At Old South Church in Boston we have built an entire worship service around the baptismal font. While we feast at Christ’s table at least twice a week (at First Worship on Sunday mornings and Jazz Worship on Thursday evenings), our newest service, Evening Worship, is centered on the font ... on baptism, on what it means and what it takes to live as a marked person.
In the Gothic beauty of our stone Chapel the chairs are arranged (not toward chancel, pulpit or table, but) in ever widening circles around a splendid white marble font. The Chapel is candle lit, flickering and hushed. Led by a young seminarian in casual attire—along with a flutist and a cantor—we chant ancient plainsong, pray the psalms, stand for the Word and listen deeply as a lay member of the church gives witness to what he or she knows firsthand of God. (Oh, the stories we have heard!) We then recall the story of Jesus’ baptism. Just as elsewhere we tell the story of the Last Supper week in and week out, here we tell and retell the story of Jesus’ baptism. Each week as the water pours and splashes into the font, the entire assembly raises a forest of arms in the ancient, priestly act of blessing. Finally, we rise and gather round the font where we renew our baptismal vows aloud, in unison, as the pastor dips and shakes the aspergillum (in our case, a leafy branch), showering and equipping us for yet another week of living as marked persons in a strange land.
We come to the waters of baptism again and again, week in and week out, for the very same reasons we approach the table again and again. Because once is not enough. Because each week we are changed from the person who approached last week. You and I each bring to this evening and this water and this renewal of our vows a new reason to seek forgiveness; or a new urgency to rehearse our allegiance to God and not to the world; or perhaps the water-mark upon our forehead has faded and it needs a fresh application; or simply because the rigors of the Christian life require diligent attention, practice, rehearsal, exercise and discipline. And, not least, we rehearse the story and return to the font over and over again because the world, too, has changed since the last time we gathered. God help us, there are yet more Syrian refugees than there were last week, or school children have been murdered, or a hurricane, mudslide or avalanche swallowed lives and terrorized survivors.
In the not too distant past, a Church like Old South Church in Boston (Protestant, urban, mainline, not much given to outward expressions of piety) baptized mostly infants. Adults arrived here already marked. If and when adults felt moved to own the covenant, they did so by “letter of transfer” from another church, or by “reaffirmation” of the vows made on their behalf by parents long ago.
Not so today. While we still do plenty of infant baptisms, more and more we baptize adults ... persons who did not grow up in any church or any faith, who do not know the stories of Jesus or the taste of God’s grace. More and more we baptize adults who arrive here unacquainted with Noah and ignorant of Moses. They are wide-eyed and entranced by the strange new land of mercy, justice and beauty to which we introduce them. Spellbound by a cornucopia of grace, they keep coming back, asking, “Can God really be so good?” All the time. And, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Nothing.
We endeavor to meet these newcomers where we find them. Congruent, therefore, with Evening Worship we have designed classes for those coming to the Christian life for the first time. They gather ninety minutes before Evening Worship for mini-lectures and shared conversation about the strange new world of Christian discipleship. Catechesis.
From start to finish, Christians are a people habituated to holy waters. Our children dip young toes into the story of Noah and his animal-filled ark: two of every kind. With crayons and markers they color pictures of the infant Moses floating in his basket among the bulrushes and of the adult Moses parting the Red Sea waters to escort the formerly enslaved to freedom. Sunday school classes wade into the story of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordon River, giggle as Jesus washes the smelly feet of his disciples and then, wide-eyed, follow the arrows on the map as the disciples set out on scrubbed feet to baptize all the nations by water and the Holy Spirit. Adults marvel at the story-scape of God’s artistic Spirit hovering over the waters at the dawn of creation.
Christians are a people of holy waters: borne across waters to freedom and water-born at the time of our baptism.
As a rite of passage Christian baptism transports us by water (and story, and Word and vow) into a strange new land. It is a land in which peacemakers are blessed, the poor are treated as kings and the hungry are fed whether or not they have money in their wallets. It is a land in which God loves and liberates slaves, and death—not an end—becomes its own rite of passage: across a sea and onto a farther shore, where the gathered saints are alive ... marvelously alive in God’s transcendent love.
Ours, however, is a community whose practices are not, frankly, for everyone. When the earliest followers of Jesus submitted to baptism, they were throwing in their lot with one who had been recently executed by the state. To submit to baptism was and is to become a marked person. The practices on this side of baptism are baffling—and, make no mistake about it—they are painfully difficult to master: loving one’s enemies, forgiving those with whom we have complaints, giving away large portions of our incomes, engaging in prayer and study, turning the other cheek, pursuing peace, and going all in with a maddeningly invisible, impossible to explain, Triune God.
Because the land is so very foreign, difficult and demanding, newcomers are carefully coached, equipped and companioned. We tell them about God and God’s son Jesus who, in the words of the UCC statement of faith, “seeks in holy love to save all people from aimlessness and sin.” We invite and challenge them to “accept the cost and joy of discipleship, proclaim the gospel to all the world and resist the powers of evil.” (Where else on God’s good earth do people vow such things?) We school them in the stories of Noah and Moses, Exodus and Exile. We introduce them to Jesus, John and the Jordan. We habituate these wide-eyed newcomers to the deep, treacherous and salvific waters of Christian faith. Then, when all things are made ready, we raise our arms in a forest of blessing over the waters and listen deeply as they make their own vows. We become who John was to Jesus and who Philip was to the Ethiopian eunuch. We get them wet, mark their brows, applaud, cheer, tear up, hug and welcome them in.
Now, on this side of baptism, we set out together and in the good company of the saints in light, to master the baffling and beautiful practices of this strange and wondrous land. It is as marked persons that we taste grace, wash smelly feet, hold tight to each other, wage peace, forgive, give, visit prisoners, enter contested crossroads, proclaim good news and resist evil. Together we venture into the marvelous land of mercy, justice and beauty for which God equips and marks us.