Daily Worship

Symbolic Text

Jo Penn November 21, 2024 3 0
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Acts 16:15 (NRSVA)

15 When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home. And she prevailed upon us.

‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!’ (2 Corinthians 5:17)

I was 18 when I was baptised one Sunday afternoon, the only one from my congregation. At that same service, a number of people from the local Indian Asian community were also baptised. Our baptisms were celebrated with piano and organ, drums and sitars as the two congregations witnessed people committing their life to following Jesus. 

I had been in church all my life, hearing there the stories of Jesus and the Old Testament. Lydia was with the Jewish women, and would have had some knowledge of some of the Old Testament scriptures. Paul comes to speak about the way that the Old Testament is fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, that he is the awaited Messiah.

John the Baptist invited people to be baptised for ‘repentance’ — acknowledging rebellions against God, turning around and starting afresh to follow God. Going down into the water to symbolise dying to the old life, and rising to new life as you are brought up. Jesus himself willingly went through this baptism, subjecting himself to the authority of his cousin, even though he did not have anything of which to repent. He put himself in the place of humankind, as he would again on the Cross. (‘…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, Romans 3:23.)

Jesus instructed his disciples to baptise people, ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Matthew 28:19).

Lydia’s heart responds to Paul’s words that she desires to be counted as a follower of Jesus, and, like the jailor in Acts 16:31, she and her household are baptised. 

 

Prayer:

 

Jesus,

Thank you for the experiential symbol of baptism, when we dedicate our life to you. May we know afresh the power of our baptism. May we pray for those we hold dear to turn to you in this way, that they may also receive the beautiful power of the Holy Spirit within them.

Amen.