Baptism by Fire
Pentecost
What is baptism? Do you remember yours, or have a vison of long white infant gowns? The scandal at my 1965 baptism in the Methodist church in Mt. Sterling, IL, was that I wasn’t wearing any booties. My bare-footed-ness only served to contribute to a great aunt’s perception that my parents were beatniks, only she thought the term was beach-nuts.
A different image of baptism is portrayed in the wry comedy-melodrama “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (2000). The three main characters, escaped convicts in the deep south of 1937, are played by George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson. In this scene they are talking about cooking gophers when people all in white begin streaming slowly past them through the woods. Delmar gets caught up in the siren call of them singing, “As I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good old way,” (sung by Alison Krauss) and splashes pell-mell to the front of the line of evidently non-Methodists to be fully immersed in baptism. Baptism was irresistible and utterly transformative for Delmar.
Baptism is sloppy and a bit absurd, according to Anne Lamott, who says in Traveling Mercies, “Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward staying dry, looking good, not going under. But in baptism, in lakes and rain, in tanks and fonts, you agree to do something that’s a little sloppy because at the same time, it is also holy and absurd. It’s about surrender…”.
For contemplative Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, baptism is about surrender, initiation, and has everything to do with awareness. Rohr calls it a “deeper surrender to a deeper life’s purpose” (from homily, Center for Action and Contemplation, July 11, 2023) that people gain in moments of clarity throughout their spiritual journeys. He is saying that despite being soaked or dribbled on at whatever age, you’re not truly baptized until you realize how surrendering to God connects you to absolute meaning, purpose, and God’s unconditional love.
Baptism is an initiation rite that takes the place of circumcision, one that marks Christians invisibly. It may not leave a physical trace on us, but it ties us essentially to a profound act of surrender by Christ. John the Baptist makes it clear that Christ outstrips his baptizing authority many times over. Not only did Christ not need soul cleansing or redemption, Christ also didn’t need to submit himself to John the Baptist to have this act done to him, passively. But Christ does this act of surrender with us, initiating us into becoming his followers, demonstrating the power of giving our lives to God.
The imagery of the story boosts its power even more. Luke’s baptism story draws on Psalm 29, the great thunderstorm, in which God’s voice thunders over the turbulent waters, and God’s voice ‘flashes forth flames of fire,’ causing all to see and feel God’s glory. Evoking these familiar images of God, John tells the crowd that he baptizes with water, but the One coming will baptize them with fire.
Wait. Fire eclipses water? Doesn’t water put out fire? Maybe in the ancient near east, they didn’t waste water putting out fires; maybe they used sand to smother fires. And if you recall all the Bible verses that mention a preference for running water, maybe stagnant water wasn’t so purifying. We might be cleansed by water, but we’ll be really purified by fire.
But how can we be baptized by fire? How can fire be managed so as to burn only the chaff away? You know that the metaphorical “chaff” aren’t the “sinners” outside of church, because as Jesus says time and time again, it’s the rich who refuse to follow him and give up wealth as their priority, not to mention the religious leaders who make an empty show of obeying the religious codes, who are the chaff.
Pentecost comes closest to showing us baptism by fire. As described in Acts chapter 2: 1-13, after Christ’s Easter Resurrection and Ascension the Holy Spirit comes like a flame of insight to the crowd of believers, bringing them the ability to comprehend all languages, and thus inaugurating our understanding of the Holy Spirit, which is God-among-us, God inspiring us, connecting us, and sending us out with the Good News of Christ. But Pentecost isn’t described as a second round of baptism per se.
So I dug around, looking for ways to interpret baptism by fire. Brace yourself for a deep dive into Methodism. What if these events are a process, or a series? If the fire of Pentecost comes after Baptism of the Lord, what precedes it? Obviously (to me), that would be Birth of the Lord, or Christmas. Suddenly, the Christian calendar maps onto our Christian spiritual journey. And like a Charles Wesleyan, theology comes to me in music. At Christmas, in “O Little Town of Bethlehem” we sing, “Be born in us today,”[vii] as we anticipate the Word coming into the world and into our hearts. On Baptism of the Lord Sunday, we surrender to God and enter into initiation of the fellowship of Christ. Where there’s fellowship, instantly, the Church is formed, “By water and the Word,” as we sing in “The Church’s One Foundation” (UM Hymnal #545). At Pentecost we receive the Holy Spirit, singing with the imagery of sacramental fire, “Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me” from “Spirit of the Living God” (UM Hymnal #393). Incidentally, those words beautifully describe melting and molding a substance into a bowl to be filled, and then poured out, perfectly describing this arc of spiritual formation. It goes from entering our hearts (at Christmas), clarifying our purpose together (Baptism), to transforming us into Christlike agents of God in the world (Pentecost).
Having developed this connection of holidays, I sat back and thought,
“this progression of faith looks suspiciously Wesleyan to me.” But even though I recently refreshed my Wesleyan theology in five college courses during the process of becoming a deaconess, I had to look this up. These stages of spiritual development are due to God’s GRACE acting in our lives. Of course! John Wesley conveniently identified them for us[x]: Prevenient grace, which is God’s latent, always-waiting-for-us-to-reach-out grace; Justifying grace, which is both redemptive (taking away our sins, like in “O Brother Where Art Thou,” Delmar’s sins of knocking off a Piggly Wiggly and lying about it are forgiven) and justifying in the sense of aligning us as followers of Christ; and Sanctifying grace, which is grace guiding the natural outlet of this Christian transformation into our actions, being tested and honed throughout our lives. God’s prevenient grace appeals to us through the humble birth of a baby, God’s justifying grace invites us to follow Jesus into the cleansing waters of baptism, and God’s sanctifying grace ignites the spirit in us.
Once again, what is baptism by fire? It’s a great idiom for describing triumph over struggle, such as a new employee being thrown a case with few resources, who rises to the challenge to become a member of the team. But how biblical (or Wesleyan) is that usage? Maybe its gut-level impact is useful for us here. In terms of the abject submission and deep repentance of baptism, it’s kind of a relief that we aren’t supposed to become and remain submissive. Rather, fire follows baptism, and according to John the Baptist it’s a whole lot more powerful than his type of watery baptism. Some Christian denominations prioritize Pentecost, and I can now understand that impulse better now that I’ve examined it. Surely a United Methodist pentecostalism would refrain from full-fledged speaking in tongues, (although I have seen the passage of Acts 2 read in multiple languages), but in our own understated way we need to envision and claim the power that Christ brings us through baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Let’s work with what text we’ve got: John the Baptist offers us the analogy of the winnowing fork that will separate the wheat from the chaff, which, according to the NRSV footnotes (for Luke 3:1-7, The Harper Collins Study Bible, 1989) is an Old Testament symbol for judgment. Picture this: Add the roaring wind and lightning from Psalm 29, and the tongues of flame from the Pentecost story in Acts 2 to the granary setting. With a sort of pitchfork Christ is flinging the grain up in the air so that the wind will blow off the chaff, while the chaff is being continually burned off.
Now imagine that Christ is standing by a great bonfire, and that Christ is flinging you high, like a parent tosses a gleeful baby, into the air full of flame. In the moment while you are free floating, your petty grievances, useless distractions, prejudices, and all traces of evil intentions fly away from you. Those unnecessary and bad things are instantly seared away in the lapping flames of the bonfire. When Christ catches you, giggling, for that wonderful cuddle hug, you have been melted, molded, purified, sanctified, and all the while beloved. All that’s left are your good virtues---patience, humility, holy love for your neighbor and even your enemy.
As you are released to trot joyfully out into the world, you retain a certain spark. The flame of the Holy Spirit leaves you just enough fire to speak up against injustice, advocate for the disadvantaged, make a change somewhere that lessens suffering.
Now, I’m not proposing a baptism-by-fire ceremony, although we could use a zipline at a United Methodist retreat center... In the meantime while that rite is being developed, the next time you’re on a roller-coaster, cresting a hill weightlessly in your car, pumping high on a swing, or swinging on a vine out over a river to let go and jump into the water, imagine the chaff of pettiness falling from you, and know that God is encouraging the best in you.
Adapted from a sermon I gave at First United Methodist of Seymour, Indiana, 1/12/2025, for Baptism of the Lord Sunday.
Deaconess Lisa Miller Maidi is grateful to be editor and writer for the DHM Substack. She invites all DHM to contribute to our Substack!
