Among the various Christian denominations there’s a variety of opinion and practice as regards baptism. In the Church of England many people are baptized as infants; in some other denominations infants are never baptized. Who’s right? The scriptural record is less than completely clear on baptism. Most people were baptized as adults, but it's hard to argue from scripture that infants were never baptized. If the head of a household was baptized, all his family would be too, old and young, slaves and servants as well. That's culturally very different from life today, and in itself a reminder of the role of popular culture in baptism as a rite of passage.
Things continue to change. Infant baptisms today can be very big affairs with a lot of invited guests; but when my children were christened thirty or so years ago most baptisms were much smaller affairs attended only by close family and friends.
Many Church of England ministers feel some disquiet regarding baptism policy, in that many of those who come asking for their children to be baptized seem to want to make little or no faith commitment. But that’s not true across the board; many parents do take it seriously, even if they’re not regular church attenders Sunday by Sunday. So how can I tell the difference, and where should I draw the line? Do I perhaps insist that a family attends church a particular number of times, or is that just getting people to jump through hoops? Our Church of England is a church with fuzzy edges: it's hard to define who's a member and who isn’t, or even whether we can speak of membership of the church at all.
As a Christian minister I always wanted to keep the door open to everyone, but I also made the most of the opportunity each baptism request provided for pastoral contact, and did my best to provide good and straightforward instruction on what being part of the church required of the baptized child, and what the responsibilities were of parents and godparents.
But I still always felt some disquiet: was I selling too cheaply what is after all one of the great sacraments of my Church? Was I requiring too little of people who, whether they really know it or not, are - when they ask for baptism - making a big faith decision for their child?
In our church infant baptism is only part of the process of Christian initiation, of course: confirmation is the other part, and parents and godparents are instructed to prepare the child to come in due course to be confirmed. Most baptized children don’t go on to be confirmed, though, sadly. And even when they do, how well does the system really work? Some people cynically call confirmation 'the church's leaving ceremony', as being the last hoop a young person has to jump through before abandoning the church for keeps.
Today we think about the baptism of Jesus: so what does his baptism have to say about our own baptism and the way we do baptism within our churches? Two things for starters: firstly, Jesus didn't need to be baptized but went to be baptized anyway; and secondly, while Jesus didn't baptize people himself, he did instruct his disciples to do it.
I mentioned the 'process' of Christian initiation a moment ago, and I’d like to say a bit more about that, because I’ve always wanted to think of baptism as beginning a process rather than being an event in itself. For me the event we call baptism begins a process of becoming a child of God, and that process is lifelong. Baptism is a sign of repentance, the water reminds us that God promises to wash away all the bad stuff that separates us from him. When John was baptizing, Jesus partook of that gift of washing, although he didn’t need to, and in doing that he identified himself with all who are searching for goodness and God. As he’s baptized Jesus assures us that the God he calls Father is our Father too.
The washing of baptism is the visible sign of an ongoing relationship of grace. Sin is still sin and still deadly, but the power of sin to enslave and condemn us has been broken forever. So even as sinners we have the right to call God our Father; Jesus alone has opened that way to us. The sacramental event of baptism is a sign and symbol of this dynamic process, in which the relationship I have with God as his child is being constantly refreshed and renewed.
But baptism isn’t just about our deliverance from the sin’s deadening impact, there’s something more. It's also about being commissioned into service, and that’s what it was for Jesus. After his baptism he came up out of the water, to be met by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, and hailed by a voice of acclamation and approval; and so the process began, with a time of trial and testing in the wilderness, that would begin his ministry.
For us too baptism begins a process of discovering what God wants us to be and to do for him in the world. In other words, baptism and vocation are closely linked. I used to edit the Diocesan Prayer Diary some years ago, and prayer biddings came my way from other Anglican provinces around the world: I was struck by how often these prayer biddings referred to "living out our baptism call and vocation". We don’t very often talk like that in the Church of England. But I think we probably should: it’s in baptism that we’re commissioned to service and ministry.
So when I think about how the Church does baptism today, for me the debate isn't so much about infant baptism versus believer's baptism, as about process versus event. If we think of baptism only as an event without thinking about the process it begins, we end up making baptism much less central to the life of the individual Christian and of the Church than it should be.
For baptism isn't just a staging post on life's journey, it’s much more than that. It’s an initiation, it’s the start of a dynamic relationship with the living God, it’s the beginning of my response to God’s call, a call that’s personal and special to me - personal and special also to each of you. So I don’t so much think about having been baptized as that I’m living in baptism - and as such I’m being washed and cleansed, and called and commissioned, on a daily basis.
There are times in the Church year like Candlemas and Easter, when we may be formally called on to renew our baptism vows; but I think that in all our worship, Sunday by Sunday, we should come to God’s table as people who are living out our baptism commitment to him. We’re here to praise God for his abundant grace, and to renew that commitment as we re-focus our lives on Christ and re-centre ourselves on his love. As we receive the bread and wine of Communion at our Lord’s table, it’s like a new baptismal experience in which his call and claim upon us expressed in our baptism is renewed, and in which we offer ourselves to him afresh.
I’d like us to recognize this more fully as a Church, for as we become more alive ourselves to what baptism means for us as a continuing process, what it provides for us and draws us into, and as we become more seriously baptismal as a Church in our sense of how we relate to God and how he calls us in mission, we’ll be all the more able to bring others to receive themselves the grace God constantly offers them, and to respond as we have done to the call and claim of his love.
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