"White as Snow": icy baptism and holy suffering

I have always gotten a kick out of the early church's prescription for baptism:

"If you cannot baptize in cold water, warm water is acceptable as last resort,"
is the gist. (Chapter 7, Didache)

Was the cold water a prophetic act; a reminder of sacrifice, suffering, and self-death you were
signifying and signing up for?

We here in California are spoiled; we baptize in heated jacuzzis and pools, which I have to joke about almost every time, just to feel justified to officiate.

I also almost always include when baptizing some comments, and half-winking warnings, about what Jesus encountered after his baptism, and what they too might expect.
I figure that honesty is more valuable than a signed certificate. (:

"Immediately after he baptism, Jesus was lead by the Spirit into the wild-erness to be tempted by the devil for forty days."

In a wonderful post, Michael Pritzl suggests that he is

...glad (Jesus) didn't write any self help books or how to do better ministry books (perhaps He should've written a book called, '40 days of purpose' based on His own biographical account of being led into the wilderness)
but, thank God, He sent His beloved Son as a Savior and not as a writer of non-fiction "build a better ministry" books.
link, emphasis mine

The biblical connection of baptism with self-death is obvious (if underpreached),
but so should be the resurrectionness embedded in any such death. With N.T. Wright, let us consider:

"...resurrection as referring metaphorically to baptism (a dying and living with Christ), and resurrection as referring to the new life of strenuous ethical obedience, enabled by the Holy Spirit, to which the believe is committed."
"Surprised by Hope," p. 47

Death is more fun than we've made it out to be, and resurrection life more demanding and demeaning than we've dreamed.

That's baptism.

The narrator in U2's "White as Snow" (I have already commented on how NT Wright and the new U2 album are versions of the same sermon), as a dying soldier in Afghanistan, recalls his conversion and baptism, notably in the Didache-recommended cold water:

Once I knew there was a Love divine
Then came a time I thought it knew me not
Who can forgive forgiveness where forgiveness is not
Only the Lamb as white as snow

And the water, it was icy
As it washed over me
And the moon shone above me

Now that was over-obeying the "cold water" injunction.

But it's the story of every baptism.

None of us knows what we are getting into.

Not even the baptizer..I was almost swept off the step here in the Jordan as I baptized Carla in that cold running water..

As it should be.

She suffered and died of a terrible disease a few years later.

I guess that's what we sign, re-sign, and resign up for.

She was still drawing strenth and Spirit from her baptism/baptisms.
I was not worthy to baptize her, it should've been the other way around.
(Read her memorial here)

Bono himself remembers as season of U2's life when as they wrestled with the implications of their faith's commitment; "when we went into the water..and almost drowned."
(see 1:20ff below)



But the only way to go: forty days plus of joyful resurrected death, and dying daily (to quote Paul and several U2 lyrics...)

Turns out I may have had the symbolism all wrong.
It was often cool/cold water that was seen as refreshing/healing/renewing in the biblical era.
Granted, a bath in icy waters was not often prescribed, but a therapeutic time (even baptism) in cool or cold water was.

Two Scriptures we have often interpreted backwards help out here.

We have all heard that Jesus would prefer us (and the Laodocians of Rev 3) to be either hot or cold, but never so lukewarm that he wants to spew us out; "cold," of course meaning spiritually dead. Right?

Dead wrong.
Ray Van Der Laan explains here why "cold" was a good symbolism, as was hot.
Either way was good with Jesus, cold and hot are equally holy healing. Just not sickening lukewarm tap water.

Then, as we have also always heard, "The rain falls on the just and the unjust," knowing intuitively that that means "Bad things happen to good and bad people. " Right?

Way off. Rain was a blessing in ancient Israel's farmland; sun was the problem.
Follow the imagery in Scripture, it's not "In every life some rain must fall," but "in every life some sun must unfortunatetly (fortunately?) fall."

All that to say, I am all for baptizing in as cold water as possible.

I remember my baptism as if it were yesterday.

For one, our pool was cold.

For two, in God's ecomony, it was a woman, and a woman in the line of Carla, who was the "officiant". I also get a lick that she wouldn't be accepted as legit in some traditions: Gimme a break, an unordained Hispanic...woman(!!)
baptizing her pastor.

No wonder I turned out so well.

And the water, it was icy
As it washed over me
And the moon shone above me

As Beth has mentioned in a great post about listening to the song in the context of Holy Week,
that last line was sung in such a way as to reference the affirming voice of God,

"God's signature melody"

dropped in from a prior song ("Unknown Caller.")

The reasons it is occupying so much space in my mind now is, I think, the general tone of failure. We heard the Passion on Palm Sunday, ending with the total apparent failure of Jesus' entire existence, and we get to zoom in on parts of that Thursday and Friday, but mostly until Saturday night we just sit here, failed and silent. "Once I knew there was a love divine/then came a time I thought it knew me not." That's right where we are. link

That's what kills and blesses me about many U2 songs; they seem to be static yet shifting enough to always speak to right where we are.

Or aren't.

As I came up out of the waters, it was as if I heard the same words of the Father that Jesus heard:

"You are my son. I love you. I am pleased with you..."

Uh..

"...so much so that I am initiating you into a life of holy joy and
redemptive suffering."

Remember your baptism, and be thankful:

And the water, it was icy
As it washed over me
And the moon shone above me

Now this dry ground it bears no fruit at all
Only poppies laugh under the crescent moon
The road refuses strangers
The land the seeds we sow
Where might we find the Lamb as white as snow

As boys we would go hunting in the woods
To sleep the night shooting out the stars
Now the wolves are every passing stranger
Every face we cannot know
If only a heart could be as white as snow
If only a heart could be as white as snow

Beth:

And as the character lies on that parched ground in failure, alienated from his brother, alienated from his homeland, alienated from those around them whom he "cannot know," alienated from the confidence in love he had at his baptism (nicely identified for us not just with a cleansing water metaphor and a standard-issue U2 moon metaphor, but also with a sonic reprise of God's signature melody from "Unknown Caller" a couple songs back), he dies. And his dying thought is, "If only a heart could be as white as snow."

What has struck me so poignantly and opened up the song for me is the realization that we are meant to ask the natural question: is that broken wish enough? He dies with it on his lips, and then what happens? That suspended moment is very similar to the moment we hang in this week. He dies a failure... and then what happens?
link