There were three country churches in a small mid-west town: the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church and the Lutheran Church. Each church was overrun with pesky squirrels. One day, the Presbyterian Church called a meeting to decide what to do about the squirrels.
After much prayer and consideration they determined that the squirrels were predestined to be there and they shouldn't interfere with God's divine will. The Methodist group got together and decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God's creations.
So, they humanely trapped the squirrels and set them free a few miles outside of town. Three days later, the squirrels were back. It was only the Lutherans who were able to come up with the best and most effective solution. The Lutherans rounded them up and baptized the squirrels and registered them as members of the church. Now they only see them on Christmas and Easter. ……
“Go therefore, and make teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Perhaps no command of Christ has caused so much controversy, division, bitterness, and cruelty as this one. Today persecution between Christians over the issue has largely ceased, yet we still disagree. In my opinion baptism has divided more Christians than any single doctrine within the Christian Church.
Once I was asked when did I become a Christian? My answer was when I was baptized. I believe in Baptism, because it is a tangible means by which God showed me love, washed way my sins, a tangible means God reaches out to me, adopts and accepts me as one of his children.
I also see baptism as a beginning of a relation with our heavenly Father. Baptism is not a “some kind of Hell Insurance policy,” we take, should something horrible were to happen to the child or and end product as many may suggest. This kind of thinking is far from the truth about the works of Baptism.
Baptism is sacrament of commitment to the living God. What does it mean to be baptized? I would like to share with you just four thoughts for remembering the covenant of our Baptism.
1. Baptism is the way of Seeing:
The central symbol of Christianity is the Cross, it is on the cross that God meets us. In abyss of despair, in the deepest darkness God comes to us. In the painful reality of our mortality, our ultimate loneliness, our weakness, God encounters us with “Hope of Salvation.”
God is not found through the process of reason or the power of logic or any human experiments. We do not find God, rather it is God who finds us ….. in the moment of our darkness, our pain, our emptiness, our loneliness, our weakness ….Walla, there God meets us where we are, and the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to See the Cross as God’s embrace. To see the cross as God’s victory for those who believe, through the pouring of Water, and the spoke Word.
2. Baptism is a way of Hearing:
The apostle Paul writes “ How could they hear” unless someone tells them. There is an amusing story of a woman who one day decided to read the New Testament and investigate the claims of Christianity. Several months later she was baptized.
Immediately following the ritual she said enthusiastically, "I could feel the Holy Spirit descend on me. I'm glad I've finally got religion. I can see things differently now, including that uncle of mine whom I hated with a passion. Once I vowed I would never go to his funeral. But now I'll be happy to go to his funeral anytime."
First we must affirm that the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of Seeing God in Christ Jesus, and the Hoy Spirit who bestows upon us the gift to hear the Living Word.
Through the spoken God pleads us to come and follow the ways of God. When God comes in:
The baptizes not just See or Hear, but also teaching others the saving Word of God. We should remain teachable in order to grow to our potential spiritually. We should also teach others, encourage others to grow in their Baptismal covenant. Your baptism is your ordination of God to be a teacher of righteousness. Not to teach is disobedience to your calling as a Christian. All these is possible through the pouring of water and the spoken Word that accompany the Water. We are called to make disciples by Seeing, Hearing, and Teaching …. But must remain teachable.
4. Baptism is a way of Following:
St. Francis once prayed:
“For it is giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is dying that we are born to eternal life.”
In Baptism a person must be shaped by the Gospel, it means accepting the reality. That we humans would do almost anything to avoid, to ignore, to escape, to evade the call to righteousness. The reality is: We are called to die in order to live. Anyone that wish to follow must deny self and take up the cross and follow ….. Jesus says.
We can not die to self on our own… therefore following Jesus in his death and resurrection…. Our Baptism then becomes the foundation, upon which the house of faith is built (Titus 3:4). Our Baptism calls us to stand and be counted in words and deeds in defending righteousness, equality, justice and preservation of what God has entrusted to us.
Our Baptism calls us children of God. As children and heirs of his kingdom, we are call to celebrate all that is of God his gift of life until the end of time. This becomes the over powering event in our lives, the event which tell us who we are and how are to live our lives for his glory. Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
September 25, 2005