Faith | Cats | Hope | Grace

Have you ever needed to explain something to someone that just seemed obvious. Or explain the “why” of something that you’ve known and understood for most of your life. Have you then needed to describe that shared experience to someone who has a similar depth, but perhaps a different relationship to that experience. Like trying to describe the plot of a movie to someone who has also seen the movie. And maybe even seen it with you.

I had an experience like this a few years back as part of my field placement during my formation for the diaconate. Like many internships, you would, under the guidance and in partnership with a mentor, get to try things out that are new to you, but all with the helpful guidance of an experienced colleague. During my field placement, a member of the parish wanted to have their youngest child baptized and as part of my development, the priest had me plan the meeting with the parents and godparents to help them spiritually prepare for the baptism. I was going to hit all the things you would think a good pre-baptism meeting would cover—the meaning of baptism, the importance of it, the spiritual role of the parents and godparents. The rector gave me my assignment and I thought “Easy peasy.” I am now just going to guide some folks through something that is fundamental to our faith lives and journeys. I’ve totally got this.

I then sat in front of a blank page of my notebook and had no idea where to start. How do you put into words something that is fundamental to the faith tradition as well as something that’s is central to who you are as an individual. And then I also realized, “Wait, this is also even more complicated. This is this family’s second child to be baptized. They have had one of these meetings before.” I worried about boring them with information they already knew. I worried that I would leave something out. I worried that I would over-emphasize something that was deeply moving and important to me, but didn’t speak to the family about why they were choosing to have their child baptized.

Here we were, about to be a meeting of parents, godparents, the rector, and me all coming together with perhaps ten different ideas of the why, in a few weeks’ time, we were coming together to do this thing. A common experience and rite shaped by each of our individual responses to it. After the worry, I did get a plan for what we would cover down on paper. I remember hoping that it was serious, but not too earnest. Hoping for deep meaning. Trying not to be too preachy. I looked back at what I wrote for that meeting a few days ago. Yup, definitely earnest. Ok, maybe a little preachy.

But all still true. But also, missing some things. No, maybe not missing, but de-emphasized. Who I was on my faith journey, intersected with the knowledge that this was the second time this family had made the choice to present a child for baptism, intersected with the then still developing knowledge of this particular parish and how they were community together. It was a pre-baptism planning meeting for that particular time and that particular group. A beautiful example of the universal but also the particular.

Baptism and our individual baptisms have a common foundation, but are lived out and experienced differently. But that’s only even when we take the time to reflect on it. I want to give us all a little homework for the coming week. If you were to take a moment and ask yourself “What is the meaning of Baptism? What is the meaning of your Baptism?” what would be your answer. Could you answer that question? And then ask yourself “Is that answer the same now as when you were baptized?” Or if you were baptized when you were a small child “Does your understanding and experience of baptism match up or align with what your family felt was important in getting you baptized?” Maybe your answers come you quick as a shot. Or maybe it takes you some time. But that is the beauty of baptisms in church, it gives us a regular opportunity to reflect. So I encourage you to take some time over the coming days to reflect and pray about your answers.

With our baptism, we become members of Christ’s Body, meaning the Church. We are adopted as children and become heirs of the Kingdom of God. With our baptism, we are forgiven our sins and given new life. That is the frame and foundation of our baptisms. But as we’ll experience in a few moments, with our baptism, we also have responsibilities to love God and put our whole trust in him.

Our Gospel reading gives us the story of Jesus’s baptism. And while we get the story, we don’t know what the liturgy exactly looked like. We don’t get the rubrics. What did those early baptisms look like? What were the words spoken? Where they formalized like in our prayerbook or were they individual to the baptizer? We have the great gift of a liturgy and rubrics for baptism. We have words and responses that that church has used in various permutations for decades, for centuries. And if we are regular church attendees or time our attendance just right, we hear, we experience, and we participate in this liturgy–this work of the people–at least yearly. These words and this work seeps into our bones and becomes the building blocks of who we are. It becomes the core of how we then move through the world.

The church has been baptizing the faithful for millennia and in stories in the New Testament and on forward through Christian history, we get details about what those baptisms looked and possibly felt like. At Jesus’s baptism, he is seen and publicly recognized by God. And in addition to being seen by God, Jesus is called Beloved. I don’t know about you, that didn’t happen at my baptism. But while not a perfect facsimile, we still see echoes of that in baptisms today. Baptism is most often an event within the community and is witnessed and supported by those who act as witnesses. We as a community, bear witness to the one soon to be baptized. We bear witness to them becoming a member of the community. We speak words of welcome. Baptism is a particular moment when we see an individual.

To be seen—truly seen—is to be loved.

We are seeing two children of God about to be baptized. We are seeing their humanity. We are seeing them as part of their family and part of their community that has gathered to support them. We see them as part of our individual parish community, but also as part of our larger Christian community. We see all that they are and will be. And with that recognition, they are loved by their families. They are loved by this community. They are loved by God. Baptism is one of those beautiful moments in our lives when love is made visible.

And when we as imperfect human beings get it right, that love continues. Our baptism is not the end of our spiritual journey, but instead is the beginning. Jesus’s baptism was the commissioning of his public ministry. Our baptism is our commissioning of our lives in Christ. And we hopefully spend the remainder our days discerning and living out how to turn the words of our baptism into actions in our lives. And we don’t do this work alone. Praise be to God for that. We do it alongside those like us who have experienced this great sacrament. We help and encourage each other in this work. We pick each other up when we stumble. We see each other as siblings of God. We call each other to be followers of Christ and all that entails. We are called to spread the good news that we have a Redeemer who came into the world to bring us closer to God and to bring us into right relationship with God and with each other. We are called to acknowledge and proclaim that that saving power is not just for a select few, but for the whole of creation. We are called to bear witness to the wrongs in our world. Then we call on ourselves and each other to work–to strive for–justice and peace in our world. Not just to hope, but to put action behind that hope.

Our baptisms are just the beginning of what we must do individually, of what we must call each other to do, and of what we must do together in the world. Let us faithfully get to work.