BLOG 10/29/16. UN-TRIVIALIZING BAPTISM: “… HE BIDS US COME AND DIE.”

BLOG 10/29/16. UN-TRIVIALIZING BAPTISM: “… HE BIDS US COME AND DIE.”

When I went into the hospital recently to have a procedure done on my heart, the hospital staff came into my room and presented me with a: Statement of Consent form. It essentially said that I was placing my life in the hands of the cardiac surgeons to accomplish that which would, hopefully, make my life much healthier, but that I also knew the risks.

Shifting gears, then, let me move to the Christian rite/sacrament of baptism. As both a pastor and an observer of adult baptisms for a long time, it so often seems to be a sweet but ever so much of a casual rite, and yet most of the adult baptismal vows in major Christian traditions are an awesome ‘consent’ to have Jesus come into one’s life and to radically recreate it into the image for which it was originally intended. Those formulae usually begin with one’s belief in the trinitarian God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But then they move to a renunciation of all that is evil, of Satan, of our sinful quest for autonomy, … and of a joyous ‘consent’—even an embrace of Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord, and of the risks—to henceforth live in and for Jesus and his Kingdom of Light.

It is, then, basically a Statement of Consent to have Jesus come and radically recreate our lives. It is a response to (as Dietrich Bonhoeffer so graphically stated it): “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” But, … I’m not too convinced that most of us taking those vows have the remotest notion of how total those vows are. It seems, so often, that they are a ‘hoop’ we have to jump through in order to become a member of the church, … rather than a death to all that was ones former self-focused life, and the acceptance of, and entrance into, a new authority, a new center, a new creative source, a new guiding-line, and a new ultimate goal for our lives. Such vows are a vows to become a joyous participant in God’s in-breaking new creation, and it makes us inevitably counter-cultural and at odds with the  dominant social order—but always creative, loving, purposeful, focused, and available to our chosen Lord to be agents of his Kingdom and will—of God’s extravagant love and  good purpose for the realities of this world.

Then, too, I think that so many church assemblies do not give occasion to their constituents to revisit those vows , those consent vows, and to re-confirm them regularly enough. Church communities that observe the bread and wine of the Eucharist weekly may, or could make that weekly identification with the body and blood of Jesus such a reconfirming time, … but then such usually falls short of having to sign that Statement of Consent weekly, to have Jesus live out his life in my life with whatever consequences might follow. Our captivity to our own autonomy dies hard. To be reminded that Christ calls us to ‘come and die’ sounds dramatic and spiritual, but its practical consequences are huge.

If we were to keep those baptismal vows next to our hearts day by day, it would give us an irresistible New Creation identity that liberates us from all of the cultural idolatries and counterfeit religions, and be irresistibly conforming us to the image of Christ (which is the reason for our calling according to Romans 8:24ff.).

Bottom line? Add my voice to those who would like to de-trivialize baptism and to make those vows an ever present guiding-line. What do you think?

[Correction to a former blog: one of my readers reminded me that the good wizard in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was not Saruman, but Gandalf. Bingo. Thanks for keeping me accurate.]

https://www.amazon.com/Enchanted-Community-Robert-Thornton-Henderson/dp/1597526657

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge