Is Sprinkling the Best Way to Baptize?

Here in the Bible Belt, sacramental Christians sometimes feel like the nerdy kid on the playground when it comes to explaining our practices of baptism. In many Baptist, Pentecostal, and nondenominational congregations, baptism is only done “as John the Baptist did it.” That means getting dunked like an early morning cruller in hot coffee. For many in my part of the world, baptism means one thing: immersion.

United Methodists actually aren’t against immersion (which is a common misconception). We are people of the via media after all, and we simply recognize that God’s grace, rather than the amount of water, is the most important agent of baptism. Our official church teaching on baptism states:

In United Methodist tradition, the water of baptism may be administered by sprinkling, pouring, or immersion. However it is administered, water should be utilized with enough generosity to enhance our appreciation of its symbolic meanings.

A “generosity” of water is encouraged not because it makes the baptism more legitimate, but because it suggests symbolically what we proclaim in the liturgy: that God’s grace is abundant, free, and there is plenty to go around. Thus, even when sprinkling, I will pour a large amount of water into the font, as noisily as possible. I run my hands through the water for emphasis. Sacraments rely on the reality of the Incarnation, after all, and are best experienced through as many senses as possible. But the effectiveness of the sacrament does not rely on getting as much of that water onto the newly-minted Christian as possible. In fact, God seems to relish in working powerfully through the small, the inferior, the minute, and the insufficient. Consider:

Hebrew families are spared the death of their firstborn sons in Egypt by the blood of the lamb painted over their doorways.
Israel is sustained in the wilderness by manna, a heavenly bread, but they are only allowed to keep enough for each day, not store it in CostCo-sized jars.
Jesus feeds thousands with just a loaf of bread and two small fish.
Jesus compares both the faith that moves mountains and the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed (they are tiny).

God, it seems, can do a lot with a little.

Hence the logic of baptism by sprinkling. Because it is water that has been touched by the Spirit which hovered over the waters at creation and over the Jordan at Jesus’ baptism as a dove, the amount is irrelevant. Just a few drops are enough to make a Christian. For Hebrew men, all that separated them from the covenant community was a little bit of skin. For us, it is a little bit of water and some prayers.

We live in a consumer culture that constantly stresses more, and larger, and greater. Why get the V-6 when the V-8 goes so much faster? Surely you need the 50″ flatscreen because your 46″ has already become boring and your neighbors have a 56″! Why settle for a standard cheeseburger when you can get two or three patties?

In such a world, I can think of few better witnesses to the Kingdom of God than making a new Christian with just a few drops of water. By sprinkling, the pilgrim church on earth dares to say that death and resurrection, new birth, and covenant identity in Christ Jesus can all be granted by the smallest of gifts from God’s abundant storehouse of grace.

Just a few droplets leave an indelible mark that cannot be removed. Luther points out the power of sprinkled grace in his Large Catechism:

Therefore our Baptism abides forever; and even though some one should fall from it and sin, nevertheless we always have access thereto, that we may again subdue the old man. But we need not again be sprinkled with water; for though we were put under the water a hundred times, it would nevertheless be only one Baptism, although the operation and signification continue and remain.

St. Paul told us, in his first letter to the church at Corinth, that “faith, hope, and love abide” but “the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor. 13:13) One of the chief ways that these three—and chiefly God’s love—abide in us throughout our lives is by the gift of baptism.

All the more amazing, then, that God’s grace can mark, claim, save, and sustain us with only a few sprinkled drops. In that sense, baptism by sprinkling is not just one of several “good” options. Might it be that, of all the possible modes, baptism by sprinkling tells the good news (“gospel”) of God’s grace better than any other?

This piece first appeared on Via Media Methodists.

6 responses to “Is Sprinkling the Best Way to Baptize?”

Stephen Crawford

February 22, 2016

In answer to the final question, I think immersion must be preferred to affusion. To say that the latter would be in some sense better seems to fall into the pitfall of pitting the efficacy of the sacrament against its symbolism, and then saying that, nevertheless, that itself is so wonderfully symbolic. I don’t doubt at all that sprinkling gets the job done. The person dies and rises with Christ, the Holy Spirit descends, the new Christian is swept up into the life of God, adopted as his Son or Daughter in a way hauntingly reminiscent of that the way that Jesus is the Son of God. However, as with all sacraments, all of this wonderful efficacy happens THROUGH the symbolism of baptism. They’re inseparable from the first. And the quantity of water is not reducible to the question of plenty versus scarcity. When candidates for Baptism are immersed the symbolism of the rite flowers: they are visibly buried in the watery tomb, acting out their own death and resurrection as a participation in Jesus’.

As for the author’s remarks about consumer culture, it seems to me that we need a more robust liturgical life and symbolic praxis to shore us up against the onslaught of consumer liturgies that constantly threaten our souls. It’s true that the Lord has made the scarcity of this world the site of his bounty. Nevertheless, a symbolic praxis that is itself built on top of a prior downplaying of the importance of symbolism will hardly hold up to rigorous symbolism of the television or the shopping mall. (Obviously, I’m drawing on JK Smith in this paragraph.)

I’ll end with an illustration. I worshipped at an Episcopal Church in North Carolina that practiced immersion. The baptistry was stone-style on a true east-west axis, along with the nave of the Church. It was a traditional font, in the shape of a cross, with an octagonal shape in the center pointing to the eighth day of Creation on Easter morning. Not only were adults immersed, though. Babies would be immersed. And when babies were fully immersed, they were naked–stripped bare by the Lord’s judgment, just like Jesus on the cross. While this was happening, the congregation would come and gather around, adults even standing on pews to get a view. Finally, if such a newborn Christian were to live out her days in this congregation, the Church had a funeral bier fitted to the font, so that during the funeral service her coffin would be placed on top of the baptistry (feet facing eastward, of course, in anticipation of the resurrection).

Matthew Bryan

February 24, 2016

Excellent points, Stephen. I enjoyed your response. While I have no dogmatic argument against those who sprinkle, I agree that the important picture painted in Romans 6:2-11 is much more difficult to perceive in sprinkling.

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1. Stephen Crawford
  
  February 25, 2016
  
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Stephen Crawford

February 25, 2016

One thing to add: I want to emphasize that I generally agree with the “less versus more” theme of this blog post. But I think the rite that shapes our imaginations in those terms is foremost the Eucharist, where the priest holds up what looks like simple bread and wine and declares that this is the Salvation of the world.

Paul Pavao

February 29, 2016

I was going to leave this alone, but since others didn’t, is no one going to address the fact that baptizo doesn’t actually baptize. That’s a transliteration, and in this case (as in many others) the transliteration has evolved into a meaning that does not translate baptizo. Baptizo means to douse. It was the Greek word used for plunging a smith’s hot metal into a bucket of water. It was the word for waves baptizing a beach. The apostolic fathers freely move between baptizo and the Greek word for “washing.” Try this sentence: “We douse/plunge/immerse by sprinkling.” That sentence would be ridiculous, but if we consider it important that we are actually doing what the apostles talked about in the Gospel and letters, then we need to use the meaning of the actual Greek word rather than the evolved English transliteration.

I don’t consider it a huge issue either, considering that we have lost many much more important things than the mode of baptism over the centuries. But if we’re going to comment about the mode, someone ought to mention what the word baptizo means. It does not mean sprinkle.

Paul Pavao

February 29, 2016

Aargh. How could I write such a comment without adding this from the Didache, a very early church manual. It says:

”

The procedure for baptizing is as follows. After
repeating all that has

been said, immerse in running water “In the Name of the Father, and of the

Son, and of the Holy Ghost”. If no running water is available, immerse in

ordinary water. This should be cold if possible; otherwise warm. If

neither is practicable, then pour water three times on the head “In the

Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”. Both baptizer

and baptized ought to fast before the baptism, as well as any others who

can do so; but the candidate himself should be told to keep a fast for a

day or two beforehand.” (In my translation, this passage is Part II, paragraph 7, even though it is the first paragrap of Part II.)

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