On the occasion of the baptism of young Malakhi
Over the last several months I’ve enjoyed meeting up with Malakhi and his family to talk about and prepare for this morning’s baptism. And that’s been one of the really fun parts of my first number of months here: meeting new people and families, getting to know them, learning about their experience in or attraction to the Church, what they find interesting, what they find weird, what baptism might mean for us today, and stuff like that.
And it’s not just been enjoyable getting together with several groups of families and friends. It’s kind of a a surprise in general to have had so many enquiries about baptism. It’s been a pleasant surprise. Because church is for most people no longer the place where business connections are made. It’s no longer an said or unsaid (but understood) expectation; part of being a good citizen. It’s no longer the only thing going on on Sunday mornings.
One of the challenges that the traditional, mainline Churches are going through is that what we’ve inherited is a church built on the assumption that the baby boom was going to last forever. Which it did not, to speak nothing of the ‘60s — which brought many important changes, but changes that the Church certainly didn’t anticipate, and struggled to understand. Because the Church was able to live on a kind of cruise control, from its legalization in the early 300s until the mid-to-late twentieth century.
But a lot of us, finally, are saying that this new reality isn’t a bad thing. Because this has brought about a determined sort of intentionality to our faith. And when people seek out baptism, they haven’t gotten there on cruise control. It’s interesting that the guy who legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, the Emperor Constantine, he had a Christian mother, and seemed sympathetic to churches, and seems to have considered himself a Christian for a good number of years. But it wasn’t until right before his death that he was baptized. Because in those days a lot of people in the Church had trouble reconciling the radical symbolism of dying to sin and rising to new life with Christ, with the reality that we’re all at the very least pretty fallible people. So sinning after baptism presented something of a problem. Constantine, for instance, killed off a bunch of his family members, so saving baptism for late in life gave him, shall we say, some flexibility in his actions.
These days we don’t have the same hang-up, nor do we murder as many people as the Romans did, and we trust in what we’ll be saying in a few moments, that we resist evil, but whenever we fall into sin, we repent and return to the Lord. Paul, in writing to the Church in Rome, connects the Christian life to how they lived. And he sets out a few rules, basically no more wild living, but also no fighting, and no jealousy. But really at the root of all that, he says, the guiding principle is “love one another.” Because undergirding debauchery and quarrelling and jealousy is a sort of selfishness that sets us and our desires over and against everyone else.
So there’s a bit of a difference between how Constantine saw baptism — as a sort of “after-life insurance” to be paid out on his deathbed — and how it’s more commonly seen today: as an entry point into the life of discipleship. Where with God’s help we try to live in a way that reflects the love we see in the life and death of Jesus. And whether one is baptized as a baby or teen or adult, it’s done in recognition of a God, who in Jesus, has undone the power of death, and who cares for us, and is bringing together a people called to give the world a living example of mercy, self-sacrifice, mutual-support, forgiveness, and even sometimes, joy and hope.
So today Malakhi will be baptized into that life of faith, a disciple or follower of Jesus. But this life isn’t lived in isolation; it’s lived in the ups and downs of the world, as part of the community of the Church; a church that even early on, as we heard in the gospel reading, can be difficult. But alongside those challenges of living together come the blessings of being part of a community. And we can see today that Malakhi has Amy and Tyler, and godparents Greg and Alex, and many others, who want to support him in his life. And I hope that Malakhi and his family and loved ones know that here at St. Andrew’s they have a community that cares, and with Malakhi, every day seeks to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and embody and communicate his message of reconciliation. Amen.
© 2017 The Rev’d Matthew Kieswetter