Wholly Bible: A View from the Pew
A Day to Remember
By RAY WADDLE
I heard a sermon the other day that made me rack my brain, do some research, make a long-distance call and wake up to reality.
The minister's message was a question: "When were you baptized?"
His point: We should know the date.
And I didn't.
We should know our baptism date, he said, just like our birthdate. That's how important it is.
My excuse: I was seven months old at the time, and so I don't remember. But he's right. If baptism is the gateway to Christian identity, I should bother to learn the date even if I was too young to drive myself to the church or take pictures at the ceremony. (My parents did.)
The date, the event, the meaning -- baptism matters. From the beginning, the church insisted on it. Nearly every New Testament book mentions it.
What's it for? A huge history of debate follows baptism around. Adult vs. infant baptism. Dunking vs. sprinkling. Tap water vs. river water.
It's described as a rite of purification, a sign of cleansing of original sin, a defiant act of renouncing Satan, or the imprint of Christ's image upon us.
Whatever the theological details, much is at stake. Baptism is no mere gesture. Something real happens when a person is baptized. Something new is added to the sum of the universe. A person baptized -- bathed in water, prayer and "Father, Son and Holy Spirit" -- is grafted onto the church, the long story of redemption, the turn from sin to salvation.
The baptized person is "sealed as Christ's own us to be evangelists, witnesses, emissaries. (It grants lay people more power than we realize.) As Christianity finds itself more deeply opposed to the surrounding culture of excess and violence, believers will come to see their baptism with greater urgency and imagination.
So I called my old church 550 miles away -- Noel Memorial United Methodist Church in Shreveport, La., which celebrates its 100th anniversary this month. It's been nearly 50 years since I was baptized there, and 30 since I was a member there, but they cheerfully received my request for my baptism date, checked their register and got back to me the next day.
Now I know: April 21, 1957. The day before, my budding little life was just plugging along. The next day, a new destiny was set in motion. It's on my calendar for good now.
--Columnist Ray Waddle is the author of Against the Grain: Unconventional Wisdom from Ecclesiastes, published by Upper Room Books.
