I want to reflect on some baptism scenes from three contemporary movies. In each case the baptisms are not obvious – you’ve probably got to be a bit baptism obsessed like me to see them. But each of them spoke to me about the meaning of our baptism.
In the wonderful new Australian film Samson and Delilah, Samson lives out in the desert of central Australia and his life is pretty sad and empty. Nothing much to do except sniff petrol and bother Delilah whom he is secretly keen on.
Once, early in the film, Samson goes down to the dry river bed digs a hole and bathes in the muddy water which seeps into it. He seems relaxed and at peace in that moment – more so than at any other time. It’s like he is immersing himself in the land, being embraced by it, entering into its womb – a kind of indigenous baptism, expressing a spirit of deep connection with that country.
Is there something like that in our baptism too? I think so. In baptism we are symbolically immersed in the life of God. Our baptism expresses deep connection with God and others, a profound unity such as that expressed in the Epistle to the Galatians: As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3.27-28).
Things don’t go well for Samson and Delilah. After a harrowing journey where their lives fall apart, there is a profoundly moving scene in which Delilah washes Samson. She gently and lovingly washes the dirt from his skin. And it is like she is washing away the soil of his suffering. There is profound hope in that action, a new beginning – perhaps even forgiveness. Through the film Delilah suffers greatly because of Samson’s petrol fumed brain – I read forgiveness in her touch as she bathed him. True love.
Scripture also describes Baptism as washing – washed by the love of God, having sin washed away … you were washed, you were sanctified, … in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God, writes Paul to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 6.11).
We are washed, not because we have necessarily suffered like Samson and Delilah, not because we are somehow stained by sin and evil. No, but because God loves us truly and will always love us with a merciful, reconciling love through all that is to come in our lives. We have been washed with that love, sanctified by it, and there is nothing, not even the terrible trials of Samson and Delilah, which can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Another film with a symbolic baptism scene is The Matrix, a film well known for its religious symbolism.
Neo the hero, lives in a dark science fiction world where humans have become the slaves of machines. In the Matrix, the world we see is a computer generated illusion which is fed into our minds by vicious robots who rule the world. This computer program hides the horror of reality from us – we actually live in a post-nuclear-holocaust-apocalyptic-nightmare-wasteland world, but it is veiled by the false screen of normality. Neo is freed from the Matrix by the rebels who fight the machines, and when that happens, the film depicts it as both a birth and a baptism.
Neo is shown waking up in the pod in which humans are imprisoned. He breaks through the membrane surrounding him, disconnects the “umbilical cord” connecting his brain to the matrix computer, then he is flushed down a long drainage pipe (a symbolic birth canal) until he plunges into water below. He goes under once, comes up gasping, then goes down again – three times he goes under and comes up (a significant number when thinking about baptism!), until he is lifted out of the water by a giant mechanical “hand” which carries him high up into the light of the rebel ship.
It’s just like Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above… born again of water and the Spirit.” (John 3:3,5)
Neo is “born again” into the rebel crew – his new family, his “church” if you like – they share a harsh reality, but they are free. We are born again through baptism as children of God, born into the family of Christ’s church. What is the freedom that we embody? – the new reality that we share?
One final cinematic baptism happens in Gran Torino. [SPOILER WARNING! The ending of the film is revealed in what follows!]
Walt is a curmudgeonly old working class widower, a Korean War veteran. He is the only white man left in a neighbourhood of Asian refugees, mostly Hmong people from Cambodia, whom he hates. Walt only really knows one way to engage with the world and to deal with problems, the way he learnt in the army, confrontation and violence – he leads with his gun and follows up with his fist while his mouth pours forth constant abuse. Walt is an angry, damaged man. As his priest says, he knows more about death than life. That is until he meets his young Hmong neighbours, sister and brother Sue and Tao.
Through the events that transpire, Walt comes to call them friends. Against his better judgement, he finds himself wanting to help them and protect them from a local gang. But violence is the only way he knows, and his violent intervention has terrible consequences. Sue whom he tried to protect is horribly assaulted. Tao wants to lash out with guns in retaliation. What will Walt do? He agonises, and then he makes an extraordinary decision.
Walt decides to sacrifice his life for Sue and Tao. He will take the violence of the gang onto himself, and die in order to give Sue and Tao life, to set them free, and to redeem his own broken life. In other words, he will perform a Christ-like act.
Having made this decision, the first thing Walt does is take a bath. What might be the symbolic significance of that bath for those of us who go through life looking out for allusions to baptism?
It’s Romans Chapter 6 all over again! Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? Writes Paul. Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we … believe that we will also live with him.
And so Walt goes and faces the gang unarmed, he leaves his guns at home. They shoot him down and he falls dead on his back with his arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose. United with Christ in a death like his, a redemptive, life-giving death. The gang is arrested and taken away – Sue and Tao are free.
In the closing scene a lawyer reads Walt’s will to his family. Tao stands in the background. The lawyer reads, “I'd like to leave my 1972 Gran Torino...” The Gran Torino of the title is a car – one of the few things Walt truly loved. His spoilt granddaughter thinks it is coming to her, but the lawyer goes on, “to my friend... Tao Vang Lor.”
My friend. “No one has greater love than this, ” says Jesus, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends,” he goes on, “if you do what I command you. And this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” That’s what Walt does. That is what we are called to do. And in baptism that love is made possible. We are united with Christ in his death and his new life.
Three very different baptisms for three very different characters. But they all have this in common: violence and suffering marks each of them. And love brings new life to each of them. They are immersed and washed in love, drowned and born again through love.
And these things happen for us in baptism as well. We are immersed in the life of God, washed by the grace of God, drowned into the death of Christ and raised up with him into new life, born again. The fullness of our faith is expressed in the simple, beautiful and profound act of Baptism.
Thanks be to God.
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