Last Sunday, we talked about John's message of repentance as the "no" that becomes a "yes." We talked about the fact that the call to repentance is a call to repent of our sins, but it's also a call to repent of trying to hide from our sins. We never repent of our sins until we quit hiding from them.

Also, repentance is more than a feeling. It is a mind-change -- a mind-change that involves admitting we have been wrong in supposing we can manage our life as if we were God. A second aspect of the mind- change is the acknowledgement that we have been wrong in believing the lie that we, along with other human beings are nice and good and eventually everything is going to be all right.

The third thing I said was that repentance involves accepting the forgiveness Jesus offers, and demonstrating our acceptance by following him. Jesus offers.

That was the message of John the Baptist – the message he came preaching: "Repent -- repent in order to prepare the way of the Lord."

I.

Let's continue to focus on John the Baptist by taking note of his ministry as the forerunner. The big point is this: No one's role as second fiddle is ever a minor one if our life and witness is pointing to Christ.

Have I told you the story of the three executives who were sitting around trying to define the word "fame" -- what it meant to arrive?

One of them said "fame is being invited to the White House for a visit with the President. That's got to be the ultimate expression of fame -- you've arrived."

"No, that's not what fame is", the second one said, "fame is being invited to the White House for a visit with the President, and when the hotline rings, he doesn't even get up to answer it. He just lets it ring! When that happens, you have really arrived."

"No," said the third executive. "That's not it. Fame is being invited to the White House for a visit with the President, and when the hotline rings, he does answer it -- He listens for a moment, and then he says, 'Here, this call is for you.'"

Go back to our scripture lesson. People were full of expectation -- looking for the Messiah -- and many of them felt that John the Baptist was the Messiah. Let's read verses 15 and 16 again. "As the people were in expectation, and all men questioned in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he were the Christ, John answered them all, "I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."

Here is one of the most telling pictures of John. He knew who he was. He was not the Messiah-- he was the forerunner. It's never easy to play that role, forerunner, or an even lesser role suggested by the expression, "playing second fiddle". You know where that metaphor comes from. It comes from the orchestra. Apart from the conductor, First Violinist is the most important person in the Orchestra. Only one sits in that chair and plays that role. All the rest "play second fiddle".

Most of us will forever be restricted to that role -- "Second fiddle" -- or maybe -- just maybe-- a forerunner.

Because of the amazing technology of television, we were able to witness one of the most thrilling events in this century -- the collapse of the Berlin Wall in Germany, and the collapse of the oppressive Communist regime in Eastern Europe.

Have you ever thought what was behind that collapse, and how it was that that wall came tumbling down?

I think what happened in Poland was a big part of it. The courageous stand of the Polish people against the mighty Soviet system became an inspiration to the world. And behind that courageous stand in Poland was a then-little-known insignificant industrial worker -- Lech Walesa. He was the catalyst for the whole Solidarity Movement in his country. We rehearsed the whole story recently as we followed his election to the Presidency of Poland.

But, press the issue further and ask, "Where did Lech Walesa get his inspiration and who was it that motivated him?

He says it was Martin Luther King whose birthday we celebrated last Monday. It was King who also dared to stand up and be counted in the face of insurmountable odds and who stemmed the tide of racial oppression in these United States.

But even there the story doesn't stop, does it? No, because then you've got to ask how it was that Martin Luther King was motivated and who inspired him to do what he did. Then you come to an insignificant black lady who was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama back in the early 1950's and who late one afternoon refused to sit at the back of the bus where blacks belonged in those days!

It was the courage of that woman that inspired Martin Luther King. And it was the courage of Martin Luther King that inspired Lech Walesa. And it was the courage of Lech Walesa that inspired the Solidarity Movement, and the courage of the Solidarity Movement that inspired the whole country of Poland, and the courage of little Poland that inspired the other Eastern Bloc countries and that finally toppled the Berlin Wall!

But there's one more little component in this moving drama. Who inspired Rosa Lee Parks? Where did she get her inspiration to refuse to go to the back of the bus and to be seated where blacks were supposed to sit? The answer lies in a little white frame church on a dusty country road way back in the sticks of our Southland long years ago; an old black Sunday School teacher, in her late seventies at the time, told the little girls in her Sunday School class in that little church that they were God's children and that they counted and that they should never let anyone take away from them their basic dignity as a human being!

"Isn't that incredible? Just think, the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is somehow rooted in a little Sunday School class way back on a country road, in what was then the backwashes of a fading culture somewhere shortly after the turn of this century! That's the way God works in history, isn't it, tying together the least significant and making them mutually dependent upon one another!" (Dr. Norman Neaves, "Be A Difference Maker!", February 18, 1989, Copyrighted 1990)

When we think of John the Baptist's ministry as "forerunner", and our having to play "second fiddle", let's don't forget who John was. Notice the impressive list of names with which chapter three of Luke's Gospel begins -- which gives the setting for the ministry of this forerunner, John the Baptist. There was the Emperor, Tiberious Caesar, and the military governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilate. There were three tyrants -- Herod, Philip, and Lysanias, and of course the chief priests -- Annas and Caiaphas. A rather illustrious who's who catalogue. That list serves to date the beginning of John's ministry -- but it does more. It puts John in perspective and helps us perceive John's stature. These men that were named possess the highest authority in the land -- but John came with a higher Authority. These men were the establishment of organized society including organized religion, but John came out of the desert. However, in that desert, the word of God had come to John, the son of Zachariah -- and it was that word that made him a prophet in the line of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Under direct inspiration of God, such men as these had counseled, sometimes rebuked and denounced emperors and kings and priests and even nations at large. That's who John is -- in that line of great prophets -- but he tells us that he's not the Messiah as people thought he might be -- in fact, he was not even worthy to tie the thongs of the Messiah's sandals -- He that was coming after him was mightier -- the One who was coming would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

So, don't ever forget this. No one's role as second fiddle is ever a minor one if our life and witness is pointing to Christ.

II.

And that brings us to the primary focus of the sermon -- a word about baptism. You have already concluded from our scripture reading where I got the title for the sermon, "Baptized...and Baptized." John said, "I baptize with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming, ...He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire."

Both baptisms are important -- to be baptized with water, and to be baptized with fire -- the fire of the Holy Spirit.

Some folks believe those baptisms are one and the same -- that the Holy Spirit comes with baptism. And there is a sense in which that is true. The waters of baptism are effective in our life only because of the Holy Spirit.

So let me say a specific word about infant baptism -- just briefly.

There is the perennial question, "What good can a child receive from a right whose meaning he is to young to comprehend?" Put that way, the answer is none. Baptism does not have the value of a vaccination, one jab and you are protected for life. It doesn't have the cultic significance of some magical ceremony. When we baptize an infant, we are not offering a new gift of Christ to the child -- we are affirming Christ's perpetual gift to his church, of which the child is becoming a part. Baptism is a proclamation to the child, and through the church to the world, that all men live, move, and have their being in God. This is not a privilege they acquire through baptism; the church baptizes them because they have that privilege. As children, they are already the recipients of God's Grace, and the church baptizes them because they are.

So, the Holy Spirit works in baptism -- in the baptism of an infant -- to make baptism a great act of prevenient grace. If parents in the church fulfill their responsibility in relation to the child, baptism becomes a means of grace for the child as the child comes to the point where he or she can claim for herself, or himself, the faith into which he or she has been nurtured.

So, in baptism, we name a child as a child of God.

"After the death of her husband, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria said, "There is no one left to call me Victoria." I know there are a number of you here this morning who have experienced what this woman of royalty experienced. The death of a spouse or loved one simply means that you do not hear your name called the way you remember it being called for so long. Only time helps us to cope with that pain.

In spite of her royalty, Queen Victoria needed someone to call her by name. That's what baptism is about. We are named by God as His child. In adult, or what we may call "believer's baptism," baptism becomes the sign of our return to our Father from whom we have wandered. By repentance and our profession of faith in Christ as Savior and Lord, we claim the inheritance God has offered us as His children.

The same thing happens in confirmation for those who have been baptized as infants. We claim personally for ourselves the faith that our parents and the church have been demonstrating, teaching, and offering. We claim our name as children of God, redeemed by the love of Jesus Christ.

A group of reporters waited outside the office of a senator campaigning for re-election. Suddenly the door flew open. "Quick!", the candidate shouted to his secretary, "where's that list of people I call by their first names?"

May I use the ridiculous to illustrate the sublime.

That's what baptism is all about. We are named by God. God calls us by our first name.

But baptism by water is not complete within itself -- the baptism of the Spirit -- that is the yielding of our life to the Holy Spirit of God which we know as the Indwelling Christ -- that's the baptism that energizes our discipleship, that brings us to maturity, that is the seal, the promise of our ultimate life in the eternal Kingdom.

"Kent Kilburn is the one who tells the story, a wonderful story about a 15-year-old girl at a Youth Conference some years ago. The girl was short and a bit overweight. She was not pretty and she was also crippled. And so when a dance was held one night at the conference, she simply put her crutches in a chair nearby and sat down in another chair and spent the evening watching the others dance with a smile on her face. The music was very loud rock and roll -- the kind that would 'peel the skin off your face' as Kent put it. And the young girl got a real kick watching the others dance up a storm. But then a really special thing happened. In the middle of the dance that evening, a slow number was played by the band and a tall sixteen-year-old boy went over to that crippled girl and held out his hand and said to her, "Please, would you dance with me? And she looked up at him with disbelieving and wonder- filled eyes, eyes that quickly flooded with great big tears. With her smile quivering on her face, she said, "Yes" and together they began dancing. The young man held her tightly and she held onto him tightly too, because she could not stand up on her own. It was a beautiful sight to see.

"Later that evening, long after the dance was over, Kent went up the guy and told him how special it was for him to do that and how much he admired him and how much he was touched by what happened. But then he said, "As the two of you were dancing, I noticed she whispered something in your ear. What was it, if I might ask?" And the guy said, "You're not going to believe this, Kent, but she said that that was the first time that anyone had ever asked her to dance in her whole life!" (Dr. Norman Neaves, "But Who Is Your Servant?", March 11, 1990 (Copyrighted 1990)

Don't think I'm being irreverent now. But that's what the Spirit does in our life. No, he doesn't ask us to dance, but He provides for us that which makes life complete for us. He fills up the missing places in our life. When we are baptized with the Holy Spirit, we have what we need to live life fully and to perform whatever ministries Christ calls us to. And we can dance -- crippled though we may be in our human weakness and sin. We can dance because we've been baptized...and baptized.