Taking responsibility for ourselves: the assembly theme and the church's diaconal task - "Turn to God - Rejoice in Hope": Unfolding the Eighth Assembly Theme

Baptism and the wilderness tradition

At the entrance to the Chapel at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva there is a copy of a 12th century Greek mosaic depicting the baptism of Christ, a gift of the Ecumenical Patriarch, Athenagoras. It is unlikely that those who articulated the Harare assembly theme, "Turn to God -- Rejoice in Hope" saw this mosaic as their inspiration. Nevertheless, the pictorial representation of John baptizing Jesus in the river Jordan provides a focus for the essence of our theme.

John the baptizer comes from the wilderness and baptizes in the river Jordan. The setting is the boundary between the settled land of the people of God and the wilderness, between the known and the unknown and between the past and the future. Mark describes the event in these words:

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a

baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.(1)

John the baptizer stands firmly in the prophetic tradition. The proclamation he makes is God's and not his own. John's proclamation is to be understood against a background of the wilderness tradition.(2)

This wilderness tradition is to be found in Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah, but it finds its most clear articulation in Hosea.(3) Hosea speaks of the promised land, which Israel now inhabits, as the mother of Israel whose true Lord is YHWH. To reach this promised land Israel had journeyed through the wilderness from Egypt, the land of her slavery. However the motherland has been disgraced by the worship of the Baals and God's judgment would be to withhold the blessing that maintains the land's fertility. A note of judgment is heard in the threat that unless Israel renounces the worship of Baals then the people will be expelled from the land of promise. Nevertheless Hosea sounds another note, a note that speaks of the renewal of hope. In returning to the wilderness the old relationship of love and trust in God is restored and again YHWH will speak "tenderly" to God's people.

So Mark's phrase a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, which is seen by many to be riddled with difficulties, may be interpreted in the light of the prophetic use of the Hebrew verb shub -- to return.

-- God promises to those so baptized, who spiritually return to the wilderness, that God will re-establish a relationship of trust and love. So begins a new history of grace, grace that enables the people of God to obey the Torah, to walk in the Way, or as some of the rabbis described it, to "be tied to the chariot of God".

-- During Israel's original journey through the wilderness the people of God had expected God to act decisively. God's decisive act was to bring Israel to the promised land. Those receiving John's baptism are once again to expect God to act decisively. John the baptizer clearly points to the mission of Jesus as that decisive act when he says, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."(4)

The Marcan account of the ministry of John the baptizer has very positive echoes of the Harare theme of Return to God -- Rejoice in Hope. For John the baptizer, Jesus of Nazareth was God's decisive act and we are ourselves are baptized into him.(5) In Christian baptism we are made one with Christ, we are empowered to be his disciples, disciples who walk in the Way. While baptism is received only once, the promises and gifts that God gives in baptism are renewed repeatedly in worship and especially in the celebration of the eucharist. Worship plays a vital part in our understanding of the Harare theme and we will return to that theme again.

John the baptizer, and the prophets who preceded him, expected to see God act as God had acted in the wilderness in bringing the people of Israel out of Egypt into the promised land. The God of Israel was a God whose actions were characterized by faithfulness, patiently calling his people anew. So God acts decisively again in raising Jesus from the dead, a Jesus of whom it was promised that he would "go before" the new Israel.(6) We who are "in Christ" look expectantly to see God act decisively in our own time. Stephen Bayne, once Executive Officer of the Anglican Communion, summed up this insight when he wrote,

The mission is God's, not ours. He is the one who is at work out

there.... We go out to encounter our blessed Lord creating and

sustaining and loving and forgiving and inspiring and

dying and being born again among the people of the world who do

not know his name... And to us, less than the least of all

saints, is this grace given that we are privileged to go where he is

and for a moment to stand by his side.(7)

The jubilee

At first sight the biblical concept of jubilee sits uneasily with the theme "Turn to God -- Rejoice in Hope". Roland de Vaux states quite bluntly that the year of jubilee "was a utopian law and it remained a dead letter".(8) A second glance however uncovers a number of important insights.