What Baptism Means

Over the next few weeks, we are going to be entering into a practice that, to my knowledge, is new for All Souls. 

On September 13th, and again on September 20th, we will celebrate baptisms as a part of our Sunday Liturgy. Among those coming to the waters will be two infants. 

For some of you, that last sentence will strike you as unremarkable. Like me, you grew up in churches and traditions where infant baptism was a normal practice in your life together. For others it will strike you as unfamiliar. You may come from a church, tradition, or denomination where baptism was an ordinance that followed a profession of faith later in life. And to not leave any one out, you may have no framework for baptism at all. 

I will echo what I say every Sunday before we come to the table, there is room for all of this at All Souls, and I think that is worth naming. 

Like the sacrament of Communion embodied by the Table in our midst, the sacrament of Baptism does not belong to me, to All Souls, or to any particular denomination or tradition. This is a beauty about the sacraments, but also occasionally one of the complications. Especially for a church that actively seeks to inhabit several streams of the Church at once. 

There is a very real Baptist/free-church/non-denominational inheritance in the soil of All Souls. We have received from the best of this tradition a deep concern for personal faith, freedom of conscience, attentiveness to Scripture, and the conviction that no one can simply inherit the faith as possession. 

At the same time, since the beginning of our Church sixteen years ago, we have been drawing deeply from the best of the Anglican and wider catholic tradition of the Church. We follow the Liturgical Calendar. We pray ancient prayers. We gather every week around Word and Table. Our life together has become increasingly sacramental as the ancient practices have helped us recognize something about the kind of people God is making us. 

And somewhere within all of this is our ecumenical vision. The conviction that the Church is larger than any of our traditions, and that we have something to receive from one another. 

Baptism happens to be one of the places where those streams meet in a very obvious way. Christians have differed for a very long time about whom we should baptize and when. And to be fair, there are good and serious theological reasons for baptizing those who can personally confess their faith. There are also good and serious theological reasons for baptizing the children of families who have themselves been baptized. The Church has done so since the earliest days (there may be a reference to it by Irenaeus in 180 A.D., though it is debated what he means, but a very clear reference to the practice by Tertullian in 200 when it was already a well established pattern). 

Though there is certainly more that can be said, the wider Church has never reached complete agreement about this, but there is considerably more agreement beneath the question of when we baptize. 

What baptism means. 

Rowan Williams in his book, Being Christian, describes baptism as being brought into the place where Jesus is. 

Jesus the beloved Son who lives eternally turned toward the Father, is also the one who stands completely alongside and inside of the brokenness and need of the world. To be baptized into Christ is therefore to be drawn into his life. In other words, the incarnation implicates God in our humanity, and implicates us in the Divine Life. 

This means that baptism is fundamentally about belonging. We belong to Christ. We are implicated in his love and life. But, because we are implicated in his life and he in ours, we are also implicated in the life of one another. No longer do we stand outside of one another’s life, but we belong to one another. This may sound simple, and to a certain extent it is, but it is one of the most radical things the Church has been entrusted to say over a human life. 

You belong here. 

Regardless of what you understand, what you think now, or what you might think tomorrow, you belong. You belong because God has made room for you, and thus for me, in Christ. 

Robert Jenson describes the sacraments as the “embodied language of this love.” And it is, for me, one of the particularly beautiful aspects of the baptism of an infant. An infant is unable to articulate the theology of grace, recite the Apostles Creed, demonstrate sincerity of faith, or prove that they “deserve” to belong. In their vulnerability, they can only be received. 

In this sense, the infant at the baptism waters becomes a kind of icon or likeness of something that is true of every one of us. God’s life comes to us before we understand it. We are loved before we know how to name love. We are sought before we learn how to seek. We are carried by the faith of the saints long before we know that our own becoming a saint is possible and good. 

Baptism is the beginning of a life. The child who is baptized, like the adult who is baptized must grow into the promises made around them. They must learn the story into which they have been implicated by their very humanity. They must eventually discover the meaning of repentance, faith, prayer, generosity, mercy, justice, death, and resurrection. And all of this is done in community. Children and adults alike grow deeper into the baptismal vows. Children and adults alike will forget the fundamental truth of their being. Children and adults alike will need fellow humans, baptized into the life we share, gathered around the table to remember. 

Font and Table belong to the same life. 

I’ll end this longer than normal Pastoral Letter by saying clearly what this does not mean for All Souls. The baptism of an infant does not mean we are dismissing the Baptist/free-church tradition from which much of our community has come, and in which some of our other clergy are ordained. Nor does it mean that every family has to baptize their children. We will continue to offer dedications/the welcoming and blessing of a child as a part of our life together. 

What it does mean is that we are recognizing that infant baptism is a faithful and ancient Christian practice. It belongs within the breadth of the Church we are seeking to inhabit together and thus cannot be dismissed. 

And so, on September 13th and 20th, we will gather around the water. Some who come to the waters will be able to speak their own promises. Others will have those promises spoken around them and for them until the day comes when they can begin speaking them themselves. But in every baptism, the deepest word is the word God speaks over us: “Beloved.”

As we move closer to these Sundays, please do be praying for those preparing for baptism and for their families: Emory D., Winnie C., Benjamin W., Elijah A., Benedict P., and Isla C. I’ll also add, that if you are interested in being baptized or having your child baptized, fill out our Baptism Interest Form and I’ll be in touch. 

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ was baptized in the waters of the Jordan: look with mercy upon those who are preparing to receive Holy Baptism; deepen in them the gift of faith, surround them with the prayers and love of your Church, and prepare them to be joined to Christ in his death and resurrection, that, sealed by your Holy Spirit, they may grow all their days in the knowledge and love of you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For the heart of Christ and the good of his people,

Bliss+