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.
