So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. here is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:26-29)
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)
For the past few weeks in Sunday School, we’ve been looking at what was different about Christianity in the first century. One of the differences brought up was baptism. For most of us, there’s that mental assent, “Yeah, baptism, being dunked or sprinkled… yeah,, so what?” We live in a society that basically shrugs its shoulders as such religious mumbo-jumbo. But there are areas in the world (even in the U.S.) where being baptized leads to ostracization by family, imprisonment, or execution, because attending church, or spending time around Christian folks can be shrugged off as curiosity or trying to convert them, baptism identifies you as one of them.
Yesterday, I watched a video that touches on this. Now that I’m thinking back on it, it was a much more interesting video than I originally thought because of the connections. It is a video about how purple dye was made for use in royal clothing. Here’s the Video
Let me share a few of the interesting parallels I see. First, in order to make purple dye one need to gather as many as ten thousand of a specific sort of shellfish. Parallel One: Death is involved in our being clothed in purple (made part of the royal family) The dye-makers had to crack the shells and ferment them in a pot for ten days. One of the big points the video makes is about the stench of the shell-fish. I find myself thinking that the smell is probably as ugly as sin.
After ten days and tests that involved touching and tasting the fermented masticated muscles, the cloth was placed in the pot. After about thirty minutes, the cloth is pulled back out and… it’s not purple. It starts out pale, turns sort of greenish, and finally darkens to royal purple.
The process of dipping the cloth in the dye comes from the same root as baptism. Baptism is a symbolic version of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. It’s also a symbol of our being identified with Christ. We would like to believe that a quick dunk or a little sprinkle is enough to make us “royal purple” but it requires that we abide in a stinking pot (the world) for a time, and when we come out of the pot, we aren’t royal purple, It takes time even after we’ve been saved and baptized. And I’m betting that even once the cloth was purple, it was washed at least once to rid it of the bouquet.
As I thought about our being identified with Christ, I thought about the whole “identity politics” thing. People are being encouraged to pick one or more things about themselves that they think sets them apart from others, whether it’s race (Jew or Greek), gender or sexual preference (Male or Female), history of oppression or status as oppressed (Slave or Free) or whatever, and put it on a pedestal That small part of themselves now becomes the thing bigger than themselves (they think) that gives them self-worth. From what I’ve seen, it usually gives them a basis to declare themselves better than everyone around them who isn’t just like them.
This is one of the ways that Christianity is different. The identity of the Christian is not based on something distinctive about the Christian. It is external, and can only be given to us through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s counter-cultural in the extreme, but baptism, true baptism and not just the symbol, is the only way we are made worthy of royalty. All that nice, polite, "just believism" is no substitute for baptism.
Yesterday, I watched a video that touches on this. Now that I’m thinking back on it, it was a much more interesting video than I originally thought because of the connections. It is a video about how purple dye was made for use in royal clothing. Here’s the Video
Let me share a few of the interesting parallels I see. First, in order to make purple dye one need to gather as many as ten thousand of a specific sort of shellfish. Parallel One: Death is involved in our being clothed in purple (made part of the royal family) The dye-makers had to crack the shells and ferment them in a pot for ten days. One of the big points the video makes is about the stench of the shell-fish. I find myself thinking that the smell is probably as ugly as sin.
After ten days and tests that involved touching and tasting the fermented masticated muscles, the cloth was placed in the pot. After about thirty minutes, the cloth is pulled back out and… it’s not purple. It starts out pale, turns sort of greenish, and finally darkens to royal purple.
The process of dipping the cloth in the dye comes from the same root as baptism. Baptism is a symbolic version of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. It’s also a symbol of our being identified with Christ. We would like to believe that a quick dunk or a little sprinkle is enough to make us “royal purple” but it requires that we abide in a stinking pot (the world) for a time, and when we come out of the pot, we aren’t royal purple, It takes time even after we’ve been saved and baptized. And I’m betting that even once the cloth was purple, it was washed at least once to rid it of the bouquet.
As I thought about our being identified with Christ, I thought about the whole “identity politics” thing. People are being encouraged to pick one or more things about themselves that they think sets them apart from others, whether it’s race (Jew or Greek), gender or sexual preference (Male or Female), history of oppression or status as oppressed (Slave or Free) or whatever, and put it on a pedestal That small part of themselves now becomes the thing bigger than themselves (they think) that gives them self-worth. From what I’ve seen, it usually gives them a basis to declare themselves better than everyone around them who isn’t just like them.
This is one of the ways that Christianity is different. The identity of the Christian is not based on something distinctive about the Christian. It is external, and can only be given to us through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s counter-cultural in the extreme, but baptism, true baptism and not just the symbol, is the only way we are made worthy of royalty. All that nice, polite, "just believism" is no substitute for baptism.
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