The current issue of The Christian Century (November 3, 2009) happens to feature not one but two articles touching on baptism – and especially how it anchors our lives.

Pastor Heidi Neumark’s “Sermon in stone”  tells of her trip to Lubeck, Germany, this past summer to follow up on her recently discovered roots. This Lutheran pastor’s grandparents were Jewish, and so she tells, brought her father as a child to St. Mary’s Church font in Nazi Germany in an “act of desperation, assimilation, or both.” Perhaps baptism would enable their child to escape the fate of other Jews.

As Neumark tells the story of the bronze font dating from 1337, a masterpiece with figures from Adam and Eve to Jesus and the surprise of the wise and foolish maidens along with more predictable apostles, the reader appreciates the both the unique glories of font itself and this pastor’s fascination. Even more surprising to her is that the church’s pastor admitted to never looking at the font and its incredible art. “I just baptize babies here,” he confessed as Neumark pondered “this sermonic lodestone.”

For whatever pastoral riches this font could yield, in the end it’s blessing was personal, earthy, transforming, and touchable as Neumark concludes, “…whatever drew my grandparents there with their son has been transmuted by mercy. My life in Christ began in this indestructible bath, and I am grateful for my place in the dance.”

Neumark’s story is worth a special read, but she shares with all of us the blessing of travel to special places, sacred places where God has worked, in this case, using earth’s water in a font in unique and terrifying wartime circumstances.

In the same issue (pp. 12-13) Miroslav Volf, professor at Yale University, tells of being a “reluctant pilgrim” to the Holy Land with his oldest son. Never one to be into “sacred places,” he really didn’t expect much from “holy sites” in this land where fact and legend were often indistinguishable. But at the baptism site dedicated to John the Baptist, a relatively new place of pilgrimage, he found himself fascinated by the historical and spiritual authenticity.  The Gospel of John (1:28) describes John’s baptisms at “Bethany across the Jordon.” An earlier pilgrim account from 333 A.D. support John’s baptizing there in the Jordan five miles from the Dead Sea near a hill where Elijah was taken up into heaven. Volf admits that suddenly he found himself immersed in the events of Elijah with Ahab and Jezebel and John with Herod and Herodias. It also helped that the souvenir shop was kept at a respectable distance in the visitor’s center.

Again travel connected the believer to story, and the past becomes present and alive. The stories of Jesus, his people, his enemies, his mission, soak deeper into us in the places we can see and feel and meander. That’s appropriate to a baptismal spirituality in which earth and heaven touch.

What did travel to this place do for Volf and his son? “…[I]t turned us into pilgrims because it presented to us a sacred space – a space free of mercantile culture in which we are drenched and space inscribed with sacred narratives that point a person to the spring of living water and the tree of true life.” The bottom line, however, comes in his son’s words, “I felt somehow connected with Jesus.”

As in baptism’s earthiness, we are immersed into the story of Jesus – and God.

For many of us, I suppose, baptism is a scene from a world apart. We watch the pastor or priest pour the “holy water” at a worship service. We remember our own baptism, or more likely, we recall that we were baptized. In “The Forum” of  USA Today’s Monday, October 26 edition, Dean Nelson gives us the larger and livelier picture with his recollection of the movie, “The Shawshank Redemption:”

“…Tim Robbins’ character serves a life sentence for a crime he did not commit, but he eventually escapes through the prison’s sewer system, makes it through the outfall pipe and collapses in a river. He staggers to his feet, and in a deafening downpour, lightning flashing around him, he stumbles through the water from the earth and the sky, takes off his prison clothing and heads toward freedom. When I first saw that scene, all I could think of was one word – baptism. He had just crawled through some of the worst muck imaginable. He had just lived through the worst life imaginable. And now he’s in the water, shedding his old self.”

What a marvelous description! For a long time, The Shawshank Redemption has been at the top of my list of favorite movies, and now writer Dean Nelson has just articulated another reason it appeals so deeply to me.  The spiritual dimension of life itself flows through the movie, even, as Nelson insists, the sacramental character of life. The more-than-mundane in the mundane. The holy in the ordinary.

I found myself considering the baptismal elements in the scene Nelson describes. Here are a few:

• Immersion in the water
• Being washed by the water
• Shedding old garments to receive new
• Leaving behind the old life
• Facing the new with all kinds of emotions: fear, joy, uncertainty, etc.
• Moving into freedom.

Nelson’s article includes the Celtic insight that there are “thin spaces” between this world and the greater unseen world. Ordinary activities have more going on within them than we take in with our senses. We often miss this, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Nelson concludes, “Wearing the lens of the sacraments can show us that it has been there all along, hiding in plain sight.” The title to his recent book  indicates the same, God Hides in Plain Sight: How to See the Sacred in a Chaotic World.

Baptismal spirituality is part of that seeing, a way to know God when God often seems absent. And sacraments like baptism , I would add, help us name our experience as one of “the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  I look forward to reading Nelson’s book to nurture my own spiritual awareness.

Today – sunshine and 70 degrees – my wife and I ate lunch overlooking the waters of that great river, the Mississippi. Sometimes hard to believe we live so close to one of the great playgrounds and workhorses of the world. Today we simply enjoyed its beauty. Its waters inspired me to add this post.

I’ve been thinking of Lent out of season. In fact, I just posted on my book’s website, www.waterforyoursoul.com, information on a Lenten preaching series for pastors to use in 2010. If you’re a pastor, I invite you to give this a look. At the site, just click on “For pastor especially” for the PDF on “The Baptismal Plunge with Christ.” I encourage you to print it out and consider using it for midweek services (or Sundays).

 Lent is the time when, with Christ, the church moves from death to life, from ashes to resurrection. Lent is a powerful time of baptismal spirituality, a time of dying to sin and rising to new life. My book on baptismal spirituality, Water for Your Soul: Living in Baptism Every Day, lends itself to a preaching series to take people deeper into the waters of grace and discipleship.

The PDF (above) and one copy of my book are the basics for the series, but there’s flexibility to go different ways with the materials. In any case, Lent is a great time to learn and experience that baptism’s benefits for our spiritual journey keep going and going. I hope you try the series and are blessed.

This is just a quick stop to post a beautiful water prayer that Lutheran World Relief mailed as a bookmark. Note the imagery from both the world of nature and the Scriptures. Then pray it – with thanks to LWR for their good sustainable development work around the world. I encourage you to support them. Water…a physical and spiritual blessing…so many ways.

Today as I was contacting folks about my book, I came across a church name that sounds full of baptismal spirituality: Ezekiel Lutheran Church.

Ezekiel: the Old Testament prophet who envisioned God breathing life back into dry bones (Ez. 37:1-14). From dryness to sinews, from death to life – that is God at work. And Ezekiel’s words long before Jesus and the church describe this amazing God and give a foretaste of baptismal spirituality.

So, Ezekiel sounds like a fine name for a church, even if a bit out of the ordinary. And as if the name’s not enough baptismal spirituality, the location of this congregation is River Falls (Wisconsin).

Let the baptismal waters flow, Ezekiel!

This business of dying to sin to which baptism calls us again and again can be pretty heavy duty. But often the spirituality of it all is woven into the everyday fabric of our lives.

Like the article I just read in USA Today: “Uplift in good times shows happy couples….”

Here’s what it tells: when a marriage partner responds with enthusiasm and pride to their mate’s good news – let’s say, for a promotion – the result is more satisfaction and closeness in their relationship. In other words, if the partner can set aside their own needs and just be happy for their mate, their marriage is going to be better than it was before.

The article indicates that a negative or even passive response is destructive to the relationship. In fact, the study apparently indicates that reactions to good news are more indicative of couple break-ups than reactions to bad news. We need to read that again.

The study makes me think of the Bible verse, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep… (Romans 12:10). I think we’ve emphasized the latter but not the former. This study should help us see the benefits of both.

Doesn’t it really require setting ourselves and our needs aside to rejoice with someone? For example, our spouse tells us of the raise received – the second one in a short time – while our own boss may give no hint that we’re even appreciated. Be happy for your spouse! That can be tough. But if in that moment we can be second, putting our own needs and feelings aside, we can improve the depth and the intimacy of our marriage. A blessing! Even more than we might by empathizing with our partner on a bad day.

For the Christian, this can be doing simply what Christ calls us to – loving one another. In another sense it’s also baptismal spirituality – dying to ourselves and rising to new life. That is, saying “no” to our own needs in that moment, and receiving the “yes” of blessing in our marriage.

This is not to say that our own needs aren’t important; but they may not be the most important at that time. It may be more important to live in trust that God is at work even we aren’t the focus. In other words, it’s all right I am second – and that bit of daily dying can bring blessing.

This time a secular study makes the point.

Monica (d. 387) comes to mind in May: her commemoration day is May 4 and, of course, she was a mother. A mother to Augustine, arguably the most important Christian theologian in the first few hundred years of the Christian church. 

But it was a line in a Lutheran Woman Today article that caught attention: when Monica’s son Augustine was baptized as an adult by Ambrose of Milan, the author notes that she “viewed the event as her life’s achievement.” You just know there’s a story there, don’t you.

Briefly, the story is that Monica was a Christian woman whose son resisted the faith for a long time. In fact, probably for 15 to 20 years. He tried “everything,” so to speak, including philosophy and all kinds of religious heresies. He himself admitted to being wayward and lazy. He lived with a concubine and had a child out of wedlock. But through it all, his mother never gave up on him coming to God. No wonder she viewed his baptism as “her life’s achievement.”

Could we pray that children had such devoted mothers – and fathers – today? 

Of course, when many parents bring their infant to the font for baptism today, this event is likely not, for them, a “life’s achievement” – unless, of course, it takes place in the face of huge obstacles, has been much prayed over, and requires personal sacrifice. Such often is not the case in the places I’ve lived. Instead, it’s sometimes easier to get the child baptized than not. Even for parents who aren’t sure they themselves are believers. Social pressure at work, you know, like getting grandma and grandpa “off their case.” Quite a different world from Augustine’s and we need to think hard about what that means.

 On this day in May, however, I thank God for the Monicas in every child’s life, the people who will pray and persist, love and live faithfully, so that our children will come to believe. Sometimes their “life’s achievement” today will be all the work that comes after baptism – which may be every bit as demanding as Monica’s was before her son’s baptism.

 The Christian Century just carried a brief news item, “Reversing baptism,” telling of Britain’s National Secular Society (NSS) that is offering “certificates of de-baptism” for people wishing to renounce the Christian faith. Part of me thought: what next?! And another part is not surprised: Christianity’s denouncers are getting louder every day.

I was curious. I went to the NSS’s website to see what they were up to and the wording on the certificate they actually sell (and claim that people have downloaded 100,000). It reads: 

I __________ having been subjected to the Rite of Christian Baptism in infancy (before reaching an age of consent), hereby publicly revoke any implications of that Rite and renounce the Church that carried it out. In the name of human reason, I reject all its Creeds and all other superstition in particular, the perfidious belief that any baby needs to be cleansed by Baptism of alleged ORIGINAL SIN, and the evil power of supposed demons. I wish to be excluded henceforth from enhanced claims of church membership numbers based on past baptismal statistics used, for example, for the purpose of securing legislative privilege.  

Interesting, isn’t it, and I wonder where to begin a response. Maybe we should recognize that the NSS has been around Britain for 150 years so some of its claims are nothing new. But here are a few beginning thoughts:

• Apparently baptism is reprehensible because the person did not consent to it. I wonder if they feel the same way about their citizenship in the UK? Or about being born?!
• Human reason is NSS’s final court, it appears, with authority over against such superstitions as original sin. Actually (as said by one whose name I forget), original sin is one church doctrine that can be proved by reason!
• On the NSS website, the leaders claim a sense of humor in offering a certificate of de-baptism. What they do perpetuate themselves and capitalize on, is a misformed understanding of the Christian faith, for example that faith and reason are inimical to each other, or that creeds and superstitions belong in the same category.
• They are concerned, rightly, about baptism’s use as a statistic to procure privilege or status in society, and via the certificate, a person asks to be no part of this system. I grant that there is honesty and integrity in that. 

Here are more thoughts of a related nature:

• The British context is apparent, with tax support for the Church of England probably based on the inflated statistics that include many who are even hostile to it.
• The offering of the certificate shows a breakdown in the church’s life and mission – that baptism has become disconnected from Christian belief and discipleship. The church is suffering the consequences of baptizing where there has been little or no intention to raise the child in the faith.
• The question of a privileged position for the Christian church is no unique to Britain. In the early church, the Romans assured Christians they were not privileged – and individuals often paid a great price. After Constantine “christianized” his empire in the fourth century, the church occupied a position of privilege for centuries – which now in Europe and the USA is rapidly changing.
• Very likely the mission situation in which the Christian church increasingly finds itself will mean more adult baptisms. We cannot count on children coming to know and live the faith as they grow up.
• I don’t think a good response is to abandon infant baptism, but I believe it unwise, and maybe even unfaithful, to baptize indiscriminately with no attention to the faith of parents, sponsors, and others around the child.
• And in the end, I believe you cannot actually de-baptize. In baptism, even in a baptism rejected, God is still there calling one to return and to believe – about which the NSS will, I suppose, have a good, scoffing laugh.

Sunday was a delightful day for my wife and me: our godson was confirmed in the Christian faith.

The day was dark and rainy, actually rather gloomy; but the confirmation brightened every part of the day. What happened with Brent is what should always happen after baptism: his parents and his church community nurtured him in the faith, so that on Sunday, he claimed for himself the faith of his baptismal day. We were so proud of him and happy for him and his family.

He knows this is not the end, but a really big step along the way with lots of steps still ahead. We listened to him express his faith in his own words – with a smile on his face! We heard his mom tell with pleasure that he’s been the reader of Scripture lessons at worship– frequently. We saw him surrounded by Christian family and friends who care about him.

Not everyone has what Brent does – a caring, Christian family and a small, close-knit congregation. That’s why too many children who have been baptized never make it to church worship, Sunday School, and confirmation classes. What could be assumed a generation or two ago – that a baptized child would be brought up in the faith – is no longer the case.  A sad situation. The reasons are many – and challenges for all of us who believe in Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. But today’s not the day for that discussion….

Today we give thanks for Brent, his faith in Jesus, and all who surrounded him and led him to take another step on the journey of following our Lord. Best wishes, Brent. As the lines of an Irish prayer have it: Christ on your right, Christ on your left, Christ before you, Christ after you…May Christ always be your companion.

On the commemoration calendar of the Lutheran church (ELCA), today we remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian. On this date in 1945, he was hanged on Nazi gallows for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

A pastor-teacher in Germany in the 1930s, Bonhoeffer has been my ministry’s inspiration. His writing on grace and baptism in The Cost of Discipleship almost 75 years ago, for example, set me a long and continuing course of lifting up baptismal spirituality, beginning with a master’s thesis at Luther Seminary.

Mindful that Bonhoeffer’s pastoral ministry took place while Hitler consolidated power and went to war, I offer a few of his words that first stirred me (and many others):

Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacrament; grace as the church’s inexhaustible pantry, from which it is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without costs….

Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways….

Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ….

[Costly grace] is costly, because it calls to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live…. Above all, grace is costly, because it was costly to God, because it costs the life of God’s Son…. [Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 4, Discipleship, pp. 43-45]

Let that be enough for now, the right note to sound here in Holy Week which is truly about costly grace.