WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO REMEMBER YOUR BAPTISM? [Sun, 1-8-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO REMEMBER YOUR BAPTISM? [Sun, 1-8-23]

 

This is “Baptism of the Lord Sunday” in the church calendar. Also, thus, “Remember Your Baptism Sunday.” But what are we remembering? I’m remembering the baptism of Charles Howard.

Charles was in jail for murdering his pregnant nineteen-year-old wife. Just the year before she had been a high school student of my wife, studying “Child Development” and “Child Care,” acquiring knowledge she would never get to use.

It was all a mistake. Charles told Catherine Smith, the head of the volunteer jail ministry, that he wanted to talk to the pastor of The Wesleyan Methodist Church. Catherine was a member of Wesley United Methodist, so that’s what she heard.

Charles told me, “I am a weak man. If I go to prison, I’ll do bad things. But I’ve made my peace with God. I want you to baptize me so that I can commit suicide and go ahead and be with God.”

What would you have done? You could have baptized Charles. You don’t have to be ordained to baptize. Any Christian can do it. Even in the Roman Catholic Church. Usually it’s “in extremis,” like if a new-born baby is dying. Then a nurse baptizes. But you could have done it.

I told Charles that baptism is not a get-into-heaven-free card. It’s not magic. We call it “a means of grace,” but what does that mean? Does it mean you’ll never sin again? Hardly! I told Charles that I would not baptize him so that he could commit suicide, for then I would be complicit in his murder. I told him that I would baptize him like anyone else, as a means of grace, to help him live as part of the Body of Christ. He agreed.

I put hands and water on him there in the jail. I took Lee Steinmetz, our Lay Leader, as a representative of the whole church, and we took the bowl from the baptistry in our church building. Charles was baptized like any other church member, to be a means of grace in the world, a part of the Body of Christ.

He went to prison. Served 13 years. Was released. Got another girlfriend. Murdered her, too.

Was I complicit in her murder? If I had baptized Charles so he could commit suicide, I would be implicit in his murder, but I would have saved her life. Wouldn’t that be better?

Or is it that simple? After all, by his own admission, Charles was a weak man. There’s a good chance he would not have carried through and committed suicide. Then I would have been guilty only of enabling a scam to fool God.

When you “remember” your baptism, renew it in your life, what are you doing? What does it mean? I have no idea. I believe in baptism. I know it is a means of grace. Beyond that, it is a mystery.

Of this, though, I am fairly certain. Whenever you feed the hungry or give drink to the thirsty, you are baptizing the world. When you go to the sick and imprisoned, you are baptizing the world. When you bring comfort to the desolate and hope to the hopeless, you are baptizing the world.

We remember our baptism when we forget about it, when we don’t worry about what it means, but just go about living it, as a means of grace for the world.

John Robert McFarland