13/50: Babies and Baptism
Those who knew me in the first 20 years of my life know how crazy I was about Amy Grant.
“Come and lift me up
Into the clean and clear
I’m waitin’ on you Jesus in the water here
So come and wash me clean”
We’ve been spending a few days on suffering, so let’s shift to babies today.
Growing up in the Baptist church, we only did “believer baptism.” You had to be able to give a clear profession of faith and make it clear that your faith was your own. I was baptized when I was 8, I think. The baptistry heater had broken that day and so the water was ice cold, which only reinforced my sense of sincerity. After the service, my family gathered at my house and offered Bible verses and blessings. It was a beautiful day.
When I married the son of a Methodist minister, I went to the baptism of an infant at my father-in-law’s church. I about jumped out of my seat during the service as every single thing that I believed about baptism, and by extent, salvation, was flouted in the liturgy. When I look through the liturgy now, I am not even sure what triggered me. But I know what I didn’t hear: that eternal salvation and baptism required a single prayer made by a conscious person. And that baby was too young to have done that.
Fast forward about ten years. A baby was baptized at the Presbyterian Church where we were members. As the water poured over her head, tears of joy streamed down my cheeks. Something had shifted in me.
What the pastor said that day is what I now say when I baptize a child: “Before we can speak a word or walk a step, baptism declares that God loves us. God’s love is a gift we do not earn.”
In changing traditions, I changed understandings of baptism. I honor both as beautiful in their own way. I’m so glad that I remember my baptism. And there is nothing more beautiful that water on the head of an infant, declaring “You belong to God.”