St. Boniface House

Today we are celebrating the baptism of not one, but three covenant children.  What a happy moment in the life of this family!  As is our custom on these days, I want to spend just a little bit of time talking about The Sacrament of Holy Baptism and what it means. 

Today, as with every time we participate in a baptism, we are witnessing not only an initiation into and union with the body of Christ, not only a symbolic promise of covenant faithfulness from God, not only the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Spirit, not only union with Christ in his death, not only a ceremonial washing, but also an ordination ceremony to the Royal Priesthood.  The ritual of baptism ordains those to whom it is applied to the priesthood in which all the church participates.

To see this we need first to remember very quickly what ordination to the Levitical priesthood looked like.  It had several elements, and I’m going to run through them quickly.  If you want more detail, you can feel free to read the book of Leviticus. When a man was ordained to the priesthood, several things were done.  First, he was ceremonially washed.  To put it another way, he was baptized.  Then he underwent investiture.  This just means that the special white robes of the priest were placed upon him. The next thing that happened was that he was anointed with oil.  Ceremonial oil was poured upon his head.  Then he made a series of purification offerings (offerings for sin) as well as other offerings over the course of eight days.  Blood from these offerings was put not only on the altar, but also on the priest—on his ear lobe, his thumb, and his toe, signifying a sort of “whole person” circumcision, sanctifying and consecrating the priest for service in the tabernacle or temple.  The last thing that would happen is that the priest would participate in a peace or fellowship offering and eat a meal with Yahweh.  We shall have more to say about that later.

The next thing we need to understand is what a priest, ordained and thereby consecrated and set apart did.  What task did he fulfill?  A priest is above all things a household servant in the house of Yahweh.  His responsibility is to take care of Yahweh’s house, to serve Yahweh’s meals, to entertain Yahweh’s guests, and to serve Yahweh himself. 

The exciting thing that we find is that the New Testament takes up these various elements of the priestly ordination when it talks about Christian baptism.  Properly speaking, baptism assumes all these elements and serves as a simplified but profound service of ordination to the Royal Christian priesthood—the priesthood in which every Christian participates.  We can’t possibly go into every example, but here are a few:  Take, for example, Galatians 3.  What does Paul say?  He says in verse 27, “As many as you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ”.  The word here for “put on” is the language of investiture—the putting on of priestly garments.  The priestly garment that is put on in baptism is Christ himself, our great high priest. 

Here’s another example:  In Hebrews 10, the author of the letter calls the church to “draw near” (which is what the Hebrew word for “make an offering” in Leviticus means) “with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”  As in the rest of the letter to the Hebrews, the writer is picturing the church and her worship as a fulfillment of the images and shadows of the Old Testament rites—so that what we do fulfills the principles of the priestly system of the Old Testament, but in the reality of the Heavenly Tabernacle where our Great High Priest has gone before.  And here is a text that equates Christian baptism with Priestly ordination, with the result that those so baptized and ordained may engaged in the true priestly service of the Heavenly Tabernacle.

We could multiply examples—consecration in 1 Corinthians 6, anointing in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, and numerous other New Testament texts testify to this wonderful truth:  That among many other images and metaphors, baptism is to be understood as a ritual of ordination to the Royal Priesthood of the Christian Church.  Today Michaelah, Nathan, and Joshua are all going to receive the blessing of baptism.  They are going to be ordained as priests, serving in the household of Yahweh, servants of the Great High Priest, our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is quite clearly a wonderful privilege for them, as it is for all of us.  We are permitted to serve the Lord in a special way, by his grace.  But as priests have great privilege and blessing, so they also have a greatly heightened responsibility.  These children, and everyone here who bears the covenant sign are attendants in Yahweh’s house.  Let that sink in a minute.  This is a loud call to faithfulness, but it is a call that comes from our gracious Savior Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, who ever lives to intercede for us.  Matt and Colleen, you must lean upon him and depend upon his grace, even as you already do to raise these three little priests to walk faithfully after Jesus all their days.