6th Sunday of Easter 2020
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21
I don’t think that the late Bishop Brewer of this diocese would have objected too strongly if he had been described as a Jack-in-a-box, bouncing from one enthusiasm to another. Some of his ideas caught hold, but the majority were abandoned almost as soon as they had been seized, as another notion caught his attention.
One idea which he floated, but which sank immediately, deserved, I believe, much fuller consideration. At Christmas dinner one year in Cathedral House, he expounded his plan for combining the sacraments of baptism and confirmation for infants, as is already done for adults, and as has always been the practice in the Orthodox Church.
Present at the table was Bishop Emeritus Bernard Foley who, with that touch of mischief of which most people were probably unaware, interjected “Ah, shouldn’t the laity be consulted about that?”, which caused his successor to subside, rather like a punctured balloon.
Of course, Bishop Foley was correct, and more aware of the mind of the Church than most bishops before or since, but I can’t help feeling that Bishop Brewer too was on the right lines. What a pity it was that he didn’t flesh out his idea more fully, and press ahead with consulting the laity about it.
In so doing, he would have closed the artificial gap between baptism and confirmation which was brought into being many centuries ago by historical accident, he would have emphasised more fully the centrality of the Holy Spirit, and he would have struck a blow at the heretical theology which drives some current interpretations of confirmation, which see the sacrament, not as God’s gift to us in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but as the young person’s act of commitment, something which they do for God, an interpretation which reeks of the Pelagian heresy.
(Actually, Bishop Brewer himself could have been accused of Pelagianism, when he explained the sacrament as the young person saying for him/herself the “Amen” which was said on their behalf at baptism—dodgy ground, Fiery Jack!)
The intimate relationship between baptism and confirmation is underlined by today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles. As soon as the Jerusalem Church hears that the Samaritans have been baptised in the name of Jesus, they send Peter and John hotfoot to complete the process of initiation by calling down the Holy Spirit on the new converts. There is no “act of commitment” here: it is pure gift from God, and it is delayed for as short a time as possible.
In today’s Church, baptism is administered in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, rather than in the name of Jesus alone, so that the baptised person, whether infant, child, or adult, receives the Holy Spirit. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that confirmation is retained as a separate sacrament purely to retain the link between the bishop and the rite of initiation which existed in the early Church.
From now until Pentecost, the Holy Spirit will feature prominently in the Mass readings. The Spirit has been described as the “forgotten member of the Holy Trinity” and the charismatic movement arose in the Church partly in response to the perceived imbalance. (The story is told of a disgruntled organist in a parish which had made her redundant in favour of a more charismatic mode of singing, and who complained “Them there charismatics seem to think the Holy Spirit is God Almighty!” Er.....) In today’s passage from St. John, Jesus underlines the centrality of the Spirit who is with and in the Christian, and whose presence and role are inextricably bound up with those of the Father and the Son.
Let us be ever more conscious of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, of the Spirit’s self-gift in baptism and confirmation, and of the Spirit’s role, together with Father and Son, in all that the Church is and does.
