We use two sacramental materials when we baptize someone, at least, in the so-called “sacramental” traditions, Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Anglican. The most obvious is water. No less important is oil.
We don’t tend to use it in the same quantities as we do water – but in some early church communities, a candidate’s whole body might be anointed with oil, and in others oil was poured into the font along with water. In some places, the baptizand’s hands, feet, face and head were anointed as part of the baptismal rite.
It seems likely that this was a part of baptism as St. Paul knew it in the earliest days of the Church. In Ephesians, he says, “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit…” That’s just what we say when we make the sign of the cross in oil on the forehead of someone being baptized: “You are sealed with the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Paul likened that anointing with the Holy Spirit to a down- payment of sorts: “…the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession.”
It is the oil, chrism, that gives us the word “christening.” That’s how fundamental the chrismation part of the baptismal ritual is. For the oil is the Sign or symbol for the Holy Spirit. As I said Monday, it was the anointing with the Spirit that revealed Jesus as the Anointed One, or the “Christ” (same root word as chrism).
We might even deem the oil more important than the water. The water serves to symbolize the cleansing, forgiving, dying and rebirth realities of baptism. But it is the gift of the Holy Spirit uniting us with Christ that makes us Christians. That’s where our new identity comes from, the birth of a new person, you + Jesus, or the Spirit of Christ. Without the Holy Spirit we are just strivers; with the Spirit of Christ in us we are carried along on the Mission of God – and that cannot fail.
One of the readings appointed for next Sunday is from the book of Acts, about a time when Paul came upon a group of elders from Ephesus who had been baptized by disciples of John the Baptist. “He said to them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?’ They replied, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’" Paul baptizes them into the name of Jesus and lays hands upon them in prayer – and they are filled with the Spirit.
Do you feel you’ve received the Holy Spirit? If you’ve been baptized in the Episcopal Church, you have. But our churches can be awfully quiet about the Spirit, so that we become almost like those Ephesians, barely aware of this Life Force by which we are renewed to be most fully who we are and empowered to do more than we can “ask or imagine.” If you don’t feel very well acquainted with the Holy Spirit, there’s some spiritual work for us. We can begin with the simplest of prayers: “Come, Spirit of Christ, fill me. Come, Spirit of the Father, renew me. Come, Holy Spirit, empower me.” And then see what happens.
We have been sealed. The deposit has been made. It’s time to start collecting our inheritance.
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