Consolations of Baptism

by Martha E. Stortz

Baptism is an event.

We produce certificates stating date and place and presiding pastor. Most Christians regard baptism as a one-time-only event, celebrated the way one observes births. You’re born once; you’re baptized once. Baptism lies somewhere in the distant past. It’s over and done with; it’s been taken care of.

But baptism is also a practice. Baptism is ongoing, and Christians return to it again and again to soak in its blessings. The past cannot contain baptism the way it contains many other events. We don’t dry off, put the baptismal gown that Grandma Carlson wore back into mothballs, and march off on the journey of discipleship. As a practice, baptism offers a map for the road ahead. In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther speaks again and again of baptism as something to which we return daily: "Thus a Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and ever continued" (The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1959).

Returning daily to baptism helps leave the old behind; it invites us into new life. Lucas Cranach the Elder, a German Reformation artist, depicted this daily return to the new life of baptism in his 1546 painting, "The Fountain of Youth." He painted people who were old and bent entering a large pool of water on one side and emerging young and joyous on the other. In the days before Botox and plastic surgery, explorers like Juan Ponce de Leon crossed the ocean to seek magical youth–giving waters in the swamps of Florida. But Martin Luther believed he’d found those life-renewing waters in baptism. They erased the "old Adam," wrinkled with sin, and left in its place a "new Adam," ready for new possibilities.

Yet Luther knew there would be obstacles along the way. As a daily practice, baptism offers us three much-needed consolations: a reminder of who and whose we really are, compassion and the invitation to be Christ’s hands in the world, and direction for the journey ahead. These consolations of baptism give the grace we need in good times — and especially in bad.

Identity
A young mother extricated herself from an abusive marriage. She had two children, a punishing ex-husband, and something she hadn’t expected: an identity crisis. "Who were we? I had to redefine our family unit." A strong faith and a loving congregation helped. Over and over again, she found herself telling her children, and herself: "We’re Children of God. We’re Children of God. We’re in the family of the Children of God." It’s become the refrain of their daily life. Sometimes she wiped away tears as she spoke it; sometimes she wiped down the counter. But the words stuck. Now whenever she says it, her young daughter chimes in along with her.

This young mother and her children fall back on the blessings of baptism. As an ongoing practice, baptism gives us an identity and a set of relationships we will need for the journey of discipleship. Many Christians regard the most important identity given in baptism as the bestowal of a family name. In some magical sense, it seems that the infant is not "completely" a Carlson or Diaz until it is called by its full name in baptism: Ruth Marie Carl son or Guillermo Bautista Diaz. But this could not be further from the truth. The most important name given in baptism is Child of God, as the family of the children of God acknowledges one of its own.

Claiming the name Child of God establishes certain relationships. Baptism introduces us to our traveling companions along the journey of discipleship. We meet Jesus as our Brother and assume the same identity he took on in his own baptism when the heavens opened and a voice declared: "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). We meet God as Father; we are received into a new relationship with the divine.

We meet a family of brothers and sisters in Christ who welcome us into a whole new relationship with the world. We’ll need this name and these relationships for the road ahead.

Baptism seals this identity by marking us. As we receive the name Child of God, we are marked by the sign of the cross. This mark identifies us to others — and to ourselves.

Consider the culture of tattoos and body-piercings. I used to write off these markings as youthful indiscretions but now I’m not so sure. The people who sport these piercings have witnessed the erosion of such mediating institutions as family and church and government with a cynicism born of despair. Perhaps their piercings and tattoos stake claim to their own bodies, which they hold onto as the last remaining "still point of a turning world," as the poet T.S. Eliot put it. Christians should understand the need to be marked. Baptism marks us, signing us, sealing us, and claiming us for the One who loves us. We are marked women and men.

This identity anchors us in seas of change when other identities become unmoored. Marriages dissolve in divorce or death; we can no longer count on being wife. Jobs change; we can no longer count on being teacher or nurse or lawyer. But there’s always room in God’s family; we can always count on being Child of God. That identity never alters. It tells us who we are even as it tells us whose we are. For God says to each of us: "You are my child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

Compasion
"Easy for you to say!" The woman closed the magazine and tried to sort through conflicting feelings of anger and sadness and fear. She’d been reading about baptism, but the topic was deeply personal. More than 40 years ago she’d buried an infant son — without the sacrament. Things had started going wrong the minute he was born. The family had called their pastor and the hospital chaplain, but they came too late. Now, looked like as an adult. She tried to imagine his children — her grandchildren. But mostly she wondered where he was. What happens to people who die without baptism?

The question is a powerful one, appropriate to our Lutheran tradition that stakes so much on baptism. What happens to people who didn’t get the sacrament? Fortunately Martin Luther himself confronted this question as he responded to an anguished request from a woman who’d lost her infant in childbirth. Because he died without baptism, was the child consigned to the fires of hell? Graphic medieval depictions of fire and brimstone fed her anguish.

Luther responded with pastoral compassion and theological depth. God shared her sorrow, he wrote, and the child was baptized by the tears of his parents.

Lutheran theology emphasizes the faith of the community in the sacrament. At two, four, eight months, a year, an infant has no idea what’s going on in the rite. Rather, the community blesses and promises, pledging to nurture the child in faith. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a congregation to raise a Christian. The youngest children of God rest on the faith of the family.

What if we could extend this faith to all the children of God, claimed and unclaimed, baptized and unbaptized? Resting on the faith of the family, Christians should say that we are all children of God, whether Muslim or Jew, unbeliever or agnostic. Christians simply acknowledge who and whose we are. Baptism is a great way to say "Yes!" to that belonging, claiming the One who has already claimed us.

We who have been baptized have a particular responsibility to the rest of God’s children. We live out our baptism by loving them, reconciling with them, leading them by example to the One "in whom we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

Finally, as the body of Christ in the world, we are that body that people long to touch. God doesn’t expect us latter-day disciples to do any better than the apostle Thomas. He needed visible, touchable proof that he was in the presence of God’s Son. As Christ’s body in the world, we are that proof.

Direction
During high school, I tried a difficult dive off a three-meter board. My coach had been clear about what to do and when to do it, but there was just a lot to keep track of. I would get to the end of the board and freeze. I forgot what I needed to do to go forward. By then, of course, I’d lost the momentum for the dive. I had to start all over again. Each time I had a little more information from the coach, a little more encouragement from my teammates, and a clearer picture of what happened next. But the only way I was going to get off that board was by starting all over again.

The practice of baptism is a lot like learning to dive. It feels like it runs in circles, and we move forward only by beginning all over again. We return again and again to the name we received in baptism: Child of God. We move forward only by returning to baptism’s blessing: "This is my child, the Beloved." Returning to that name and that blessing orients us to the journey ahead just like a run down a three–meter board orients a diver to the jack–knife ahead. The call that baptism issues is a simple invitation: "Follow me."

"Follow me." Jesus beckoned his first disciples with the same words, and the invitation was so compelling, they didn’t ask for travel insurance first. Along the way, however, disciples faltered and fell out of step. They longed for the lives they had left behind, even the monotony of fishing. They missed their friends and family; they worried about Jesus’ strange ways and odd taste in friends. Mostly they were afraid of what the journey would bring. Again and again, Jesus re-issued the invitation: "Follow me." These words bookend the life of discipleship. If we take Peter’s story seriously, these words begin (Mark 1:16–20) and end ( John 21:22) the journey. The only thing Jesus says as frequently are the words: "Be not afraid." That’s no coincidence.

The journey of discipleship is perilous. As was the case with medieval pilgrims, the journey might entail suffering, persecution, and even death. Pilgrim’s garb marked these travelers as easy prey. As we have seen, baptism makes us marked women and men, targets for everything and everyone held in thrall by evil. Yet, while baptism makes us more visible, it also gives us the power to stand up to evil. Baptized into the death of Jesus, we rest assured that we are also baptized into his resurrection (Romans 6:4). The confrontation with powers and principalities will end, not at the cross, but with Pentecost, the descent of the Spirit of the Risen Christ.

Let us hold fast to the consolations of baptism and move into the future with hope, a light step, and a steady heart.

Martha E. Stortz is professor of historical theology and ethics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. She was the author of LWT’s 2007–2008 Bible study, "Blessed to Follow."