What I am Learning About Baptism
It’s taken me a little over a week to read through and digest (or at least begin to digest) all the comments and fabulous conversation about baptism. Which is why I title this post, “What I am learning about baptism,” rather than “learned” or even “believe,” let alone “know for sure.” What you all have shared keeps teaching me about baptism and for that I am grateful. So, several things:
1) We don’t talk about Baptism enough!
Goodness gracious, but there were enough marvelous questions, great insights, strong opinions, and wonderfully open invitations to dialogue that we could fill who knows how many Sunday mornings with this conversation. So why don’t we? I mean, we know Baptism is important. We apparently have lots of questions. And we obviously want to talk about them. But we usually don’t. Or if we do, it’s a rather one-way conversation as the pastor preaches about baptism in the sermon or teaches it to confirmation students. But what about the chance to talk back, to raise questions, to point to what other traditions are doing, to read the Bible and its varied stories about Baptism. So one of the things I’ve learned is that this can’t be a one-way conversation anymore if we want to understand (or at least understand more about) Baptism rather than merely “do” it.
2) Memory, experience, and participation matter, perhaps more than at other times in the Church’s history.
I don’t know that even a few generations ago, let alone several centuries or a millennium ago, Christians would have focused quite so much on the individual experience of the believer. This isn’t a critique, but only a realization that rituals practiced before the dawn of the importance of the individual probably need to be thought about in light of a shifting consciousness from “we” to “me.” Whether you for this reason baptize adults or whether you baptize infants – or whether you do both, as I learned the Disciples of Christ do – we need to recognize that we want today not only to partake but to participate, understand, actualize, even to some degree “own” what happens to us. Again, this isn’t critique, but recognition. And this has great implications, I think, for things like worship, preaching, confirmation, and more. I’ve only begun to start thinking about that.
3) Our words matter.
Adoption has been a powerful word in the Christian tradition, dating at least back to Paul’s writings. But how do we differentiate – and do we need to? – between being born into the family of humanity which is also presumably God’s family (part of the world God loves so much) and the family of God we call the church. Are we being adopted into the Church as a part of God’s family as Paul talked about being grafted into the vine that was Israel? If so, why is this important to us? How do we communicate that? Is adoption still a helpful way of talking about it? After all, one is adopted from one family into another, not from nothing into a family. Great questions.
4) Even as we think about how to communicate the gospel effectively today, there is great wisdom in the tradition.
I have been immensely helped, for instance, by returning to some of Luther’s teaching about the sacrament of Baptism. What makes a sacrament, Luther asks. Three things. 1) It is commanded by Jesus. We seek to be obedient to the One we follow, the One we name both Savior and Lord. (This doesn’t settle the “when” question, I realize, but it does remind us that obedience, too, is part of the Christian life.) 2) It is a physical sign. The ordinary water of Baptism – preferably straight from the tap rather than imported from the River Jordan! – is a reminder that God works through ordinary things to communicate God’s extraordinary grace to ordinary people. Physical signs for physical people. In this sense, the sacraments are incarnational, as God again meets us in the ordinary and mundane; that is, God meets us where we are. 3) It conveys a promise. And that promise is that God chooses us, even before we can choose God. That God will stay with us, even if and when we run away from God. That God will not give up on us, even if and when we give up on God…or on ourselves. Powerful reasons for Baptism.
5) Baptism has become too disconnected from the rest of the Christian life.
“We don’t baptize children in case they die,” one of my beloved mentors used to say, “but in case they live.” Baptism, from this sense, is not a once-and-done event but meant to shape and inform our whole lives. But leaving that only to the parents, or only to confirmation, or only to the pastors seems foolish. It’s just too important. The whole of of a congregation’s life, it increasingly seems to me, should be shaped to repeat, remind, and reinforce the promises of Baptism and to invite all Christians not just to remember but actively live out the love and acceptance of God we receive and hear about in Baptism. What would that look like? I’m not sure, but I’d love to keep working at it.
6) Our choices are more than choices, they are also messages.
I fear being reductionistic at this point, and was glad for some gentle reminders that this doesn’t have to be an either/or question (infant or adult), as some traditions actively practice both. At the same time, it seems to me that while all conversation partners emphasize both what I’d call the objective element of God’s activity apart from anything we do or can understand and the subjective element of our response to God. Both are important. Both matter. But each tradition tends to emphasize one somewhat over the other, infant baptism coming down on the side of God’s activity –as the infant, finally, can’t yet respond – and adult baptism clearly affirming God’s grace but ultimately emphasizing the importance of our response and decision to claim and activate that grace. Both, I think, have legitimate traditions behind them. But as much as I sometimes wish I could remember my baptism, I am grateful that my parents didn’t wait to shower me with a physical, tangible sign of God’s love any more than they waited to shower me with physical, tangible expressions of their love before I could comprehend and remember those.
7) We can’t, finally, limit God’s grace.
There are scenes in Acts where Baptism precedes the gift of the Holy Spirit, and there are others scenes where the Holy Spirit is obviously present so it makes total sense to baptize. This is a good reminder, I think, that even though the matters we discuss and the decisions we come to are of great import, they finally can’t trump the unpredictable and indefatigable work of the Holy Spirit. I take no small amount of comfort in that, not to sit back and let the Spirit do all the work, but to throw myself in the task, confident that my best efforts and worst failures will find their home, culmination, and redemption in Christ.
There’s more, of course. There’s always more. Especially on something so important. So please feel free to take up, or take further, or take issue with, any and all of us. And let’s also think together about what a baptismal community would look like, as I think this may be one of the more important questions for our generation as the Church. Thank you, again, for your candor, your questions, your struggles, and your insights. I’ve been blessed by them.
Hi David–in point 3 on baptism, I don’t know if you realize that you switched from adopted to adapted in the sentence, “Are we being adapted into the church as part of God’s family…” Off the cuff, I like the use of “adapted,” not in the opposite sense of adoption, but rather, we fit our lives, we change them, when we are baptized and recognize our part in God’s family.
I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this!
Thanks both for catching that, Linda – yes it was a typo – as well as reading it generously and creatively. I like that sense of “adapted” as well (though I’ll probably fix my typo 🙂 ).
I sometimes feel sad that when we say “the family of God” in the church we usually mean just Christians – maybe even just our denomination or even our congregation. The term also emphasizes the human world as the norm…
…one of many reasons baptism is draining of meaning for many. As I’ve read the posts on baptism, I find I again embrace the metaphor – even the real symbolism of water as cleansing, drowning, birthing – but water carries those meanings without calling it baptism.
If I may be bold, I am basically saying water rite(s), yes; stress on one singular rite of baptism, no.
David, I made a comment on the first message about baptism and then saw your more recent comments. I wholeheartedly agree with you on point number 5. That is why I look forward to see how you connect baptism with vocational calling for all Christians in the next Making Sense book.
When talking with pastors as I have done they would make comments like “I baptized my grandson or daughter” And I would say to them no you didn’t- God did. They then would generally agree with me. Maybe I’m not on the right theology of this but through baptism there should be a strong connection to the work of the Holy Spirit in all of this. Isn’t that part of Luther’s commentary on the 3rd Article of the Creed that it is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks as always for continuing the conversation in the church at large today and everyday.