Teaching Sermon: Baptismal Beliefs & Practices
As part of our ongoing series of teaching sermons, today we will be exploring baptismal beliefs and practices. Baptism is a ritual welcome into Christ’s Church. It involves making certain promises and affirmations of faith, a ritual washing, and being marked as Christ’s own forever. It is a sacrament that is almost universally recognized across the many, varied branches of the Jesus Movement. In the fifth century, St. Augustine defined a sacrament as, “an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.” 1 Depending on who you’re talking to there are two, seven, or even countless sacraments - but we’ll save that thread for another day. The origins of baptism stem from many faith traditions with ritual washing, and Jesus would have grown up knowing baptism as a Jewish ritual. It was understood as a cleansing, a washing away of one's sins. I’d invite us to think about sin as those things which distract us from living the life we are called to live, leaving