The Pure in Heart

Each and every one of the seventeen candidates that day received the unconditional and unearned grace of God in baptism and this narrative will continue to explore the way in which so many of our lives have been transformed during these days.  But I want to single out just one person.   I had never in my fifty-six years of life and fourteen years of ordained ministry seen anyone so dramatically transformed, as was Moses that day.  He entered the cold water of the pool one man.  He stepped out another.  The “old Adam” had been withdrawn and sullen, morose and lacking self-confidence.  The “new Adam” simply shone from the moment his face emerged from the water.  In an instant he was born again.  The old had gone; the new had come.  It was as though the water had washed away everything that was not of God and the sparkling light of the bright sun was bathing him in the Holy Spirit, empowering him to become all that God had created him to be.   Until that day I had come to believe that the grace of God made available in the sacrament would unfold in hidden and mysterious ways over the life of the person, that the action of the water was essentially symbolic and metaphorical.   But on that day I saw, for the first time, that spiritual transformation may be as instantaneous and dramatic as the birth of a baby into the world. 

Since Moses’ baptism many of his closest relatives have commented to me on what has happened to him.  One young Romany girl told me that visiting Moses’ home had overnight become an entirely new experience.   His home then quickly became a centre of light, a place to which people were drawn, like moths to a flame.  I wondered whether the Philippian Jailor’s home had been changed in this way following his baptism and whether Lydia, the women who traded in purple cloth in the same city, had opened her home to others following her baptism. 

The Lord had guided our Moses through the wilderness, through the deep waters of death and now, praise God, he had landed him safe on Canaan’s side. Behind him followed a whole community of travellers, hoping against hope that, ahead of them, there beckoned a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of freedom and hope. We were just beginning to glimpse what God was saying to us through the burning bush, that Moses’ daughter, Charlotte, had seen earlier that year!  

Moses’ spiritual re-birth led me to ask why such transformations are not commonplace.  Was it simply, as little Roy had said, that these were special times, and that “God had drawn near”?  Were such outpourings of his grace random and unusual and, therefore, not to be expected?   But again I wondered whether God had found it easy to draw near to the Romanies precisely because their world-view was holistic and open, free from cynicism and scepticism.  They were open to feeling the movement of the Holy Spirit in the very action of cold water and bright sunshine.