Top Ten Thanks for Baptism

Thanksgiving Day is just past, and I found myself thinking of reasons I am grateful for baptism. A la David Letterman, I also love “top ten lists;” so here are today’s top ten reasons that I’m glad to be baptized: 

10. For knowing the love of God larger than my feelings, my mind or my memory (That’s part of why infant baptism inspires me).

9.  For a bond with Christ that cannot be taken from me (Everything else might go away, terrifying as that may be, but not Christ – or God).

8.  For the rich past – being connected to the great biblical story (All those stories of saints and sinners are now my story, helping me along the way).

7.  For the future, knowing my destiny is connected to Jesus (And you know how Jesus’ story turns out: he rises from the dead!).

6.  For receiving everything that belongs to Jesus (Quite frankly, that’s why I need my whole life to learn what he gives).

5.  For forgiveness, sins flushed away (If I had to carry all the garbage around, oh, it’s too much to contemplate).

4.  For receiving a family of faith for life’s journey (These folks both succeed and fail, but we’re companions together in Christ).

3.  For baptism’s call to die to my sin (It’s good to own up to my messing up).

2.  For a place to stand when doubts come (This I know, and so did Luther: that I have been baptized; God committed himself to me. Hang on to that.)

1.  For being a child of God, loved and learning (I have difficulty measuring spiritual progress; that’s why belonging to God is so incredible). 

The list is really too short – I eliminated about seven items to get down to ten. What would be in your top ten?

Branded

Westerns. Cowboy movies. I grew up on these – in black and white nonetheless. And when the movie involved ranches and rustlers, we sometimes found ourselves watching cattle being branded. Perhaps because I grew up on a farm, the thought of that red-hot brand causing pain never troubled me; we frequently saw worse in real life. But I was deeply impressed by the value of the brand. The brand was about ownership and belonging. The brand kept rustlers from getting the upper hand.

Baptism is, in a sense, a brand on Christians, God putting the divine mark upon us that here is where we belong. We are God’s. Water is poured over us “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” and the cross is marked on us.  The water doesn’t sizzle like that a flaming cattle brand, but it marks us all the same. The water may be toweled off us or evaporate in a few minutes, but we are marked – marked with the cross of Christ forever. 

In the world of the first Christians, wealthy Romans who had slaves sometimes branded or marked them to make it clear where they belonged. They were owned, sometimes treated well, but still owned. At least a few of these slaves became Christians, and when they did, they were marked with the cross in their baptism. Suddenly their ownership was different. They belonged to God! No, they didn’t escape their Roman bonds, but they knew themselves greater, more valuable, and in some deep sense, free. Their Roman brand may have been the one the world saw, but they knew themselves loose in God’s new kingdom. They had new dignity. They belonged where there was “no longer slave or free” (Galatians 3:28). The world’s powers, even great the great Roman Empire’s, were not the last word. Baptism’s “branding” was no small thing.