Getting Baptised

We started the year thinking about Jesus being baptised in the River Jordan, and now some of us are thinking that maybe it’s time that we got ourselves baptised, too.

Baptism is for grown-ups as well as for children. It’s never too late to receive this sacrament of God’s grace: of washing and re-birth and re-creation.

We’ll be planning some preparation for it, starting this side of Easter.

So if you think this might be for you, do get in touch with Nick Howe, the Chaplain, to talk it over.

Meanwhile, here are two things to help fire your imagination:

A video by Bill Viola.

And Malcolm Guite’s fine poem about Jesus’ baptism:

Beginning here we glimpse the Three-in-one;
The river runs, the clouds are torn apart,
The Father speaks, the Spirit and the Son
Reveal to us the single loving heart
That beats behind the being of all things
And calls and keeps and kindles us to light.
The dove descends, the spirit soars and sings
‘You are belovèd, you are my delight!’

In that quick light and life, as water spills
And streams around the Man like quickening rain,
The voice that made the universe reveals
The God in Man who makes it new again.
He calls us too, to step into that river
To die and rise and live and love forever.