Reclaiming Baptism: Being in Water Together (A Sermon at Oaklife Church on July 20th)

Delivered at OakLife Church on July 20th, 2025. If you'd like to follow along a video of me delivering the sermon, here is a video!

Good morning OakLife!  It's so good to be back with you all today. This was the first avowedly Queer affirming church that I attended. This community carried me through the pandemic. It's an honor to return here and preach today. 

Now today I wanted to start by talking about water. Some of my earliest memories as a kid growing up in Sydney, Australia were of taking swimming lessons with my family friends. Although I love swimming now, I hated it as a kid. I hated the pungent smell of pool chlorine (although I do love a good whiff now). I wondered what the point was in thrashing around in a pool when you could just... Walk on the side of the pool. Our Lord, after all, preferred to walk on water. 

One day, when we reached the pool for my lesson, I was excited to find out that my mother had forgotten my swim trunks at home. Elated, I was sure this would mean I no longer had to take my lessons for the day. My swim instructor thought this a teachable moment. After all, if you really needed to swim to save your own life, the odds of you being in a speedo were slim. He dragged me by the feet into the pool as I kicked, screamed and cried. I spent one hour desperately thrashing around in the pool in my sweatpants. 

However, as time passed, I grew to love the water. We were grouped into levels named after fish species. Students stepping into the water for the first time were Salmons. Once we learned basic swimming skills we graduated to Stingray. As we fine-tuned our technique, we became Swordfish. The final level before graduating beginner swim lessons was the "Shark" level. At the ripe age of 5 or 6, I was a newly minted Shark and I was eager to prove myself. 

On special weekends, our mum used to take us to the Ryde Aquatic Centre. It was a public pool about a twenty-minute drive from our house. I was too young to go down the water slide, but I loved to float down the lazy river, jump in the wave pool with a kickboard and come up for some fries, or chips as we call them down under, with chicken salt. Going to the Ryde Aquatic Centre was a treat and a whole-day affair. I'd fall asleep on the car ride back, my body still moving to the pulse of the waves from the wave pool. 

I loved the days we spent at the Centre, but there was one unknown, mysterious part of the pool that I never experienced. To the right of the lazy river at the Aquatic Centre was a small whirlpool. While I felt comfortable playing in the lazy river, I was dazzled by the speed at which the glimmering water moved inside of the whirlpool. There'd always be other kids riding on their parents' shoulders laughing and screaming and having the time of their life going around in circles. I'd feel dizzy just looking at them. The whirlpool had a warning sign next to it, cautioning small children against playing inside alone, but that sign couldn't stop me. They weren't ready for me. After all, I was a "shark" now. 

One day at the centre, without telling my mum, my brother, or my family friends, I swam toward the whirlpool eagerly showing off my new freestyle kick. I paused briefly outside of the whirlpool, hanging onto a ledge, took a deep breath and swam in. I immediately started tumbling around inside of the whirlpool. I tried my best to give my biggest flutter kick that they taught me in Shark class but it didn't even register against the strong current of the pool. I tried my best to tread and keep my head above the water but I knew there was no hope of getting out. As I splashed around, I felt both so foolish and so alone. 

I wonder how many of you have ever felt similar. I wonder if you've ever found yourself in a circumstance where you've felt alone and that no one was around to help. I wonder if you've ever felt overwhelmed by all you've taken on. I wonder whether you've ever felt tossed around in the currents of the whirlpool of life, splashing helplessly trying to get yourself out.  I know this is how a lot of church sermons start and at some point, a fog machine will be rolled in and I'll bellow out something about how through Christ all things are possible and the worship team will come on and the bass will thump us back into deep connection and relationship with the divine. 

But I'll be honest, it feels intellectually dishonest for me to speak this way in this season. One of my closest friends is navigating a serious illness right now and holding their hand through this process and seeing the pain they have gone through has shaken my relationship with the divine in ways I wasn't anticipating. Unfortunately for you all, by the time this happened, I was already on the OakLife preaching lineup and so this is how I'm showing up today. 

It was at OakLife that I found conviction in my faith after leaving the church in high school. While I'd been reading and listening to a ton of material deconstructing the meaning of every part of my faith in my own spare time, OakLife was the first time I was doing it in a group of like-minded people. Every Sunday morning I was in town, I could look forward to a sermon that explored the origins of the scriptures we wrestle with and how we came to find them sacred. The conviction that I found at OakLife was what led me to decide to be baptised here before moving to Brooklyn. I stood here back in 2023 and was so drawn to the Christian image of a loving God that I made a lifelong commitment here. Now in this season of doubt, it's worth revisiting that commitment and asking: How do I feel about that? 

I wonder if you've felt the same. If you've been baptised, I wonder if your journey into the wilderness and into the unknowns of life has led to you revisiting your baptism and pondering its meaning in the context of the life that you're currently living. If you haven't been baptised (which to be clear, is a perfectly valid lifestyle choice), I wonder if you experience these seasons of doubt, where you feel like you are sitting far from God's grace.  So while I can't fog machine thump us back into relationship with the divine this morning, I do think that I can share some thoughts on how I'm navigating this season in my life. If you'll humour me, I'd like to ponder the meaning of Baptism in a world where my current relationship with God is rooted in doubt. 

My earliest memories of baptism were at the immigrant Taiwanese church my family attended in Sydney. I think baptism is a really strange thing to observe as an infant. There was an inflatable pool on the stage of the run-down community centre we met at and I was excited. We're going to be playing today! Imagine my disappointment when a neatly lined group of teenagers and adults dressed in crisp white robes were dunked into this pool and we were supposed to... Applaud? My Mandarin wasn't good enough to understand what the pastor was saying. What I did remember was the conviction and certainty with which each person being baptised spoke about their faith in God. I knew from watching them that at some point, I too, would naturally develop that conviction and it would be time for me to be dropped in the kiddy pool in the name of God. 

I sat in an anguish growing up about Baptism. As far as I understood it, faith worked in a very simple way: If I believed hard enough, so hard that I was willing to declare publicly in front of everyone I love that Jesus Christ was my Lord and Saviour, I would be given an Admit One pass that entitled me to an eternal Good Time. 

However, as I grew older, no matter how many times I stood in the front of church with my hands raised or how many times I prayed and prayed and prayed at youth group retreats, that conviction just never showed up. One by one, my friends got baptised and I started wondering if there was something wrong with me. The scariest part of all was that I knew that with every passing second and minute, my own death drew nearer and my lack of conviction meant I was about to be slingshotted down into Eternal Damnation. 

I don't think I'm alone in growing up with this theology. I talk to many people, including a friend last weekend, who still sits with this as their understanding of the meaning of Baptism. As someone who has gone through the revolving door between therapy and the Barnes and Noble Self-Help Section in the last half-a-decade, I am no stranger to the concept of Attachment theory and lately, I've been feeling like growing up, my relationship with Baptism was one rooted in Anxious Attachment. 

For those who aren't familiar with the concept of Attachment Theory, psychiatrists generally assert that our childhood relationships, predominantly with our parents, cause us to develop into adults who tend to navigate friendships and romantic partnerships in two distinct ways: Secure and insecure. Those who have a secure attachment style are "more readily able to form long-lasting and healthy relationships with others. They’re more likely to trust their partner and be emotionally available to them", according to the Cleveland Clinic 0. On the other hand, there are three attachment styles classified as "insecure": Anxious, Avoidant, and Anxious-Avoidant. People with insecure attachment styles can often find it more challenging to develop stable and secure relationships, both romantic and platonic, with those around them. 

When I started reading about Attachment Theory, I was under the illusion that I was one of the 58% of people in America who have a secure attachment style, again according to the Cleveland Clinic. How wrong I was. As I went down the checklist of what constitutes an anxious attachment style, I started to see myself. 

You may have an anxious attachment style if you’re:

• Preoccupied or fixated on your partner’s needs
• Prioritizing your partner’s needs over your own
• Experiencing fear of rejection or abandonment
• Questioning your self-worth
• Having a strong need for validation or reassurance that you are loved Source: Cleveland Clinic

But if modern attachment theory states that our early childhood relationships form our adult attachment styles, and we as a religion bring children into "relationship with God" from a young age, it's worth considering what that relationship looks like... And to be honest, mine doesn't look pretty. What happens if we replace "partner" in Cleveland Clinic's characteristics of an anxiously attached relationship with "God"?

We teach kids to: 

• Preoccupy or fixate on "God's" needs. 
• Prioritize "God's" Needs over their own
• Experience fear of rejection or abandonment by God
• Question their self-worth in the eyes of God. 
• Have a strong need for validation or reassurance that we are loved by God. 

I can't speak for you, but that looked a lot like my relationship with God growing up. To grow up a Christian, for me, was to "prioritize God's needs over my own out of the fear of rejection or abandonment". Like many of us, I did not grow up affirming. I believed parts of myself had to be cut out with a knife and left on the altar of sacrifice to a God who demanded it. Heaven and eternal paradise was dangled in front of me like a doughnut on a string, telling myself that this anxiety and insecurity was what would lead to something bigger and better than I could comprehend, well thank God I walked away from that. 

When I started deconstructing, I started reading voraciously, searching for answers for how I could find a way back into faith. Rachel Held Evans' Searching for Sunday is a classic for a deconstructing Christian and its first chapter is on Baptism. Much of that chapter ultimately created the theological building blocks for my own Baptism. I think a lot about her framing of how Martin Luther perceived his own Baptism:

It is said that when Martin Luther would slip into one of his darker places, he would comfort himself by saying, “Martin, be calm, you are baptized.” I suspect his comfort came not from recalling the moment of baptism itself, or in relying on baptism as a sort of magic charm, but in remembering what his baptism signified: his identity as a beloved child of God. Because ultimately, baptism is a naming.

Now, I have my fair share of issues with Martin Luther, but even I have to admit he makes a pretty good point here: Baptism is less a state change and more an acceptance. Baptism is when we accept that we are a beloved child of God and nothing can take that label away from us. We trust that God is going to be there for us tomorrow and the day after, no matter what we do today. This mirrors the list of characteristics found in a Secure Attachment Style, as defined by The Attachment Project. People with secure attachment styles tend to have an inner voice that says: 

• My needs matter and can be met. 
• Others' actions aren't always about me. 
• Conflict doesn't mean the relationship is over. 

Let's do the same exercise again. When we substitute God in, what might we get? 

• My needs matter to God. 
• God's actions aren't always about me. 
• Conflict with God doesn't mean our relationship is over. 

Church, in a world where we are securely attached to the Divine, doubt and disagreement is a healthy part of that relationship. Maybe our baptism can remind us that no matter what personal season we are in, our God will be there for us tomorrow. 

I wanted to switch gears completely and talk about the King of Britain for a moment. Here's an aside: Did you know that the King of Britain doesn't carry a passport when he travels internationally? If you open a British passport, you'll see text, which resembles what's on the inside of a US passport: 

"His Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of His Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary"

As you can see, British passports are issued "in the name of His Majesty". The idea is that because they are issued in the name of the Monarch there's no reason for the British king to carry a passport issued in his own name 1. 

I bring this up because lately I've been pondering the Baptism of Jesus. 

Now, as we'll discuss later, there is actually very little that the scriptures agree on when it comes to the baptism of Jesus, but by-and-large, amongst the Christian faith, there is some sort of broad consensus around the vague outlines of a story that many of us have heard. John the Baptist is a bit of a weird dude, living off a diet of Wild Locusts and Honey, walking around and baptising people in preparation for the arrival of Jesus. At some point, Jesus arrives at the Jordan River and John baptises Jesus. 

Traditions vary, but growing up, in a Baptism, you proclaimed your faith in the creator and your unwavering belief that Jesus died for your sins and you were saved in his name. When we baptise folks at OakLife, we usually ask people to agree to the phrase "Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior". If it is this act that constitutes a Baptism, then I'd imagine just like it's a little awkward for the British King to carry a passport, that Baptism must have been really awkward. John the Baptist, leading Christ our Lord into the Jordan and asking him: Do you believe in the creator? Sure. Do you believe you are about to die at some unspecified point in time in the near future for our sins? Do you believe that your death is going to save us? 

What exactly happened at this Baptism then? While my baptism was livestreamed around the world to my family in Taiwan and a Zoom recording lives somewhere, unfortunately, the only records we have of the Baptism of Christ live inside of the four Gospels that we draw from. Now, I definitely didn't know this as a kid, but most Biblical Scholars agree that the Gospels were written 35-70 years after the death of Christ and serve as an attempt to recall his life and works as much as they could. 

To colour the length of this time period, this year marks 35 years since the Berlin Wall fell. 

70 years ago, the Warsaw Pact was signed, paving the way for the Soviet Union. 

The authors of the Gospels really tried to commit to words the miraculous deeds of a man from decades ago. Meanwhile, I can barely remember what happened last week. The Gospels often contradict each other and Christ's baptism was no exception. I bring this up because I think it's important to signpost that we will never know with authority what happened at Christ's baptism, but we can try and fill in the blanks. 

Three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, tend to agree on the vague outline and shape of Jesus' life. They're often called the Gnostic Gospels and we'll get to them in a minute. We'll start with John, the Gospel which tends to diverge the most. The Gospel of John mentions a discrete moment when John the Baptist is baptising people when Christ comes to him. 

32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

The Gospel of John diverges in a really big way from the other three: It doesn't have any record of Christ's Baptism happening, at all. In my mind, this is extra confusing, because this means to me that either the author felt that Christ's Baptism was not significant enough to warrant a mention, or that it didn't happen. 

Meanwhile, Luke mentions the Baptism, but only in a passing sentence: "When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too". In my mind, in the Gospel of Luke, Christ's Baptism doesn't look any different from any other megachurch Baptism. He gets in line, says a couple words, is dunked, and we move on. I'm going to skip Mark because Mark and Luke largely agree, but Matthew adds colour to Jesus' Baptism in a way that I find very beautiful.

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. 16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

The Word of God for the People of God, Thanks be to God. 

It turns out that the John in the Gospel of Matthew is just as confused about the Baptism of Jesus as I was. Why is the Lord I will worship coming to me and asking me to baptise him? 

Now, Jesus is very cryptic in his response to John. I have to admit, I don't really know what he means when he says "it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness", but I can take a stab. 

When I sit in my own doubt right now and reflect on my own Baptism, I've been struck not by its significance, but I've been focusing on the physicality of the act. I've been focused on the idea that one of the most significant ceremonies in our religion involves immersing ourselves in water. Christians most commonly associate water with cleansing. To be baptised is for your sins to be washed away and for your soul to be cleansed. 

I'm not going to negate the interpretation of water as a cleanser, but I want to try a different angle. Water cleans me, but water is also terrifying. Water is the unknown. Yochaved placed her child Moses into the hands of God when she let the basket go in the Nile in the book of Exodus. It was in the storm on the fishing boat being tossed by the waves that the disciples woke Jesus. It was in the water that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. I've had many run-ins that have left me humbled by water. In 2020, I learned to scuba dive and got my certification. During my first boat dive, a current tore my entire dive party apart. We ended up floating in the ocean adrift from each other while our boat came to look for us. It was sitting in that water with no one around me that I really felt terror and awe for the ocean. I felt so small being tossed around in an endless expanse of unknowable water. According to my sister, a marine biologist, we know less about the bottom of the ocean than we do about the surface of the moon or Mars. 

It's within this context of terror for water that I revisit my Baptism today. I was baptised at Alameda State Beach, in the ocean. Ultimately, we can try our best, but much of the vast depths of the ocean are unknowable to us right now. If we view water in that way, Baptism is about submission to the unknown. As much as I devour scripture and pray and worship, ultimately, on many days, God, fate and destiny can feel unknowable. 

And while that can feel deeply unsatisfying, here's the kicker: We fixate a lot on the idea of Baptism as an individual act, an affirmation of one's relationship with God publicly. That feels strange to me, because Baptism is a fundamentally communal act. It takes two to baptise one. I simply do not have the abdominal strength, no matter how many Orange Theory Hot Yoga Lessons I attend, to baptise myself. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that even Jesus needed to be baptised. 

If water is dangerous and unknowable, then consider this: what if Baptism represents controlled immersion in the unknown? When someone is baptised, they trust the Baptist or the Pastor, or the Congregation, to bring them safely into the water and out again. What if Baptism was an act to symbolise: "Hey, I may not have all the answers. I don't know if you have all the answers, but we're in this together." 

We often think of Jesus as this Atlas-like figure. He saved the whole world like a Marvel superhero and washed away all of our sins if we all just believed. But if we are to take Jesus as the literal son of God, I wonder if his Baptism symbolised God binding themself in the shared tapestry of humanity. 

I wonder if the message that Jesus brought wasn't an Arnold Schwarzenegger style "Come with me if you want to live" and more a "If God is amongst humanity, maybe we are responsible for caring for each other". What a balm for my soul. 

While my friend's diagnosis has shaken me, I have been so thoroughly touched by how it has brought our group of friends closer together. We are a constant presence in their life, accompanying them to Doctor's visits, cooking for them, and just being there for them. I used to think that with conviction in faith came involvement in church and with involvement in church came care for others. These days, it is seeing and taking part in the act of communal care that contours what my faith looks like. 

I'm 4 years old. I'm thrashing inside of the Ryde Aquatic Centre whirlpool and I'm certain that I'm going to drown. A middle-aged man floating inside the whirlpool grabs me and pushes me out of the whirlpool and into the comfort of calm waters. Before I can turn around to thank him, he's gone. I don't think it's too dramatic to say he saved my life. 

Church, maybe salvation isn't coming from one man who was martyred two millenia ago. Maybe Christ charged us with the act of salvation, to weave a common tapestry amongst unlikely people together. Maybe his baptism served as the way to charge us with the mission of forming uncommon kinship. If God could be made flesh and dipped in the Jordan by a man who feasted on wild locusts and honey, surely my young millenial butt can knock on my neighbour's door and introduce myself. 

I think often about the fact that it took me twenty five years on this blue marble before I found the conviction to get baptised. I wonder what the missing piece was. Maybe it was you all. Maybe it was us. It was at OakLife that I first cooked with Marianna at Andrew and Becca's apartment for food pantries around the Town. It was at OakLife that I saw a Queer small group praying over each other and arranging mutual aid. It was at OakLife that I truly saw, for the first time, a church that worked to realise the Kingdom of God, here on earth. A church that charged us to take care of one another and nourish one another as we faced the unknown. Maybe some days, the grace that needs to be proclaimed is that our spirits are entwined and we are meant to carry each other. That we aren't meant to do life and contemplate the vast impossibility of existence all alone. 

I was recently introduced to Pascal's Wager. Blaise Pascal, a French Mathematician, articulated a very mathematical, cold and logical reasoning for belief in God: 

if God does not exist, the believer incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries; if God does exist, the believer stands to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic Tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell. 

In many ways, Pascal's Wager is the theology I grew up with: That the promise of God lay in some eternal afterlife and that conviction in the Christian faith is what promises the good place and avoids the bad place. 

When I met Jonathan Williams, the founding pastor of Forefront, he said something to me that I think about constantly. He said, loosely paraphrased: "If I knew for certain that God wasn't real, that Jesus never existed, that nothing in our scriptures was historically factual, I wouldn't change a thing in my life, because the message of love in these scriptures is so powerful, important and true". 

This led me to ponder what I call the inverse of Pascal's Wager: If we found out today that God wasn't real, would everything that we did in Their name be worth it? 

I did not grow up as an affirming Christian. I don't think many of us did. I think often about the exact headspace I was in as a child: I deeply wanted to love and affirm the LGBTQ people in my life, but I knew that to do so was to go against the will of God. That headspace of wanting to love without condition, but feeling like my faith fenced me in, tormented me my whole adolescent life. 

I do think that the modern-day Church could really benefit from a little healthy doubt, rooted in the question of the inverse Pascal's Wager. I believe if we knew tomorrow that none of this was true, the work of this church would still be worth it. To partner with local community partnerships would still be worth it. To provide a space that reminds LGBTQ folks of our inherent belovedness would still be worth it. To affirm the belonging of every last single person would still be worth it. 

In this season, this kind of church makes this whole thing worth it. In a country and a world with cratering trust in public institutions, it is an act of courage to proclaim faith in something. It is a defiant bid for connection to seek community at a church like this. 

Any romantic or deep platonic friendship is constantly tested. Our relationship with God is no different. What if our baptism affirmed a secure attachment to God? One that was rooted in the belief that through Christ's Baptism, God had woven themselves into the shared tapestry of our mutual humanity?

When I chatted with our very own Becca, the woman, the myth, the legend, about my doubt, she held it and she honored it. Then she said for her, it's recently been less "God, show me a sign" and more "God, expand my awareness of your presence". Just as Martin Luther needed that constant reminder, in this season, when I'm struggling and in doubt, I can be reminded of my belonging to something bigger than myself. Remember, I can tell myself: "I am baptised". In times when the divine feels far, church makes it feel closer. Becca encouraged me to read Psalm 139, which I'll quote now: 

Where can I go from your Spirit?   Where can I flee from your presence?   8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;   if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.   9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,   if I settle on the far side of the sea,   10 even there your hand will guide me,   your right hand will hold me fast.  11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”  12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;   the night will shine like the day,   for darkness is as light to you.

"Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?" In this season, when I don't know if what I believe tomorrow will be the same as what I believe today, to be with you all today draws me closer to God. It was here that I was baptised, and it was here where I mark my baptism weaving me into a great tapestry. I remember that my creator spun themself into my form to be a thread in this loom with me. To be with you all in this moment is to be closer to God. 

If you'll permit me, I'd like to try an exercise. I'd like you to turn to the person next to you and say "The Kingdom of God feels closer because of you". Amen. 

Communion

We're now going to take Communion. Everyone has a different idea of what a God who became human might have been like, but I have to believe that Jesus felt doubt! As He was crucified, we remember his words on the cross: "My god, my god. Why have you forsaken me?" As we take the bread and the juice today, may we be reminded of a God who has experienced the full gamut of human emotions through the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. The body of the Lord, broken for you. The blood of our Lord, shed for a new covenant and a new way. Let's eat and drink together.