BEING CHRISTIAN - BAPTISM - Part 7

"But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy."
(1 Peter 2:9-10)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus

In the series, 'Being Christian' I am trying to share with you the activities that signify a Christian essence in the life of the faithful and what kind of people we might hope to become in a community where these activities are practices. With this hope in mind, we started with the most important sacrament (or a rite) by which an individual is brought to the Christian family - the Baptism.

In the previous blog, we started to try and understand the identity that is bestowed on the baptized by understanding the titles that are mainly used in thinking about the identity of Jesus. We tried to identify with Jesus as a prophet, where the role of a prophet is to challenge the community to be what it is always meant to be. As a prophet we are to be ready to show each other the integrity of Christian life. We also tried to understand that the role of a prophet is not limited in the church but also in the wider societies that we live in. Let us now understand about the priestly role that is bestowed upon us.

Let us again go back to the Bible. In the Old Testament, a priest is someone who interprets God and humanity to each other. A priest is somebody who builds bridges between God and humanity when that relationship has been wrecked; somebody who by offering sacrifice to God re-creates a shattered relationship. Of Jesus' priestly role I need hardly speak in that connection. But we can perhaps see how, as baptized people we are drawn into the priestliness of Jesus, we are called upon to mend shattered relationships between God and the world, through the power of Christ and the Spirit. As baptized people, we are in the business of building bridges. We are in the business of seeing situations where there is a breakage, damage and disorder, and bringing into those situations the power of God in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in order to rebuild something. We may not offer sacrifices in the Old Testament sense, but we offer and bring before God the reality of Jesus which has restored everything. We pray in Jesus that the restoration may be applied in the brokenness. And we offer our own service and devotion as best we can in the bridge-building process. 

And how do we relate to Jesus as royal king? In ancient Israel, the king was somebody who spoke for others to God. The king himself had a priestly role. But the king had the freedom to shape the law and the justice of his society, He could keep people close to the demands of God's covenant; he could make justice a reality (or fail terribly in this task). We read in Jeremiah the great definition of what it means to be a king who will 'know God' by favouring the poor, doing justice for the needy (Jeremiah 22:16). And that 'royal' calling is about how we freely engage in shaping our lives and our human environment in the direction of God's justice, showing in our relationships and our engagement with the world something of God's own freedom, God's own liberty to heal and restore.

So the baptized life is a life that gives us the resource and strength to ask awkward but necessary questions of one another and of our world. It is a life that looks towards reconciliation, building bridges, repairing shattered relationships. It is a life that looks towards justice and liberty, the liberty to work together to make human life in society some kind of reflection of the wisdom and order and justice of God.

All these aspects of the baptized life need one another. If we were only called to be prophets, we would be in danger of being constantly shrill nay-sayers to one another and to the world. There is plenty of that in Christian history and plenty of that in the Christian mentality today. And if we were only priestly, there would be a danger of never asking the difficult questions but moving on as rapidly as we could to reconciliation. And if we were only  talking about royal freedom and justice we would be in danger of constantly thinking in terms of control and problem-solving. But just as in Jesus these three things are inseparably bound up in His work and His words and His death, as in His life, so for us these are three facets of one life, not three isolated bits of a vocation.

... but still sinners

Throughout Christian history there have been plenty of debates around baptism. In the early Church people debated whether it was possible to sin after baptism. The great temptation was to think that when you had entered the new creation, the old world just stopped existing. St Paul knew that temptation but he also knew very well that the old world is tough, a natural survivor, and that the old humanity - muddled about its destiny and forgetful about its true nature - goes on with remarkable persistence.

So if, as a baptized person, we still sin - let's don't panic! Remember that the depths of God's love still surrounds us. And when we sin as a baptized person we are not, as it were, stepping right outside the depths of God's love (unless, of course, we fully and consciously decide to do so). Rather, it is as though we are deliberately ignoring the depths all around us, and not letting the reality of the world's need and the reality of God's love come through. So, what we need to do is to take the shutters down again, and we will find that every prayer of penitence that we pray is a taking-down of the shutters and letting the baptismal depths well up around and within us again.

And that brings us right back to where we started: the chaos of human sin and disorder and the wind of the Spirit blowing over it, and the embodied love of God going down into the waters and being drawn out again in a blaze of light and a word from heaven, 'This is my Son!' The baptized community lives in that mystery, drawn out of chaos, breathing in the wind of the Spirit and hearing from God the words that He speaks to His only Son: 'You can call me Father.'


In the following blogs, we will try and understand the second essential element of the Christian life - The Bible

The blog is based on the book - "Being Christian" by Rowan Williams

BEING CHRISTIAN - BAPTISM - Part 6

"But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy."
(1 Peter 2:9-10)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus

In the series, 'Being Christian' I am trying to share with you the activities that signify a Christian essence in the life of the faithful and what kind of people we might hope to become in a community where these activities are practices. With this hope in mind, we started with the most important sacrament (or a rite) by which an individual is brought to the Christian family - the Baptism.

Dear brethren, as we look back on the last few blogs, let us just quickly recap on what we learnt about baptism. Baptism restores a human identity that has been forgotten or overlaid. Baptism takes us to where Jesus is. It takes us therefore into closer neighborhood with a dark and fallen world, and it takes us into closer neighborhood with others invited there. The baptized life is characterized by solidarity with those in need, and sharing with all others who believe. And it is characterized by prayerfulness that courageously keeps going, even when things are difficult and unpromising and unrewarding simply because we cannot stop the urge to pray. Something just keeps coming alive in us; never mind the results.

Prophets, priests & kings

Let us try to explore a little bit further what this new baptized identity, this new humanity, means by considering three titles that are often used in thinking about the identity of Jesus. For many centuries the Church has thought of Jesus as anointed by God to live out a threefold identity: that of a prophet, priest and king. We as baptized people can identify with Jesus in these three ways of being human which characterize and the define His unique humanity. As we grow into His life and humanity these three ways come to characterize us as well. The life of the baptized is a life pf prophesy and priesthood and royalty. What does this mean to those of us who do not normally think of our roles in quite such dramatic terms?

Thinking about the role of prophets, we quite literally think about what the prophets did in the Old Testament times.The role of the prophets is more than just foretelling the future. Much more importantly, they act and speak to call the people of Israel back to their own essential truth and identity. They act and speak for sake of a community's integrity, its faithfulness to who it is really meant to be. Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos and Hosea are constantly saying to the people of Israel, 'Don't you remember who you are? Don't you remember what God has called you to be? Here you are, sitting down comfortable with all kinds of inequality, injustice and corruption in your society. Have you completely forgotten what you're here for?'

Therefore, the prophet is somebody whose role is always challenging the community to be what it is always meant to be - to live out the gift that God has given to it. And so the baptized person, reflecting the prophetic role of Jesus Christ, is a person who needs to be critical, who needs to be a questioner. The baptized person looks around at the Church and may quite often be prompted to say, 'Have you forgotten what you're here for?'; 'Have you forgotten the gift God gave you?'

One of the very uncomfortable roles we have to play in the Church is to be prophets to one another - that is, to remind one another what we are here for. By saying this, I don't mean that every Christian needs to go around nagging every other Christian (though it may seem attractive to some people). Rather I mean that we need to be, in a variety of ways, ready to show one another what the integrity of Christian life is all about. It is more of a nudging one another from time to time and saying, 'What do you see?'; 'Whats your vision?'; 'What are you making yourself accountable to?' And to go on gently holding one another accountable before God doesn't mean nagging or censoriousness. It means something much more like a quiet, persistent re-calling of one another to what is most important. We do it silently every time we meet for worship. We do it, ideally, when we meet together privately. We do it in all sorts of ways. The Church needs to always to hear the critical voice saying, 'Back to the beginning, back to where it all comes from. Let's try and listen again to what God said to us'. So, as prophets we lead one another back to the essentials: back to baptism, Bible, Holy Communion and prayer.

But if we as prophets are gifted with this uncomfortable calling to ask questions of one another, what about the wider societies we live in? People speak rather loosely of the Church being 'prophetic' and sometimes people talk as if the prophetic role of the Church is simply a matter of taking loud and very clear stands on all issues of the day. But it is surely much more a matter of the Church expressing and asking important and readily forgotten questions in out society. It is to ask, 'What's that for?' and 'Why do we take that for granted?' and 'Where's that leading us?' We do it for one another in the Church but I think that we also do it for the whole of our human environment, which needs that sort of questioning for its health and survival.

In the following blogs, we will understand the roles of a priest and kings that are bestowed on us with baptism that we share with Christ Jesus. In the meantime, do keep me and my family in your prayers.

The blog is based on the book - "Being Christian" by Rowan Williams

BEING CHRISTIAN - BAPTISM - Part 5

"In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh has been put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead."

(Colossians 2:11-12)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus

In the series, 'Being Christian' I am trying to share with you the activities that signify a Christian essence in the life of the faithful and what kind of people we might hope to become in a community where these activities are practices. With this hope in mind, we started with the most important sacrament (or a rite) by which an individual is brought to the Christian family - the Baptism.

Dear brethren, let us first recap on the last few blogs on what we covered on baptism and the deep thoughts the church associated with one of the important sacraments by which an individual was brought towards Christ Jesus. We started by understanding that baptism does not confer a special status on the baptized that marks them off from everybody else, but leads in claiming a new level of solidarity with everyone else. Just as Jesus was brought into the middle of human sufferings on a very intimate level, so also are the baptized brought into the midst of human chaos and are also those who go with Jesus into the risk and darkness. The baptized person finds not only in the middle of human suffering and muddle but also in the middle of the love and delight of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We also tried to understand that from this unique relationship, the prayer of the baptized people is a prayer that is always moving in the depths, sometimes invisibly and from places that we can seldom understand. Continuing on, let us try to understand why and how the path of the baptized person though a dangerous path is also called the path of life.

All the changes that we tried to understand in the life of a baptized person are all results from the upsurging life of the Spirit in the center of ones being, coming from the heart of God. The path is both a dangerous and life-giving for me as an individual believer - but not only for me. The other great truth about baptism is that it brings us not only in the proximity with God the Father, not only with the suffering and muddle of the human world, but with all those other people who are invited there as well. Baptism brings us into the neighborhood of other Christians; and there is no way of being a Christian without being in the neighborhood of other Christians. (It might seem like bad news for many, because other Christians can be so very difficult!) But that is what the New Testament tells us very uncompromisingly: to be with Jesus is to be where human suffering and pain are found and it is also to be with other human beings who are invited to be with Jesus. And that, says the New Testament, is a gift as well as sometimes a struggle and even an embarrassment.

It is a gift because in this community of baptized people we receive life from others' prayer and love, and we give the prayer and love that others need. We are caught up in a great economy of giving and exchanging. The solidarity that baptism brings us into, the solidarity with suffering, is a solidarity with one another as well. It is what some Christian writers have called 'co-inherence'. We are 'implicated' in one anther, our lives are interwoven. What affects one Christian affects all, what affects all affects each one. And, whether as individual Christians or as individual Christian groups and denominations, we often find that hard to believe and accept. We find it hard to accept it as a gift - yet a gift is what it is. It means that the darkness that belongs in the baptized life is never one own problem exclusively. It is shared: how it is shared is very mysterious, and yet most of us who are baptized Christians can witness in one way or another to the fact that it works.

So baptism restores a human identity that has been forgotten or overlaid. Baptism takes us to where Jesus is. It takes us therefore into closer neighbourhood with a dark and fallen world, and it takes us closer neighbourhood with others invited there. The baptized life is characterized by solidarity with those in need, and sharing with all others who believe. And it is characterized by prayerful life that courageously keeps going, even when things are difficult and uncompromising and unrewarding, simply because we cannot stop the urge to pray. Something keeps coming alive in you; never mind the results.

Through the following blogs we will try to understand the roles that are bestowed on us with baptism that we share with Christ Jesus. In the meantime, do keep me and my family in your prayers.

The blog is based on the book - "Being Christian" by Rowan Williams

BEING CHRISTIAN - BAPTISM - Part 4

"In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh has been put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead."

(Colossians 2:11-12)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus

In the series, 'Being Christian' I am trying to share with you the activities that signify a Christian essence in the life of the faithful and what kind of people we might hope to become in a community where these activities are practices. With this hope in mind, we started with the most important sacrament (or a rite) by which an individual is brought to the Christian family - the Baptism.

In the previous blog we tried to understand that just as Jesus was acknowledged in the waters of Jordan as God's son, we too are given an opportunity to be acknowledged as God sons & daughters by becoming recipients of the Holy Spirit. And in so opening ourselves to the Holy Spirit, we also are to open up to the needs and requirements of the people around us. We who are baptized are to be found in the middle of the love that God has for us and in the middle of the human suffering showing to the world Gods love for them as well. The baptized person is not only in the middle of human suffering and muddle but also in the middle of the love and delight of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That surely is one of the most extraordinary mysteries of being Christian. 

Growing out of this blessing - to be in the middle of the heart of God and being in the middle of a world of threat, suffering, sin and pain, the prayer of baptized people is going to be a prayer that is always moving in the depths, sometimes invisible - a prayer that comes from places deeper than we can really understand. St. Paul says just this in his letter to the Romans: "The Spirit helps us in our weakness... that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26). The prayer of the baptized people is never just 'rattling off' the words at surface level. The prayer of baptized people comes from a place deeper that we can penetrate with our minds or even our feelings. Prayer in the baptized community surges up from the depths of God's own life. Or, to change the metaphor, we might say that we are carried along on a tide deeper than ourselves, welling from God's depths and the world's.

The prayer of baptized people is always growing and moving into the prayer of Jesus himself and therefore it is a prayer that may often be difficult and mysterious. It will not always be cheerful and clear, and it may not always feel as though it is going to be answered. Christians do not pray expecting to get what they ask for in any simple sense. Rather, Christians pray because they have to, because the Spirit is surging up inside them. Prayer, in other words, is more like sneezing - there comes a point where you cant's not do it. The Holy Spirit wells and surges up towards God the Father. But because of this there will be moments when, precisely because you can't help yourself, it can feel dark and unrewarding, deeply puzzling, hard to speak about.

That might be the reason why so many great Christian writers on the spiritual life have emphasized that prayer is not about feeling good. It is not abut results, or about being pleased with yourself; it is just what God does in you when you are close to Jesus. And that of course means that the path of the baptized person is a dangerous one. To be baptized is not to be in what the world thinks of as a safe place. Jesus' first disciples discovered that in the Gospels and his disciples have gone on discovering ever since.

It is a great privilege to know and learn about people who live in dangerous proximity to Jesus; where their witness means they are a risk in various ways. And when we get to know people in places like Zimbabwe, Sudan, Syria or Pakistan living both in the neighborhood of Jesus and in the neighborhood of great danger, we understand something of what commitment to the Christian life means, the commitment of which baptism is the sign. But we also see this when we look at the lives of the great saints whose path of contemplation has led them to deep inner desolation, loneliness and uncertainty. All this results from the upsurging  life of the Spirit in the center of our being, coming from the heart of God. Like the saints before us, we tread a dangerous path - which is also the path to life.

Stay tuned for more on the path of life in the following blog.

In the meantime, do keep me and my family in your prayers.

The blog is based on the book - "Being Christian" by Rowan Williams

BEING CHRISTIAN - BAPTISM - Part 3

"In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh has been put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead."

(Colossians 2:11-12)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus

In the series, 'Being Christian' I am trying to share with you the activities that signify a Christian essence in the life of the faithful and what kind of people we might hope to become in a community where these activities are practices. With this hope in mind, we started with the most important sacrament (or a rite) by which an individual is brought to the Christian family - the Baptism.

In the previous post we tried to understand that God intended for us to grow in such love for Him and in such confidence in Him that we could rightly be called as God's sons & daughters. And Jesus Christ came down to our level so that we could be restored to the humanity that God intended, by being able to work in places where humanity is most at risk, most disordered, disfigured and needy. Christians who are meant to be in the neighborhood of Jesus, will also be found in the neighborhood of human confusion and suffering, alongside those in need. We ended with learning that baptism means being with Jesus 'in the depths': the depths of human need, including the depths of our own selves in their need - but also in the depths of God's love; in the depths where the Spirit is re-creating and refreshing human life as God meant it to be.

Sharing in the life and death of Jesus

If we believe the previous beliefs as true, baptism does not confer on us a status that marks us off from everybody else. To be able to say, 'I am baptized' is not to claim an extra dignity, let alone a sort of privilege that keeps one separate from and superior to the rest of the human race, but to claim a new level of solidarity with other people, It is to accept that to be a Christian is to be affected - one can also say contaminated - by the mess of humanity. 

It is very much a paradox. Baptism is a ceremony in which we are washed, cleansed and re-created. It is also a ceremony in which we are pushed into the middle of a human situation that may hurt us, and that will not leave us untouched or unsullied. And the gathering of the baptized people is therefore not a convocation of those who are privileged, elite and separate, but of those who have accepted what it means to be in the heart of a needy, contaminated and messy world. To put it another way, one does not go down into the waters of the Jordan without stirring up a great deal of mud!

When we are brought to be where Jesus is in baptism, we let our defenses down so as to be where He is, in the depths of human chaos. And that means letting our defenses down before God. Openness to the Spirit comes as we go with Jesus to take this risk of love and solidarity. And that is why, as we come up out of the waters of baptism with Jesus, we hear what He hears: 'This is my son, this is my daughter, this is the one who has the right to call me Father'. The Holy Spirit, says St. Paul, is always giving us the power to call God Father, and to pray Jesus' prayer (Galatians 4:6). And the baptized are those who, going with Jesus into the risk and darkness, open themselves up to receive the Spirit that allows them to call God Father. 

What else can we expect to see in the baptized? Along with an openness to human need, we will also see a corresponding openness to the Holy Spirit. In the life of the baptized people, there is a constant rediscovering, re-enacting of the Father's embrace of Jesus in the Holy Spirit. The baptized person is not only in the middle of the human suffering and muddle but also in the middle of the love and delight of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That surely is one of the most extraordinary mysteries of being a Christian. We are in the middle of two things that are very much contradictory to each other: in the middle of the heart of God, the ecstatic joy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and in the middle of a world of threat, suffering, sin and pain. And because Jesus has taken his stand right in the middle of those two realities, that is where we take ours as well. As He says, 'Where I am, there will my servant be also' (John 12:26)

To recap, in this blog we tried to understand that just as Jesus was acknowledged in the waters of Jordan as God's son, we too are given an opportunity to be acknowledged as God sons & daughters. And in opening ourselves to the Holy Spirit, we also are to open up to the needs and requirements of the people around us. We who are baptized are to be found in the middle of the love that God has for us and in the middle of the human suffering showing to the world Gods love for them as well. In the next blog we will continue on what else do we expect to see in a baptized person.

In the meantime, do keep me and my family in your prayers.

The blog is based on the book - "Being Christian" by Rowan Williams

BEING CHRISTIAN - BAPTISM - Part 2

"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." 

(Romans 6:3-4)

 

Dear brothers & sisters in Christ Jesus

In the series, 'Being Christian' I am trying to share with you the activities that signify a Christian essence in the life of the faithful and what kind of people we might hope to become in a community where these activities are practices. With this hope in mind, we started with the most important sacrament (or a rite) by which an individual is brought to the Christian family - the Baptism.

 

To recap, in the previous blog we understood that baptism is one of the most essential signs of being a Christian. We also understood that from early Christian years, baptism has been related to the Crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and also how it was related to the creation history in Genesis. And through it all, we understood that baptism is a means to overcome the chaos of this life, leading to rebirth as a son or daughter of Go, just as Jesus is a son.

We stopped at a point where the ancient Church brought together powerful symbols towards baptism. Where water symbolizes rebirth: rebirth as a son or daughter of God, as Jesus himself is a son. So when the Church reflected on what baptism means, it came to view it as a kind of restoration of what it is truly to be a human. To be baptized is to recover the humanity that God first intended.

WHAT DID GOD INTEND? He intended that human beings should grow into such love for Him and such confidence in Him that they could rightly be called God's sons and daughters. We human beings have let go of that identity, abandoned it, forgotten it and corrupted it and stamped it under our very feet. 

But when Jesus arrives on the scene He restores humanity to where it should be. But that in itself means that Jesus, as He restores humanity 'from within', has to come down into the chaos of the human world. Jesus has to come down fully to our level, to where things are shapeless and meaningless, in a state of vulnerability and unprotectedness, if real humanity is to come to birth.

This suggests that the new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that we are familiar with, that is a humanity that is successful and is in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God. And that means that if we ask the question 'Where might you expect to find the baptized?' one possible answer is, 'In the neighborhood of chaos'. It means you might expect to find Christian people near to those places where humanity is most at risk, where humanity is most disordered, disfigured and needy. Christians will be found in the neighborhood of Jesus - but Jesus is found in the neighborhood of human confusion and suffering, defenselessly alongside those in need. If baptized is being led to where Jesus is, then being baptized is being led towards the chaos and the neediness of a humanity that has forgotten its own destiny.

We might also add that we may also expect the baptized Christian to be somewhere near, somewhere in touch with, the chaos in his or her own life - because we all of us live not just with a chaos outside ourselves but with a quite a lot of inhumanity and muddle inside us. A baptized Christian ought to be somebody who is not afraid of looking with honesty at that chaos inside, as well as being where humanity is at risk, outside.

So baptism means being with Jesus 'in the depths': the depths of human need, including the depths of our own selves in their need - but also in the depths of God's love; in the depths where the Spirit is re-creating and refreshing human life as God meant it to be.

As we stop here for today, let is reflect in what it means to be a baptized Christian. In the Orthodox tradition, the days before trimphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and Good Friday is marked by events where Jesus heals a lot of people around Him. He is also found at a graveside resurrecting His friend Lazarus. Through my walk in the Great Lent, this is a question that kept me thinking, where am I in this fallen humanity and what is my role. As we look towards the Ascension and the Pentecost, where do we want to be found? To be in the midst of success or in the midst of human chaos?

 

The blog was written on the basis of the book "Being Christian" written by Rowan Williams. 

Do keep me and my family in your prayers.

 

BEING CHRISTIAN -- BAPTISM - Part 1

"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." 

(Romans 6:3-4)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus

Wishing you all a blessed feast of Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ

We have now completed one week after the celebration of the resurrection of our Lord and defeating death on the cross (many of my Orthodox brethren around the world are right now preparing for the same), and during this blessed period while I was reminiscing on the reason for baptism and its importance in the Christian life, I was struck by the similarity it bears to the death of Jesus Christ and His resurrection. 

Jesus speaks of the suffering and death that lies ahead of him as a 'baptism' he is going to endure (Mark 10:38). That is, He speaks as if His going towards suffering and death were a kind of immersion in something, being drowned or swamped in something. He says that he has an 'immersion' to go through, and until it is completed he will be frustrated and his work will be incomplete (Luke 12:50). So it seems that from the very beginning, baptism as a ritual for joining the Christian community was associated with the idea of going down into the darkness of Jesus' suffering and death, being 'swamped' by the reality of what Jesus endured. St. Paul speaks of being baptized 'into' the death of Christ (Romans 6:3). 

We are, so to speak, 'dropped' into that mysterious event which Christians commemorate on Good Friday, and more regularly, in the breaking of bread at every Holy Eucharist.

Out of the depths

As the ancient Church began to reflect more on this in the early Christian centuries, as it began to shape its liturgy and art, another set of association were developed.

In the story of Jesus' baptism, He goes down into the water of the river Jordan, and as He comes up out of the water the Holy Spirit descends upon Him in the form of a dove and a voice speaks from heaven: 'You are my Son' (Luke 3:22). Reflecting on that incident, the early Christians soon began to make connections with another story involving water and the Spirit. In the book of Genesis, at the very beginning of creation, we read that there was a watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was the Holy Spirit hovering or a great wind blowing.

First there is chaos, then there is the wind of God's Spirit; and out of the watery chaos comes the world. And God says, 'This is good.' The water and the Spirit and the voice: we can see why the early Christian fathers began to associate the event of baptism with exactly that image which St. Paul uses for the Christian life - new creation.

So the beginning of Christian life is a new beginning of God's creative work. And just as Jesus came up out of the water, receiving the Holy Spirit and hearing the voice of the Father, so for the newly baptized Christian the voice of God says, 'You are my son/daughter', as that individual begins his or her new life in association with Jesus.

In the icons reflecting the baptism of Jesus, we can usually see Jesus up to His neck in the water, while below, sitting under the waves, are the river gods of the old world, representing the chaos that is being overcome. So from early on baptism has been bringing powerful symbols around itself. Water and rebirth: rebirth as a son or daughter of God, as Jesus Himself is a son; chaos moving into order as the wind of God blows upon it.

As the Church reflected on what baptism means, it is not surprising when it came to view baptism as a restoration of what it is to be truly human. To be baptized is to recover the humanity that God first intended. What did God intend?

To understand what did God intend from his most prized creation, stay tuned to the blogs.

To do a brief recap, we understand that baptism is one of the most essential signs of being a Christian. We understood that from early Christian years, baptism has been related to the Crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and also how it was related to the creation history in Genesis. And through it all, we understood that baptism is a means to overcome the chaos of this life, leading to rebirth as a son or daughter of Go, just as Jesus is a son.

The above blog has been taken from the book - "Being Christian" by Rowan Williams

Being Christian - Introduction

Christ is risen! Indeed, He is risen! (Khristós Anésti! Alithós Anésti!)
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus
A very blessed season of Resurrection of our Lord Jesus greetings to one and all.
As I was pondering on the topic that I would like to take up as blog post, I thought it would be best to learn the essential elements of any Christian life. The thoughts that I'll be sharing as blogs will be representations from a recent book that I have been reading - "Being Christian" by Rowan Williams. Hoping that these thoughts will be helpful for you as it has been for me.
What are the essential elements of the Christian life? I'm not thinking of in terms of individuals leading wonderful lives, but just in terms of those simple and recognizable things that make us realize that we are a part of Christian community. The blogs are written to help us think about four of the most obvious of these things: baptism, Bible, Eucharist and prayer.

Christians are received into full membership of the Church by having water poured or sprinkled over them (or, in some traditions, being fully immersed); Christians read the Bible; Christians gather to share bread and wine in memory of the death and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth; and Christians pray. Though there is a huge and bewildering variety in Christian thinking and practice about all kinds of things, these four basic activities have remained constant and indispensable for majority of those who call themselves Christians.
In the following blogs, we shall be looking at what those activities tell us about the essence of Christian life, and what kind of people we might hope to become in a community where these things are done.
Kindly keep me and my family and our ministry in your prayers.

THE PATH OF SALVATION - Introduction

Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus 

Wishing one and all a very blessed and happy Easter (Pascha). I have decided to read some writings of our Holy Fathers and coincidentally my hands came upon a book written by a father from the Russian Orthodox Church - St. Theophan the Recluse. This series of my blogs will be from one of his books - The Path of Salvation. 

We all understand that our life on earth is a sojourn towards our Heavenly Kingdom and the main task on this way to salvation is to live in the spirit of Christ. But it is very difficult to answer all the questions and so it is very much necessary to explain nearly every step of this way. 

Man's final goal is communion with God, and the way to this goal lies through faith in Christ, together with constantly keeping His commandments with the assistance of God's grace. 

It is very easy for a person to say that "This is the way! Follow it!" But how is one to follow this path? Mostly because people have no desire to move in this direction. Their souls, pulled by one passion or another, stubbornly refuses every gentle invitation and every call. The soul alerts its gaze from God and does not want to look at Him. The law of Christ does not conform to the soul's liking. The soul does not even have disposition even to hear this law. 

Therefore, the questions that will be addressed through these blogs are:

1. How does one reach the point where the desire in born to move towards God by way of Christ?
2. What does one do so that the Law imprints itself, not just a ink on paper, but as the Spirit of the Living God imprints itself on the living flesh of the heart? 
3. How can a man act according to this Law willingly and unconstrainedly, not as though like a burden, but proceeding from his deepest nature? 

If someone has turned towards God, and has come to love His Law, is this enough to ensure the success of the journey? Will the journey be successful merely because we desire it? No.

In addition to the desire, it is necessary to have the strength and the ability to act, that is active wisdom or the practical knowledge of how to act (praxis). Whoever enters this true way of pleasing God, whoever begins with the help of grace to strive towards God in the way of Christ's Law, will inevitably be threatened by the danger of losing his way at the crossroads, of going astray and perishing while under the illusion that he is working out his salvation. These crossroads are unavoidable because of our sinful inclinations and the disorder of our faculties, even in those who have accepted Christ. These sinful inclinations and disordered faculties are capable of presenting things to a man in a false light, and deceiving and destroying the man.

Moreover, there is flattery from Satan, who is reluctant to leave his victims. Whenever a person goes to the light of Christ, he pursues him and sets every manner of trap in order to catch him again. He prowls like a lion waiting for its prey. Hence, the spiritual traveler who already has the desire to follow the way to the Lord must be informed of all the possible deviations, so that he may be warned beforehand, may see the dangers that are to be encountered, and may learn how to avoid them. 

These unavoidable things, which are encountered on the way to salvation and are common for everyone, require special guiding principles that are indispensable for the Christian life. These principles define how to acquire the saving desire for communion with God, the fervent desire to remain in communion with Him, and how to come to God safely through all the crossroads that must be negotiated on the way and at every stage on the way. In other words, how to begin to live the Christian life and how, having begun, to perfect oneself in it. 

These guiding principles must take the man who is separated from God, turn him towards God, and then being him into God's Presence. They must show to the man the practical development of the Christian life in all its manifestations and levels, from its very beginning to the end. That is how the Christian life germinates, develops, and becomes mature. In other words, we must give an account of the unfolding of the active life for every Christian, to show how he must act in every possible case so that he may stand firm in his calling. 

When comparing the gradual growth of plants to that of a Christian, the growth of the plant is easy and unconstrained, while it is not so with a Christian. He rather has a hard struggle with himself, intense and sorrowful, and he must dispose his faculties towards things which they have no natural inclination. Just like a warrior, he must win every inch of land, even his own, from his enemies by means of warfare. He must use the two-edged sword of self-constraint and self-coercion. And finally, after long hours of hard labor and exertions, Christian principles emerge victorious, reducing without oppression. These principles bestow upon man the bliss of those who are pure in heart, so that the man can see God in himself in the most sincere communion with Him. 

Such is the condition in us of the Christian life. It has three stages, which we can describe as follows :

1. Turning to God, which is conversation 
2. Purification or self-amendment, and 
3. Sanctification.

In the first stage, a man turns from darkness to light, from the reign of Satan to God. In the second, he cleanses the dwelling Chamber of his heart from every impurity, in order to receive Christ, the Lord, who is coming to him. In the third, the Lord comes, makes His home in the heart of a man and sups with him. This is the state of blessed communion with God-the goal of all ascetic labors and endeavors. 

To show the way to salvation means that we describe all these things and define the rules which govern this operation. Full guidance in this matter takes a man on the crossroads of sin, leads him through the fiery way of cleansing, and raises him up to the highest pitch of spiritual perfection attainable, to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

In other words, this guidance must show us:

1. How Christian life begins in us 
2. How it is perfected - that is, how it grows and is strengthened, and 
3. How the Christian life appears in its full perfection.

As we start this journey of writing and reading, I ask you all to keep me and my writing in your prayers. May this series enlighten us and help us to walk on the way to salvation. 

Your brother in Christ

Prepare O Bethlehem - King Herod and the Holy Innocents

Herod was filled with alarm 

When he saw the righteous wisemen. 

Overcome by fury, 

He determined when the child was born 

Mothers were robbed of their infants:

Their tender lives were reaped as a bitter harvest. 

Milk stopped flowing and breasts dried up 

Great was the suffering! 

Therefore assemble in holy fear, O faithful, 

To worship the birth of Christ! 

- Stikhera for Ninth Hour of the Royal Hours of Christmas 

(Byzantine Orthodox Church)

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

The story of King Herod and the death of the holy innocents stands out grimly in the birth narratives of Jesus Christ. While Herod is never seen in crèche scenes and he seldom is represented in Parish tableaus, he is mentioned in the birth narrative. While Herod is not formally commemorated on the Church calendar, we do remember the martyrdom of the holy innocents in Bethlehem on the first Sunday after Christmas. I'm 2015, we remembered them on Dec 27. This post and the coming couple of posts are delayed as I was busy with my secular work and did not get time to write on these topics.

King Herod was King Herod the Great, the father of the Herodian dynasty and the father of Herod Antipas, who killed John the Baptist and assisted Pontius Pilate in condemning Jesus to death (Luke 9:7, 23:6-7). The Scriptures offer little information about King Herod except that he was the King of the Jews. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that Herod was an ambitious politician and a strong leader. He was alive when Julius Caesar was killed, and befriended Mark Anthony. Herod was later summoned to Rome to receive the title "King of the Jews", and he returned to Jerusalem as their King. By the time of the birth of Jesus, the Roman Empire controlled most of the known world around the Mediterranean and was organized into smaller kingdoms. Herod, the King of Judea, was unpopular with many Jews because he was a foreigner and only part Jewish. Although Matthew does not tell us directly, it is likely that any news about a newborn King would not be welcomed by Herod or his followers. The mere mention of a newborn "king" would cause anxiety in most people, and especially to someone as the unpopular Herod.

Herod told the wise men that he too wanted to visit the Christ child (Matthew 2:7-8). Joseph, after being alerted in a dream, took Mary and the infant Jesus and fled to Egypt, where they remained until the angel told them to return to Nazareth.

Herod, in a rage, had all the make children who were two years old or younger killed so that he could kill the baby Jesus.According to Matthew, this fulfills a prophesy in Jeremiah,

"A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more. This says the Lord: 'Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for your work shall be rewarded says the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, says the Lord, and your children shall come back to their own country'" (Jeremiah 31:15).

Jeremiah speaks of the exile of the northern tribes and uses the example of Rachel weeping for her children who were taken away.

The story of Herod and the Holy innocents is strikingly similar to the beginning of the Exodus story. In Exodus, Pharaoh wanted all the male babies killed because the Israelites were over populating Egypt. Yet, we know that Moses was miraculously saved, ironically, by Pharaoh's daughter (Exodus 2:1-6).

Moses survived this ordeal, and he later became the leader in the house of Pharaoh. He eventually led the people on their exodus journey, and died just before they entered the promised land (Deuteronomy 34).

Herod went after the baby Jesus as soon as he heard from the Magi that they saw a star in the East. The Magi refer to Jesus as a king, a title which is used again and again throughout the New Testament. In the beginning of the Gospel of John, Nathaniel says of Jesus, "Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (John 1:49). Later in the same Gospel, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, refers to Jesus as King, although in order to mock Him (John 18:33-38).

Throughout the Scriptures, other people affirm that Jesus is a king, but Jesus never referred to Himself as a king. In His passion narrative, Luke tells us that some from the crowd told Pilate that Jesus called Himself a king and forbade people from paying tribute to Caesar. This would be considered an act of rebellion, because all Roman citizens had to pay their taxes and honor Caesar as the Roman Emperor (Luke 23:1-5). Yet, Jesus never stirred up a rebellion against the Romans nor did He forbid people to pay their taxes. Actually, the opposite is true, on one occasion, He told His disciples to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's (Matthew 22:21).

While Jesus never sought political authority and power, He frequently spoke about His Father's Kingdom. His parables describing the kingdom of God show a different Kingdom from what people assumed. He used everyday images, such as a mustard seeds, yeast and a camel through an eye of a needle, to show that God worked in ways unknown to man. As the prophet Isaiah says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" (Isaiah 55:8). Jesus taught about the kingdom of heaven throughout most of His ministry. Yet, at the end of His life, it is ironic that this peaceful, loving, Jewish carpenter was sentenced to death for the charges of blasphemy and treason, for supposedly calling Himself a king and rebelling against Rome. All four Gospels mention that there was a sign on the cross which read "Jesus King of the Jews," and the Gospel of John emphasizes that this was written in Greek, Latin and Hebrew (John 19:20).

Herod's attempt to kill Jesus' life in the beginning of the Gospel foreshadowed what is to come, since at nearly every step, there were opponents of Jesus and His ministry. Throughout the Scriptures, the Pharisees, Scribes, and Jewish leaders seek to destroy Jesus and put Him to death (read Matthew 21:45-46). Likewise, even Judas, one of His own disciples, betrays Him, and Peter, His favorite disciple, denies Him three times! So, we should not be surprised that Jesus was in danger even from the very beginning of His life. Yet, Jesus managed to perform meant miracles and proclaim the Kingdom of God to the people, and some did hear and accept the Gospel, the same Gospel that is proclaimed to us. Unfortunately, there are still people who do not want the Gospel to grow and, therefore, they try to prevent it from growing. However, the Gospel is continually preached throughout the world and is under the power of God Himself who gives the growth. Our job is to stay out of His way and allow Him to keep planting those seeds of the Kingdom.