In the not to distant past, my wife and I had the wonderful opportunity to serve an international church in Bali, Indonesia. We had only been married a few months and so we looked at this amazing opportunity as a wonderful working honeymoon. I mean, why not? We were living in a tropical paradise while getting the opportunity to work with an amazingly diverse group of Christians. One opportunity sticks out as we sit in the shadow of last Sunday’s worship around the Lukan narrative of Jesus’ baptism.
We were invited to visit a Hindu temple up in the mountains. Part of the trip was to sit down at a family home near the temple and participate in some informal interfaith dialogue. There was an American woman living with this Balinese family who acted as an interpreter for us. As we sat to have tea, she told us about her conversation with the family before we came. We had told her while planning this visit that we were Christians who ministered from the Baptist perspective, and she recounted to us her experience of trying to explain that to the Balinese Hindu family she was living with. The only way she knew to describe our faith practices to the family's elders was to tell them that we were Christians with a special relationship to water.
At the time, I didn’t know what to think about it. I’ve always wondered about the name Baptist and what it means. Often, the Walter Shurden book, The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms, comes to mind. It’s a great book, if you haven’t read it. Regularly, I reflect on Shurden’s work around religious freedom, soul freedom, bible freedom, and congregational freedom. In terms of what I truly think of Baptist distictives, in a formal sense, the book captures my position well.
However, if you ask me what the word “Baptist” means, I have a harder time answering that question. I can recite my old seminary answers about baptizing members of the church and not children, or why we immerse as the official mode of baptism, but there isn’t one way for me to really capture what baptism means in full-throated way. There could be all kinds of reasons. Baptism does not save a soul, as the Campbellite Churches of Christ put it, and it is not a sacrament as my Episcopalian or Catholic friends would think of it. So, what does it do? Why is baptism important?
This last Sunday, I listened to a pastor give a great sermon, more a dramatic presentation really, of someone standing in line behind Jesus as if they were there in the reading from Luke. As I listened, I was carried away by the story and felt myself responding to the dramatic cues, and following the along, just as the pastor has planned it, I’m sure. Then, I remembered another scene. We were in the chapel of the Episcopal seminary where my wife earned her masters. It was the Saturday before Easter, and we were participating in The Great Easter Vigil.
For this Baptist boy, it was a long service. At the end, the dean of the seminary baptized the children who had been born in the seminary community that year. Though I prefer the practice Baptists have clung to, I appreciated the moment of families and god-parents gathered around the priest as they watched the ceremony with a packed chapel. It was quite beautiful after just singing of the resurrection. Then, something happened that I had never known before. The priest took a branch of rosemary and dipped it into the bowl . Turning to the crowd she said, “Remember your baptism,” before shaking the water over the heads of the gathered worshipers. We were sitting too far back to have the water hit us, and so after the service had fully concluded, my wife went to one of the professors with whom she had grown close. She told her, “We didn’t get any of the water during the remembrance of baptism.” The professor, still in her vestments, said, “Oh, I can handle that.” She gathered her alb and ran to the font. There, she took the rosemary and plunged it into the bowl before turning to my wife, whose arms were outstretched and gave her a good dousing. It was joyful, and beautiful. The perfect mixture of reverence and irreverence, levity and depth, beautiful and fun. It is an image I will remember.
I remember it mainly because it caused me to remember my baptism. I remember the night when I stood on a milk carton in the baptistry of my local church as a 4th grader. I remember my pastor in his white baptismal robe, and I remember the nervousness of that moment in front of the entire congregation. As I put all of those stories together, I even begin to see what it means.
It took me experiencing a Baptist ritual, then seeing my Baptist ritual through the Episcopal remembrance for me to think my Baptism all that important. It’s the first time that I really remember having any discussion or ritual that was called as a memorial for baptism. In a way, I find it a touch shameful, being that I am a Baptist. Baptism is one of the big things we SHOULD be known for, it is in our name.
I know that today there are all manner of conversations around how we attract new people to our churches, and how we through the doors open in such a way that all feel that our faith is accessible. Last Sunday, as I listened to the pastor tell the story as if they were there, I realized, we need to make the things we do mean something. It doesn’t matter if we keep practicing full immersion baptism or the Lord’s Supper/Communion if we do not take it seriously. When I am asked to remember my baptism, in whatever ritual or form that could be used, I want to relive it. In the moments, I want to be baptized again. It is re-born in me. and I feel as I did when I was a new member to the body of Christ.
Maybe, there is a new way for us to remember our baptism.
Hopefully, it is something worth remembering.
Eventually, it may lead us to realizing how connected we are as a body.
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