What would you say if I asked you to tell me about your baptism? Would you have an answer to that? What would you say if I asked you about what your baptism means to you? That might be easier to answer, but I’m also guessing that your baptism might not be the most exciting topic you’ve engaged in or not the most exciting aspect of your faith life. And yet this is the one thing, in particular, that the major Lutheran nerds in your life will tell you to remember daily. Daily is kind of a lot for thinking about something that doesn’t get you all fired up.

When I was interviewing to begin the process of becoming a pastor, I was caught way off guard when I was asked about my baptism and what it meant to me. I could feel from the interviewer that they wanted me to be excited and to be able to expound on my baptism from the depths of my soul. But, I just didn’t have that fire in my bones about it. Frankly, I found the question confusing and began my answer by saying, “Well, I was a baby.” Needless to say, that part of the interview didn’t go all that well. I did go on to say vaguely coherent words about baptism, but I had no excitement about the subject. And I didn’t really understand why I should have been excited about the subject.

So, when we read about the baptism of Jesus, I’m not sure that anyone is going to say that this is their favorite gospel story or that this one always brings them to tears. It’s a nice story. It’s important that Jesus did not hold himself separate from the masses of people being baptized. He fully entered into the human experience of repentance, prayer, and was also baptized. It’s beautiful that the Holy Spirit descended and blessed him. But, I’d say this story is maybe a 6/10 on the scale of gospel stories.

I think our response to baptism is tepid in part because we don’t really get baptism. It’s not clear what it’s really all about.

In all of our defense, I’d say this is not our fault because what we’ve been taught about baptism isn’t really what it’s all about. The early Christian church, who established baptism as central to our faith had a different understanding of what they were up to. Somewhere along the way in Christian history, baptism became the necessary thing that kept you from burning in hell fire. People were taught that without baptism, God would have no choice but to condemn you to hell.

Others think baptism is what we do when we make the decision to follow Christ. It’s something we earn in response to our decision, like a graduation of sorts. Other folks get baptized multiple times in their lives as a gesture of commitment. Still others understand it as basically an initiation rite into Christianity.

I think a lot of us would be in the category of thinking of baptism as a beautiful initiation rite. As if It’s basically a nice thing you do to enter the community of believers. As initiation rites go, it is a lovely thing. It’s beautiful to welcome babies, kids, and adults into the faith and into our community of love, faith, and commitment to each other and to God. It’s meaningful.

But even so, this is the only element of our faith that I have repeatedly been encouraged to remember every day.

Now, as nice as baptisms are, every day is a lot. Especially since there are many parts of our Christian faith that we could be encouraged to contemplate every day, but we aren’t. It’s baptism that holds this distinction. At least in my world in the Lutheran church.  

Mysterious, no?

So, there’s got to be something going on in baptism that is worthy of contemplation every day. So, let’s go exploring.

First of all, baptism is the entry ritual of the church. There’s no doubt about that and this alone is meaningful. However, there is more going on with baptism. You can learn about the early church’s contemplation of baptism in the early letters of the church, such as in Romans and Ephesians. In these letters, we hear that baptism is our way of participating in the death and resurrection of Christ. It’s the beginning of our new birth, not just membership. It’s a means of illumination and enlightenment. Baptism is how we are grafted into the body of Christ. It’s the shift from an old creation to a new one. It’s passage from death to life, like Noah’s ark.

Martin Luther (the founder of the Lutheran church and leader of the Reformation) talked about baptism as the death of the “old Adam” so that the “new Adam” can be nurtured and fed in our new life with Christ. And, btw, communion is the food for this new Adam in us, for Christ in us.

Luther’s description of the old Adam and the new Adam reminds me of a Cherokee parable about the two wolves inside of us. Perhaps you remember it, too. It goes like this:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The grandfather simply replied, “The one you feed.”

(https://www.virtuesforlife.com/two-wolves/)

Baptism is indeed the entrance into the church, an initiation rite. But it is also a declaration of which wolf you intend to feed. To me, this is something to contemplate daily. Baptism is a big “NO!” to our human ways of life that are harmful to life and a big “YES!” to the ways of Christ, to the ways of living that are life-giving. This change, this transformation in us is Christ’s action in us, this slow change that unfolds over time of the evil wolf dying and the good wolf thriving.

I think of this process, this daily dying and rising in Christ, as being the path of our life-long conversion. We may think conversion happens quickly. Or that we were born Christian, have always been Christian, and so we don’t need conversion. But the truth is we’re all in the middle of this slow conversion, this slow process of dying and rising in Christ.

The two wolves is a helpful metaphor. We all know these wolves that live in us and can sometimes be in battle. Baptism is about the death, the end of the evil wolf. Communion is about feeding that holy, good wolf in us. It’s about transformation that takes place over time. Our conversion to ever more fully following in Christ’ path is ongoing and it takes a community to support each of us in our conversion. We don’t need help to feed the hateful, fearful, and selfish wolf in us. But to starve that wolf and feed the Christ-like wolf, we do need support and reminders. We need communion. We need the Word. We need friendship and prayer. We need to remember our baptism, this ritual that cleanses away the evil wolf, or as Luther would say, the “old Adam.”

This ongoing conversion is salvation. Often times, folks think of salvation (whether or not you are “saved”) as only being relevant in terms of where we go after death. If you’re saved, you know you’re going to heaven. If not, you’re going to hell.

But the meaning of salvation in Hebrew literally means spaciousness. It also means healing or wholeness. So, let’s imagine what spaciousness might feel like in our bodies. What would it be like to live without constriction in our bodies or in our relationships. Doesn’t that sound like a beautiful way of being in the world that is maybe different than our normal, everyday experience? Does that not sound like salvation, to move from a state of fear, constriction, anger, or worry to a state of wholeness and spaciousness?

This transformation that takes place in Christ, however you describe this change, is a process that is ritualized in baptism. It’s a turning towards God in the embrace of your faith community that will support you in your faith journey. This transformation, this long conversion (as I call it) takes time and thus we are reminded to remember our baptisms. It’s not just an initiation, but a means of conversion that doesn’t happen in a moment but over a lifetime. Unless you’re Jesus, but none of us are. For the rest of us, it takes us some time.

So, today as you come forward for communion, I invite you to dip your finger into the baptismal font and make the sign of the cross on your forehead, if that doesn’t feel too weird, to remember your baptism. It’s a tiny moment of affirming that we do indeed want to feed our Christ-like wolf inside of us. We do indeed long for the spaciousness of Christ in our lives, our bodies, and our world. This is the big gift of baptism, which Jesus received making this community holy, making the waters of the world holy, and making us holy in our ongoing path of following him.

AMEN