Reflection on the Word for the Second Sunday of Advent in 2022 (December 04, 2022)
Baptism by Fire -   (Matthew 3:11,12)
" I indeed baptize you in water for repentance, but he who comes after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his threshing floor. He will gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.”
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In the old tradition, there are a couple of medical advice, some of them are on the verge of  mere incantation or magical spell, recorded in old tractates.

One of them is suggesting a cure for chronic ailment, that an ill somebody has to go to the road and waiting for a big ant carrying a relatively huge load. He has to catch the ant, putting it into a tube, and has to say like a mantra that ‘Dear ant, I will carry your burden, and you will carry my burden.‘

If the procedure had been done properly, than the sickness will be transferred to the ant. It can be a moral question, that why should humans be allowed to transfer their illnesses to the animal kingdom, but it looks like that it is still a poetical question, today.

However, the medical advice of the old tradition goes even further, as an other adviser remarks that in an unfortunate case, it can happen that the ant, found on the roadside, had been already used for this purpose, and already carrying a serious illness transferred from an other person.
In that case one has to be very cautious, because the incantation may cause that the ill person, instead of being freed from a chronic illness, he will catch a serious illness, already carried by the ant.

Of course this sound as magical thinking, however in modern days when scientific bacteriology and virology state that illnesses are caused by non-visible pathogens, then the modern view may also sound as magical for the common people. Thus, the cautious people should change the incantation by telling the ant that you may carry my burden and your burden, as well.

This type of logic is supposed to work by analogy, like as it is here, so it will be there. There are many similar advice, and one of them is actually a little bit similar to the baptism by water. In the old tradition it is said, that in a case of illness, let the sick person take a new jug, and go to the river, and say to it:
River, river, lend me a jug of water for a guest who happened to come to me. And let him turn it around his head seven times, and pour out the water behind him, and say to it: River, river, take back the water that you gave me because the guest who happened to come to me came on its day and left on its day. And the illness is supposed to leave as an unwanted guest.

In both story of the ant and the river there is a motive, which hints that the overburdened person should seek a remedy, where somebody or something will be taking over the burden, not by transmission, but by removal and taking it over.

The scenery of the river is familiar to us, that is exactly what the prophet Elisha told the Syrian general Naaman, suffering from the that time incurable leprosy, as it is written that “Naaman came with his horses and with his chariots, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, ‘Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall come again to you, and you shall be clean.’ ”

It is understood that the water did not wash away the dirt of the leprosy from the skin of the Syrian general, but that the prophet himself took over the burden of his sickness, channeling it upward Heaven, because no human being is ultimately able to fully carry the burdens of others.

At the original action of the biblical baptism the river again the scenery, and we can see that John the Baptist, if he not even invented Baptism as it is, but he was the capital letter Baptizer, where even Jesus went to him to become baptized by water. There is nowhere in the Scripture, that Jesus, himself, had ever baptized anyone, still John declared in the Gospel of Matthew, that I need to be baptized by you, and he meant the Holy Spirit.

It looks like that there was a competition not between Jesus and John the Baptist, but between the followers of Jesus and John. It is also a historical fact that a big bunch of John followers never joined Christianity, and they were claiming the superiority of John over Jesus.

This group still exist in a small number all over the world, but mostly in Iraq and they are called the Mandaeans, they having their own Scriptures, own traditions, own theology, their own prayers and worship services. Interestingly enough, in the history, in the Islamic world, most of the time, they were protected by the Islamic law, considering them one of the communities, called the people of the Book, as John the Baptist is a recognized prophet in the Islamic world.

With their very existence comes the fact, that there is a historical prove of the early tension of these separated two groups of the followers of John and Jesus, respectively, though the tension is very much curtained in the Gospels.

Nonetheless, one of the issues of the imagined rivalry was the very question of the Baptism, as it was told, according to the Gospel, by John himself that “I indeed baptize you in water for repentance, but he who comes after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit. ”

Although in the last two millennia Christianity seemed to claim in doctrines and creeds that we know what we are talking about regarding Baptism, still it looks like that we missed major points of views from different angles.

The Apostle Paul declares in his letter to the Ephesians, chapter four, that there is one Lord one faith one baptism. He had to state it, because, especially in Ephesus, where Paul, himself, found numerous disciples of John, who never heard about Jesus. In the early decades at least, it was known, that two kinds of baptism was established, indeed.

The Gospel of Matthew, acknowledges that there is the Baptism of repentance, which happens by water, and the Baptism of the spiritual rebirth which is the baptism of fire by the Holy Spirit.

There is no discrepancy in this, as Jesus himself told Nikodem, that in order that someone may enter Heaven a rebirth is needed indeed water and the spiritual fire, as it is written in the Gospel of John that Jesus answered Nikodem, that “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”

The Christian tradition made the two aspects of the Baptism united, and we exactly know that the Water Baptism without the conscious affirmation of the Faith is just an ancient rite, which is spiritless until someone’s heart is touched by the Spirit.  

When the Spirit blows new life into us, under the cover of our heart a new person is born, and a new body, made out of light, is given to us by Heaven on Earth and in advance, as it is written in the Psalm 104, that “Bless the Lord, my soul. Lord, my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honor and majesty. God covers himself with light as with a garment. (...) He walks on the wings of the wind. He makes his messengers as winds, and his servants as flames of fire. ”   May the Lord touch our hearts with the Holy Spirit to be born anew, according to the love of the Master of Universe,

AMEN

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