“What is to prevent
me from being baptised?”
Acts of the Apostles,
8:36
I spoke these words
at Bank Street Unitarian Chapel, Bolton, 22nd
April 2012:
It is a great joy and
privilege and responsibility to stand here week by week and to offer
you, in my words, some guidance in your spiritual journeys. It’s a
responsibility that cannot be taken seriously enough. It is my job,
as I understand it, to study the great spiritual traditions of
humanity, to pass those traditions through the fire of my own
spiritual life, and then to pass on to you a small pearl of wisdom
that hopefully you will find of some use.
It is my job, as I
understand it, to speak to the spiritual condition of our community,
and to point to the Sacred, and invite us all to allow that vision of
the Sacred to guide us.
My job is not to simply
pass on my own thoughts, my own agendas, my own opinions.
Nevertheless, as I’ve
laid down this rule, I’m going to bend it this morning and speak to
you quite personally. I do this because you deserve to know where
your Minister is in his spiritual journey, and in the hope that
sometimes when you speak most personally you also speak most
universally.
If you find something
of use in my spiritual journey, then I’ll be very glad. If you
don’t then I can only ask you to forgive me for this indulgence.
For most of my life
(probably since the age of about 10) I have been struggling with the
question, “Am I a Christian?” This question has possessed me, it
has obsessed me, it has tortured me. And finally, now aged 30, I feel
I can answer the question with a “yes.”
But it’s taken a long
time to get here.
I grew up in the
Anglican Church and I was baptised as a baby in the Anglican Church.
And I have generally very happy memories of my experience of church
and Sunday school. It was part of my life. It was part of my family’s
life, and I was fine with that. But as I say at the age of 10 or 11
or 12 I began to ask questions; questions like:
“What does it mean
that Jesus ‘died for my sins’?”
“What does it mean
that Jesus was God? If Jesus was God who was Jesus praying to when
Jesus prayed?”
“Is salvation or
truth or God only in Christianity? What about my friends who are
Muslims or Hindus or Sikhs or atheists?”
I obsessed over these
questions, though generally silently, in my own mind, on my own. And
of course every question led to a thousand more.
I remember one
Christmas asking for my own Bible. I don’t know why I didn’t have
one of my own before then – perhaps my parents were waiting to give
me one for a Confirmation present. That always seemed the wrong way
around to me. You should read the contract before you sign, right?
Before I committed to Christianity, I wanted to have a good read of
the Bible.
At around this age I
was asked if I wanted to be confirmed, to confirm my Christian faith
for myself. I said no. Every year when the confirmation classes were
starting up I was asked if I wanted to join them. Every year I made
an excuse.
The fact was
confirmation was the exact opposite of what I was feeling. I was more
confused than ever, more full of questions, less confirmed in
my Christian faith than ever before.
Nevertheless I still
believed in God, I still experienced God in prayer and worship, and I
still found the figure of Jesus compelling.
As an adult I left the
Anglican Church and eventually found the Unitarian Church. In many
ways I came to Unitarianism searching for a Christianity that made
sense to me. But Unitarianism of course offered me more than that. It
offered engagement with different religions, and a search for
universal religious/ethical values like compassion, justice,
tolerance, gratitude.
In Unitarianism I had
the freedom to put Jesus down; you didn’t have to be a Christian to
be a Unitarian. But I never have been able to put Jesus down, not
really. Like grit in my shoe that won’t go away, Jesus has remained
an irritating presence that I can’t shake.
So over the years: I
have kept returning to this question: can I call myself a Christian?
You see there’s much that I love about the Christian tradition, but
there’s also much I don’t like. Jesus uses the image of weeds
growing among wheat, pointing to the difficulty of separating the
two. That’s how I feel about Christianity. There’s good stuff,
but it seems surrounded by really bad stuff.
Without even getting
into contemporary Christianity, even if we limit ourselves to the New
Testament, you can’t get away from the fact there are at least two
different Christianities there.
There is the religion
of Jesus: Jesus teaching in provocative parables, hinting at a
Basileia tou Theou, a Realm of God, a Rule of Love, a religion
where Love breaks all the rules, and there are more questions than
answers. Broadly we find this in the synoptic Gospels:
Matthew, Mark and Luke.
And there is the
religion about Jesus: where Jesus is a divine figure, who died
for our sins, was resurrected and that we must “believe” in.
Broadly we find this in the Gospel of John, the writings of Paul, and
most of the rest of the New Testament.
Now orthodox Christians
would say that it’s impossible to separate the two. After all even
the synoptics aren’t eye-witness accounts of Jesus’ life. We
have no book Jesus wrote. We only have the interpretations of his
life by followers decades later, with their own agendas. We only have
access to Jesus through the faith of the early Christians.
But still you can’t
ignore the fact that there is an inherent tension (conflict even)
between these two understandings at the very heart of Christianity.
And these two Christianities do contradict each other explicitly.
In the Gospel of Luke
Jesus says, “if you forgive you will be forgiven.” So if you want
to be forgiven then you must forgive others. Indeed that’s what the
Lord’s Prayer says. This is a call for ethical transformation. But
in the Acts of the Apostles Peter in his Pentecost sermon says “get
baptised in the name of Jesus and you will be forgiven.”
There is no longer an ethical demand to forgive others but the most
important thing now is to believe/be baptised in the name of Jesus.
And so in the synoptic
Gospels Jesus says, “not everyone who calls me “Lord” will
enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of the
Father.” Again ethical demands are explicitly more important than
merely saying words or believing. But Paul writes “If you confess
that Jesus is Lord… you will be saved.” According to Paul,
calling Jesus “Lord” is what matters more than anything else.
And the trouble is you
can debate these biblical and theological arguments all day long. And
I have done! For 20 years I have done! On two different continents I
have done, seeking answers to these questions.
And what I long for now
more than ever is simplicity! There comes a point when you have to
put aside intellectual arguments, and decide where you will stand,
and where you will plant yourself.
It has taken me a long
time, but I can finally say what I believe Christianity is, what I
believe it means to follow Jesus, the religion of Jesus. Even
if no one else agrees with me I have to take what I understand of
Jesus’ way and seek to live it out in my life.
So for me Christianity
means imitating Jesus, his spirit, his way. It means living my life
by an overwhelming abundant Love, a Love that burns away all the
rubbish in life that we waste our time with.
It’s like Jesus was
the first person to discover fire. There’s no use “believing”
in the inventor of fire, no use worshipping the inventor of fire, the
point is to learn for yourself how to make fire, to catch alight with
that same spirit.
Jesus shows us how to
make Fire, and the fire is Love.
I don’t know what God
is (I really don’t), but I know that God loves me. And it’s
embarrassing to say that because it sounds a bit cheesy, maybe a bit
un-Unitarian. But it is the truth I live my life by, it is the fire
that lights my way. It is the heart of my Christianity, and it is
sufficient on its own without any other theological baggage.
Jesus shows me what it
really means to live out the Love of God in my life. He offers me a
way of life free from worry about material wealth or status. And
Jesus challenges me to live with compassion, hospitality,
overwhelming love (even for enemies), forgiveness, justice and
non-violence. That’s what Christianity as a way of life means to
me.
You know, Shane
Claiborne, the Christian activist, talks about people (especially in
Evangelical churches) saying, “my life was really messed up, my
relationships were in trouble, I was doing the wrong things, I was in
a terrible state, and then I found Jesus, and he put me straight.”
And Shane Claiborne
says he feels the exact opposite, he says, “My life was great
without Jesus, I was happy, I had a good life, a good career ahead of
me, and Jesus messed up my life. He messed up my life by asking me to
see the poor as my brothers and sisters, he messed up my life by
asking me to give away all my possessions, he messed my life by
asking me to work towards justice in this world.”
That’s kind of how I
feel. My life would be so much easier without Jesus in it. To be
honest, Jesus annoys the hell out of me. He’s the fly in the
ointment, he’s the stone in my shoe, he’s the petulant toddler
asking annoying questions. A lot of Christian songs talk about loving
Jesus, I’m not even sure I like him that much.
But I stand here,
ladies and gentlemen, telling you today that he is my Lord, my
Master, my Teacher and my Rabbi. I think I finally pretty much get
what he’s saying (not all of it, some of it is (deliberately I
think) difficult to understand), and I’m prepared to follow him. I
want his fire.
In the story of the
Ethiopian eunuch in Acts of the Apostles it seems to take him only an
afternoon chatting to Philip before he says “What is to prevent me
from being baptised?” Well, it’s taken me 20 years, but I am
finally prepared to ask that question myself, “What is to prevent
me from being baptised?”
Yes, I was christened
as I child, but honestly that doesn’t mean anything to me. I can’t
remember it, it doesn’t feel significant in my spiritual journey.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with me making a personal commitment
to follow Jesus and his Way of Love.
So I have decided that
I want to be baptised. I want to publicly and physically declare
myself as a follower of Jesus, and his way, and his fire.
And so in two weeks’
time when I’m on my retreat with seven other Unitarian ministers,
we’re going to walk down to a stream nearby and I’m going to ask
my friends and colleagues to pour water on my head and I’m going to
say to the world at large, “I am a follower of Jesus. I surrender
myself to the fire of God’s love.”
This may seem a strange
thing to do. Orthodox Christians will not recognise it as a “real”
baptism because it will not be done in the name of the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit.
Most Unitarians will
consider it a rather un-Unitarian thing to do, although historically
Unitarians in Poland and in Britain have practised adult baptism. But
still we would usually associate adult baptism with more conservative
forms of Christianity. Perhaps some will think that I’m going
fundamentalist, that I’m no longer really Unitarian, that I’m
condemning any other religions; although none of those things are
true.
Basically there are a
lot of reasons not to do this. But I’m coming to a place where I
can’t not do this. I know, somehow, that committing to the
Way of Jesus is something I have to do. I have to make some act of
spiritual commitment, something I have never done in my life before.
I’m being led somewhere, I don’t know exactly where, but I know
that Jesus is my guide for getting there. I’ve reached a point
where I know I need to put aside the intellectual questions and
commit simply to Love. I’m not saying I’m always going to be
perfect, that I’ll always live up to the way of Jesus, because it
is very demanding. But I know I must try, I know I must commit to it.
And so I suppose, I’m
asking you, my church, my Unitarian community, one thing: not to walk
the same spiritual path as me; not even to agree with me; but to pray
for me in my spiritual journey at this time. As I will continue to
pray for you in your spiritual journey.
Thank you. God bless
you.
Two weeks later on
the 3rd May 2012, I was baptised by seven
Unitarian ministers. In a very simple ceremony in a stream in North
Wales I affirmed my intention to follow the Way of Jesus and everyone
there poured a cup of water over my head as we sung a chant together.
This essay first appeared in Our Christian Faith, a book published by the Unitarian Christian Association (Larkpress, 2015)
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