(From Sunday) Satisfying the Hunger Within

What are you hungry for? What are you craving? Food? Wine? Friendship? An end to this loneliness? The lighting up of the darkness? The excited buzz of fellowship? The warm embrace of love? To be hungry is to be human. To feed that hunger is to be human. And we live in a hungry, deeply hungry, age. We are all of us barraged daily with promises to feed our hunger, to quench our thirst, to satisfy our desires, to bring an end to the infinite craving, to fill the emptiness deep within.

***

To read more, click here.

Day 17: Monday: What must I do?

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” 

    The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.  Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.  At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptised without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God (Acts 16:25-34, NRSV).

What does it mean to be saved? What are you being saved from? What are you being saved for? Ask God about it, and reflect on what emerges.

Day 16: Saturday: Baptized again

Oscar suffered from severe aphasia and debilitating arthritis… He spent… time in my parents’ cafe… he could manipulate a pencil well enough to make himself understood. Under the counter at the cafe I kept a large tablet expressly for Oscar’s use. He would pass me notes like a sneaky schoolboy … Oscar’s shaky scrawl was sometimes so large he had to finish the message on the back of the page. Well, one day he was laboring over a note … when having finished he handed me a page with a word on it that I could not decipher. I turned the page sideways, then upside-down, but I could not make any sense of Oscar’s inflated scrawl.

    Oscar meanwhile was making guttural sounds no more comprehensible than the word on the page. I made several guesses at the word; at each of them Oscar shook his head. I might be there guessing yet if my sister hadn’t materialized. She took one look at the word, said “Baptism,” then returned to wherever it was she had materialized from.

    My friend, you see, wanted to be baptized, but he did not want the ritual to be performed in the church. I believe he perceived himself as both nuisance and embarrassment, and because of this he had gone I don’t know how many years—he was sixty, I’d say, or close to it—without asking to be baptized… a long round of questioning led to this: Oscar wanted to be baptized, and he wanted it done in Shannon’s Creek.

    And he wanted me to be baptized with him.

    … I was stunned. I did not care to be baptized again; I had been both sprinkled and baptized once, and that seemed to me enough. But when through his notes and his noddings, his grunts and his hand signals and the open-mouthed contortions of his lips, Oscar insisted that I be baptized with him, I reconsidered.

    … you should have seen the sweet fire in Oscar’s eyes when I said yes, when I said hell yes, I’ll be happy to be baptized with you in Shannon’s Creek.

Which rites of sprinkling, confirmation or baptism have you experienced? Was one ‘more real’, or did different rituals hold different meanings? Pray about your experiences.

William Kloefkorn This Death by Drowning (Lincoln, NE/London: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 71-2.

Day 15: Friday: Like a birth or a resurrection

When I was in seminary I used to go sometimes to watch the Baptists down at the river. It was something to see the preacher lifting the one who was being baptized up out of the water and the water pouring off the garments and the hair. It did look like a birth or a resurrection.

When you were baptised, what did you die to? Into what were you born? What are you dying to now, and what are you being born into now? Pray for courage: to die to the things you must, and to live deeply into your calling.

♫ Extra: To listen to ‘Down in the river to pray,’ click here.

Reading from Marilynne Robinson Gilead (London, Virago: 2004), 72.

Day 14: Thursday: God wanted me to experience this

I was christened in Tewantin, Queensland, at six weeks. My very aged grandparents on my Mum’s side of family and another great Aunt from my Dad's family came from Melbourne. This would have been a big undertaking in 1948/49. Despite the fact I was a baby when it occurred, I always understood that this was a significant event for me.

    At 17, just before I went into nursing, I was confirmed in the Methodist Church at Kalorama. Confirmation was something I willing underwent knowing that I was publicly committing my life to being a follower of God, in other words, a Christian. I do not remember much about the service other than that I had passed a milestone or another significant step in my life.

    A few years later, I was attending Melbourne Bible Institute and many discussions were held with friends about baptism by full immersion. I started to feel that, in the eyes of my friends who had been fully immersed, my very powerful experience of confirmation was not enough. This was made clear one evening when we attended a Baptist Church: the minister at that time went a step further saying that, if you were not baptised, your faith and Christianity was questionable. I was quietly incensed and did not agree.

    By 1974 I was attending South Yarra Community Baptist with Paul. We married there in 1975. We were very active in all things at South Yarra, and ran the very famous “Club 12”, an all-age Sunday School program.

    Soon after we were married, the minister of the day came to do a pastoral visit with me, and he and Paul discussed with me the need for me to consider undergoing baptism. The reason cited by the minister that was that I was a teacher in a Baptist church Sunday School, and so I should be baptised. That delayed things for a while, as I naturally was not happy about this. But I continued teaching and everything else I was doing at South Yarra.

    But as God does these things, the quiet realisation came to me that it was something I needed to do. It was not because of what any human or spiritual guru thought, but God wanted me to experience this. I, a committed God loving woman who had publicly declared my faith, was being gently being made aware that God required me to do this, too.

    So I was baptised in a swimming pool in the left hand corner at the kitchen end of the hall. The water was warm! It was a great day and service. None of my family there but Paul's Mum and Dad and Joy his sister in law and her children and all of the Club 12 family. My only fear on the day was that I might pass out if I was dunked backwards, so we arranged to go forward.

    Interestingly, Mum, who had once talked about us as being christened or sprinkled, began to refer to the ceremony performed when I was an infant as a baptism service. When I and Gayle my sister became involved in Baptist life, this did not help my confusion between confirmation and baptism.

Was baptism something you actively sought, or did you have a sense of being drawn to it? What experience is God inviting you into now? Spend some time reflecting on the invitation that lies before you at this time.

Reflection by Merryl Gahan, South Yarra Community Baptist Church, 19 January 2016.

Day 13: Wednesday: Baptism

A stoic Yankee

A Baptist bowl

and a lot of water

met for a moment

one November day

Some fifteen years gone by

Back erect

Arms folded across your chest

You fell back into loving arms

joining a fellowship, a community

a new walk, a reconnection

a new life up from the waters of life

When you were baptised, were you explicitly connected into a community? Informally connected? Give thanks for the people who travelled with you to baptism, and for those who journey with you now.

Poem by Raymond A. Foss 

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/raymond_a__foss/poems/21368.html.

Day 12: Tuesday: Baptism of the Spirit

I became a Christian outside the institutional church. At the age of 9, I was taught by a friend of the family how to pray. He told me praying was talking to God and that I should not only ask for things but spend time listening to God. I guess I had a contemplative prayer experience at a very young age.

    When I was 17 I suffered from depression. My grades at Year 11 were appalling and I felt everything in life was miserable. I confided my depression to Stephen, my closest friend and classmate, who told me to read the Bible starting at the Gospel of Matthew and to pray to Jesus because he can help me. As I started to read the Gospels my heart started to burn and I began to really believe Jesus was the son of God.

    One Friday night, Stephen took me to a street church in Malvern called “The Bridge”. They served coffee and raisin toast. I recall Geoff, one of the servers, asking me if I was a Christian.  I said “I was trying to be a Christian.” He said to me that I don’t have to try and that all I had to do was let Jesus come into my life. That night I invited Jesus to come into my life and I physically felt my body shaking. My heart was literally on fire and tears poured down my cheeks as I knew Jesus had come into my life, forgiven me of my sins and the Holy Spirit was dwelling in me.

    My exposure to institutional church came when I joined an Anglican charismatic youth group when I was at university. I couldn’t get my head around the idea of Baptism of the Spirit despite being “Bible bashed” by my peers. As a member of the youth group, there was peer pressure on me to receive the Baptism of the Spirit. So one Sunday night, the vicar and members of the youth group laid hands and prayed that I receive the Baptism of the Spirit. I again experienced supernaturally the power of the Holy Spirit as I felt a heat of fire descend into my body during the laying on of hands. I was expected to receive the gift of tongues immediately but it didn’t happen. That night as I was sleeping my tongue could not stop moving and I woke up the next morning speaking in tongues.

    The vicar said to me it is normal practice to receive water baptism first then the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and he thought it would be appropriate for me to be baptised in water. I agreed to go ahead with baptism but looking back in hindsight, I chose the wrong time of the year. It was the middle of winter in Melbourne. The temperature was about 5 degrees centigrade and a Clarks’ rubber pool had been erected in the church car park. I was given a white robe to wear and together the vicar and I got into the pool which was about waist high. I could hear members of the congregation shudder and shiver in empathy for me. I can’t recall the exact words but I was tipped backwards to be fully immersed. I had never felt so cold in my life. I felt cleansed, my sins forgiven and recommitted again to follow Jesus.

    I still feel honoured today to be called by God to be a Christian. My Christian journey began outside the institutional church and although each church may have rules about admission and Christian baptism, Jesus continues to speak to me personally and calls me to be his servant.

How have you experienced the Baptism of the Spirit? What spiritual gifts have been given to you? (See 1 Cor 12:1-11 for some ideas.) Give thanks for your gifts, and pray that they continue to contribute to the common good.

Reflection by Steven Wong, South Yarra Community Baptist Church, 20 January 2016.