Second Saturday of Omer-- Mikvah

Second Saturday of Omer--Mikvah

Immediately after leaving Egypt, God begins leading his Children by way of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  Exodus 13 tells us that this pillar was, in fact, God--a Theophany.  God is leading his people, and he chooses to lead them, not the direct way to Canaan, through the land of the Philistines, but rather to a place where he will lead them through the Red Sea (Ex 13:17-18).  Why?  The scripture offers several answers in the immediate context: God will get glory by it, the people will be able to stand and See the salvation of God, and God will destroy Pharaoh and his elite guard in punishment for their enslavement and mistreatment of God's people.  In 1 Cor 10:1, though, we get an entirely different answer.  God is going to baptize Israel. 

In Jewish law, there is a ceremonial cleansing, called "mikvah" in Hebrew, whereby the worshiper comes to God and acknowledges his need for cleansing before a Holy God.  It isn't meant to actually clean the body.  You are, in fact, instructed to come to God already bathed physically. That wasn't the point.  This ritual bathing was to symbolize that you were aware of your uncleanness spiritually, that you needed God to make you clean, and that, by His sanctifying presence, you could be clean in his sight.  The mikvah is commanded throughout the law for many reasons--everything from demonstrating that an impurity has passed (your mildew-ridden belt has been replaced or a woman is no longer menstruating) to declaring a gentile's new found embrace of the laws and the God of Israel in his conversion to Judaism. The command to mikvah occurs no less than 50 times in the law.  Sometimes it is a game-changer, as in a gentile becoming a part of God's people.  Sometimes it is a routine part of the rhythm of life.

It became traditionally expected that mikvah always needed to be done in running water (it is specified in a few places of the law, but not in all occurrences) from a natural source, so that the blessings that it brought and the uncleanness that it removed could be seen as flowing from God to the believer and away from him to the destroyer.  This is why, by Jesus' time, communities of Jews living in the dispersion who were not large enough for the formation of a synagogue (requiring ten heads of households) would meet by streams and rivers, to pray and worship.  They still needed mikvah to be clean before their God.

This is the ritual cleansing that John the Baptist called people to and purposed to point people to Christ.  They were used to mikvah before they were allowed into the temple, mikvah after childbirth, after illness, after war, and after many other defiling events.  John called them to mikvah out of a knowledge of their sin in general and in anticipation of the coming of Messiah. 

Christ initially continued this kind of mikvah ministry early on after his own mikvah at the hands of John.  Jesus didn't baptize anyone himself, but his disciples were performing the mikvah cleansing for those who were coming to Jesus and confessing their sin.  By the end of his ministry--certainly after his resurrection-- the simple acknowledgement of sin and the need to be clean had been transformed into a sign of conversion greater than the gentile proselyte to Judaism.  You weren't asking for a general cleansing and relying on the mercy of God to get it done.  Christian baptism, as commanded in Matthew 28:18ff is wholesale reliance on the completed work of Christ, His death, burial, and resurrection, into which the baptized believer enters by metaphor and out of obedience.  It is done not simply looking at the sinfulness of the immersed, but at the complete revelation of God, as trinitarian (in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), judge, and mercy-bringer.  It is a fully-informed, fully-developed picture of what it means to be brought out of death and into life, out of bondage, and into freedom.   This fully-developed picture is different from the baptism of John and of Jesus' disciples in their early ministry.  That's why it was possible for people to have been baptized by the baptism of John to be re-baptized by Paul into the full Christian baptism of faith in Christ (Acts 19:1-4).  This was something much greater, much more fully-realized. 

What would become our Christian ritual of initiation, the first step in obedience required of everyone who has been saved by faith alone in Christ alone,  began so many years ago at the Red Sea.  The command to mikvah had not yet been given, and the people of Israel had just been redeemed from bondage and slavery by the blood of the Passover Lamb and the work of God.  They had much in common with the new believer.  Sin and bondage lie behind them, and God is leading them on the first steps of their faith journey.  He takes them straight away to mikvah.  It is the first priority for the newly freed from bondage and sin.  When they arrive at the moving waters, they are faced with a moment of crisis that tests their fledgling faith.  Sin is pursuing them in a very real way.  Pharaoh and his army are coming to bring them back to bondage, and God has told them to wait at the shores of the sea for His salvation to be demonstrated.  God let them leave Egypt prepared for war (Ex 13:18), but He does not require that the infant belief of the Hebrews be tested in war so soon.  He requires that they observe the salvation of their God.

Believer's baptism is trinitarian, but the mikvah of the Jew is not immediately seen in this light.  Here though, at the first mikvah, God the Father is present in the theophany of the pillar of cloud and fire (Ex 13:21), God the Son is present in the person of "The Angel of the Lord" (Ex14:19), and the Holy Spirit, whose name in both Hebrew and Greek means "wind," is sent to drive the sea back and make the corridor for the mikvah of the people of God (Ex 14:21).  The Israelites march across on dry ground, while God holds the Egyptians back with two manifestations of his presence (the pillar and an unapproachable darkness, see Psalm 18:11). Interestingly, the contemporary mikvah practice dictates that the person dip three times in the water. Why?  Tradition. Once they are across,  he takes back the barrier, and the Egyptians pour into the channel make through the waters, only for the waters to come crashing down on them and consume them. 

Baptism does not save the believer, but it does mark the moment in the person's life when they publicly testify that they have left sin behind and entered into the salvific act of Christ on their behalf.  They have left sin to die behind them, and they are a new creation, no longer in the land of slavery, bondage, and sin.  They are now on the road to new life, to a promised land that they will one day achieve.  They are lead along this path by the God of the universe, and there is still much to learn and experience in the journey toward relationship and perfection, but the line has been crossed, the decision made, and they are clean in the eyes of God.

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