but have the support of those who stand by us. In sorrow, we are soothed by the communion created by a shared loss. The mystery of dying and rising teaches us that getting wet in the tragedies and sins we face won’t harm us, if we don’t just shake them off and move on. Instead, we are called to embrace these in faith and probe the divine healing and forgiveness that can get into us, if we allow it. That is what it means to be a baptized disciple.
In His baptism, Jesus showed us that we don’t wear our baptism on the outside. We swallow it as the nourishment, refreshment and substance of our lives. We interpret ourselves according to the mystery this washing signifies, and we respond to our lives and others by looking for how to build new life from the floating debris we discover from life’s hardships.
Baxter has it right. Baptism is not about getting wet. It is about drinking in the waters of life God gives us.
