We were in an Episcopal Church on Sunday. The preacher had just returned from three weeks away from the congregation. She and her husband had made the pilgrimage known as the Camino de Santiago.
This Sunday was the day for a baptism as well as the priest's homecoming. The sermon, then, had to do double duty. She was masterful and I told her so. She spoke about how the child to be baptized was beginning a life-long journey that many would describe as "crazy." She and her husband had begun a journey that many in her crowd marveled at and wondered aloud how she could do it. Finally she decided that the only answer to how she and her husband succeeded was by -- in the words often spoken -- with one step. And then another. My wife turned to me and whispered "step by step" because it was the name of a video I posted some years ago about a discipline I followed on Koko Crater on O'ahu, Hawai'i. Link to video: https://youtu.be/g3_DkIujgZo .
Today she linked her pilgrimage and the pilgrimage of this wee child in her parents' arms, no more than 3 months old. So innocent and cute, she didn't very well exemplify the crazy insanity that a committed Christian life might well be. At the same time, it wasn't clear how the preacher was going to link the little one to the two weeks of slogging along northern Spain that she and her husband had just completed
She did it with that little metaphor and snap rejoinder of, "It all begins with one step." Immediately I thought of all the theological battles that have been fought over infant baptism. In many ways the boundaries of the Reformation were forged from the various positions one might take over baptizing children before the age of reason. I thought of the metaphor that I learned in seminary used by the orthodox to explain their practice of baptizing, confirming, and communicating infants all at the same time. It was said:
In the same way that physically a child needs to be cleansed, sheltered, and fed to thrive, so too a Christian needs "baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist."
I was just delighted with this new metaphor. It seemed to me something like God pronouncing that this little child was way ahead of the game in advancing her CHristian life. Those who needed to be baptized later in life were like the slow students who took longer to get ready.
The wager we make is that the community, the god-parents, the ethos of the surrounding culture of the innocent child, is going to carry the Grace to allow her to grow into her Christian vocation.
This Sunday was the day for a baptism as well as the priest's homecoming. The sermon, then, had to do double duty. She was masterful and I told her so. She spoke about how the child to be baptized was beginning a life-long journey that many would describe as "crazy." She and her husband had begun a journey that many in her crowd marveled at and wondered aloud how she could do it. Finally she decided that the only answer to how she and her husband succeeded was by -- in the words often spoken -- with one step. And then another. My wife turned to me and whispered "step by step" because it was the name of a video I posted some years ago about a discipline I followed on Koko Crater on O'ahu, Hawai'i. Link to video: https://youtu.be/g3_DkIujgZo .
Today she linked her pilgrimage and the pilgrimage of this wee child in her parents' arms, no more than 3 months old. So innocent and cute, she didn't very well exemplify the crazy insanity that a committed Christian life might well be. At the same time, it wasn't clear how the preacher was going to link the little one to the two weeks of slogging along northern Spain that she and her husband had just completed
She did it with that little metaphor and snap rejoinder of, "It all begins with one step." Immediately I thought of all the theological battles that have been fought over infant baptism. In many ways the boundaries of the Reformation were forged from the various positions one might take over baptizing children before the age of reason. I thought of the metaphor that I learned in seminary used by the orthodox to explain their practice of baptizing, confirming, and communicating infants all at the same time. It was said:
In the same way that physically a child needs to be cleansed, sheltered, and fed to thrive, so too a Christian needs "baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist."
I was just delighted with this new metaphor. It seemed to me something like God pronouncing that this little child was way ahead of the game in advancing her CHristian life. Those who needed to be baptized later in life were like the slow students who took longer to get ready.
The wager we make is that the community, the god-parents, the ethos of the surrounding culture of the innocent child, is going to carry the Grace to allow her to grow into her Christian vocation.