Getting in the Spirit: Luke 3:15-17, 21-23
Over the years, several people have asked me if they could be rebaptized. They typically ask for one of three reasons: they want to rededicate their lives to Christ after having drifted away; they were baptized in another church and wish to be baptized in this one; or they were baptized as an infant and what to experience God’s gift firsthand. The Church, however, does not rebaptize. The reason is because God keeps the promises God made when you were baptized, and no human being can undo what God did. Still, these people ask out of a deep spiritual need which cannot be satisfied by my recitation of church doctrine. The people of God want baptism and need baptism, and to understand why it’s so important, we must look to Jesus’s baptism in today’s Gospel. Chapel Fog by Hermann Steurer from Pixabay Jesus was baptized at the age of thirty in the Jordan River. What’s striking about Jesus’s baptism is the fact that he did not need it. John was proclaiming “a baptism of repentance for ...
