Baptism is not a commodity

I confess I am astounded by some ideas people have about the church and religion in general. I'm not talking about the agnostic/atheist crowd who reject God and religion. I actually get along with them really well. I don't shove my faith down their throats and we often find common ground on social justice and ethical issues.

My real conundrum is with nominal Christians: those folks who say they are Christian but if you put them on trial for it, you'd never have enough evidence to convict them. These are generally folks who will say things like, "I can be a good Christian and not go to church." Basically, they want Jesus when it conveniences them and they really don't want to give up anything to be a disciple. I think of this as "consumerist Christianity."

Basically, these folks reduce faith and religion to a commodity which they feel they can demand from the Church. Nowhere is this more evident than when they have children and the question of baptism arises. It's about this time that they view me and the Church as the purveyor of religious goods and services who will, of course, baptize their kid no questions asked and no demands made.

Last year, I had someone email me on a Tuesday telling me they wanted their daughter baptized on Sunday ... yes, THAT Sunday ... because Grace was the father's childhood church and he wanted his children baptized there. Mind you, this was not an email asking me about what baptism would entail: it was an email demanding their daughter be baptized on that day because that's when they could get the family together. I responded by telling him I wanted to meet with him and his wife. Thankfully, he agreed to a face to face meeting. During that meeting, I showed them the Book of Common Prayer and the vows they made to raise their child in the Christian faith and life. I asked them how they were doing with that vow since they had made it just one year earlier for their oldest daughter. They admitted they were not living into it at all. I asked, "Why not?" They told me they hadn't found a church home close to where they lived.

I explained to them that I don't baptize children whose parents do not take them to church. It's pointless. For all the good it will do, you might as well put your child in the inflatable kiddie pool and squirt them with the hose three times. I suggested they start attending a local Episcopal Church near their home and gave them the contact information. I told them I would be willing to baptize their daughter once they became involved in a worshiping community. They called me back in four months, after getting involved in this local church, and I was delighted to baptize their daughter ... and transfer their memberships to their local church.

Baptism is about joining the Church and committing yourself to being a part of a worshiping community where you can learn to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. It's about personal transformation, but we believe this happens within community, not as a solitary enterprise. Baptism is personal - but it is not private! It concerns the whole community gathered who commit to helping you grow into the full stature of Christ. We, the Church, baptize people into the Body of Christ - and at baptism, the individual "me" becomes part of a much bigger "we" known as the Church.

Some things are not commodities. Baptism isn't a commodity. It is a call from Jesus Christ to take up your cross and follow him - which means dying to self and making sacrifices. Jesus makes demands on his disciples. He didn't say to James and John, "Follow me when it's convenient for you" or "Follow me if you have nothing else more interesting to do."

Too many nominal "Christians" think that being a disciple of Jesus is like some sort of a la carte menu where you can pick and choose at your convenience when and where to follow Jesus. They believe they can have their own private belief in Jesus divorced from a community and being a part of the Church is something you do if you want to ... or not ... and baptism is a reason to get together to have a party for your baby. That isn't Christianity - it's consumerism wrapped around a cross. To be a real Christian, you need to nail your consumerism to the cross. It needs to die so that you can really live.

Baptism demands something of you. It's not yours to demand on your terms because it's not cheap grace.

Is there life before death?

I've wrestled with this question this week in light of some of the healing stories in Mark's gospel (especially the woman with the 12 year hemorrhage). I've had some wonderful insights from Facebook friends on this - especially on the nature of life and what it means to live.

Jesus said that he came that we might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). I cannot subscribe to the popular prosperity theology that's rampant in our culture which links abundant life to material wealth. Some of the most alive people I've ever met were people who were poor and had short life spans because of where they lived. They invested in relationships not things and conversely, those who spent time heavily invested in things often struggled with relationships.

If we're really honest with ourselves, we'd acknowledge the fact that we are all walking dead. That's right - we all live under a terminal condition ... we all have a death sentence hanging over our heads. We just don't know when, where or how.

So if you began to, as the Tim McGraw song goes, live like you were dying ... what would be different in your life?

Holy Family systems

This week I've been pondering the issue of family systems in light of our Gospel reading from the 3rd Chapter of Mark this Sunday. It's the story about how Jesus' family goes to his house to restrain him because the word is "he's out of his mind." (Mark 3:20-35)

Our image of the Holy Family is not that of dysfunction, is it? When someone says "the Holy Family," our mind leaps to images lifted from Christmas cards showing Mary and Joseph gazing down adoringly at their baby boy in the manger. (As an aside, I always thought Mary looked way too composed in these pictures! As one who logged 38 hours in the labor and delivery ward between two pregnancies, I can assure you no woman looks that good after giving birth. But I digress...)

We have trouble wrapping our heads around the idea that Jesus' family was much like our own - replete with joys, sorrows, and yes, even conflicts and relational dysfunctions. We get a small glimpse in Luke's gospel of the tension when Jesus stays behind in Jerusalem as a 'tween and his exasperated parents return to fetch him. And we get a glimpse of it here in Mark's gospel too.

As the eldest son (which Mark doesn't explicitly tell us, but Matthew and Luke do), Jesus has an expected role to fulfill. He is to learn the trade of his father and take over the work when his father dies or is too old to work. He is to provide for his parents in their advancing age ... a form of first century social security. He is to be the elder of the extended family to whom the family system looks for leadership and guidance. Oh yes, he has a job to do ... but he's not doing it and the family is none too happy about that! They think he's gone meschugge and needs a good talking to in order to straighten him out. They've come to the rescue ... or so they think.

The pull of the family system is strong. The family is the first place where we are told who we are, how we are to relate to the others in the system, and how we relate to the world. Some families affirm their children and want nothing more than for their progeny to be the best they can be. Other families ... well ... not so much. Much of what we believe to be true about ourselves comes from our families and, hopefully, they tell us the truth that we are beloved children of God. Sadly, some families don't know how to affirm and support each other and the distortion of shame and lies can destroy their members.

Jesus steps out of the expectations of his family system in this story. The family tries to pull him back - largely out of their desire for familial self-preservation. But preserving the self isn't what the gospel is about, is it? Transforming the self, both individually and collectively, is where the gospel leads us ... if we but dare to let it.

Weary of the small god

Looks like I struck a nerve with my last Facebook posting:

I don't want to understand God. To understand and be certain of what I experience as mystery would reduce the transcendent Holy to some rational being small enough to live inside my head. Anything that small has no power to save me. I need a God much bigger than that.

Perhaps I'm just getting a bit weary of the image of the immanent God and how that has played itself out in our culture. I often find that the mystical Trinity is often reduced to something way too small and individualistic.

We live in a culture which values the primacy of individualism and independence - both of which I'm persuaded have taken on an idolatrous status. We value independence in America to the point where we denigrate God's intention of interdependence and balance. My independence and its associated "rights" are worshiped at the altar of American culture while forgetting that rights have associated responsibilities to the greater good of the community (yes, that pesky interdependence thing!).

We say we value individualism and so create a culture of spiritual and emotional isolation which breeds unhealthy codependency rather than healthy mutuality. Intimacy at any level, whether with a friend or lover, becomes less and less possible because of our "me centered" world.

While God is both immanent (personal) and transcendent (wholly/holy other and beyond), I feel as if I have grown up in a world which has erred on the side of portraying the immanent personal God at the expense of the transcendent Holy Other. The immanent personal God can be reduced to a god who needs to be understood and follow the "rules" as set forth in human written documents we call Scripture.

Don't get me wrong, Scripture is indeed God-breathed and inspired, yet at the end of the day, these writings are not magically dictated by the Almighty to human automatons who just wrote down everything in pure form. These are human writings describing how God's actions were seen (and interpreted) within the community. But I digress ...

In this culture where "me" and "we" are the center of an immanent God relationship, it is so easy to distort this into an ecclesiology where me/we/us become the locus and focus of God rather than God's work in Christ being the transforming work of the Holy Other which draws us back into God's heart. We begin to see God's actions as beginning and ending in us ... rather than beginning and ending in the mystery of God. And when we do that, there is no call for transformation or change in us. God exists for us at the expense of our existing for God.

So I guess I'm a little weary of the God who just seems way too small. The "boyfriend Jesus" imagery feels too simple and too reductionist. This has no power at all to save me. I need a God much bigger than this. I need the mystery, awe and transcendence of the Triune God who breathed me into existence, sustains me from without (and within), and fills all things (not just me) with the divine. Come Spirit of the Living God!

What is Truth?

Christ the King Sunday is this coming Sunday. It's like New Year's Eve in the Church ... except we don't play Auld Lang Syne as the closing hymn. The following Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent and a new church year (Year C for those of you following the Lectionary's three-year cycle of Scripture readings).

Speaking of the Lectionary, there's something interesting in how the Sunday Gospel readings are structured from All Saints Day to Christ the King Sunday. We travel back to Holy Week for the Sundays between these two festivals. When we encounter Holy Week at the end of Lent in the spring, we focus intently for a seven day period on the events leading to the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's an intense seven day period and the readings focus on what happens to Jesus during this time. In the fall, we return to Holy Week but not to focus on what happens to Jesus, but rather to focus on what Jesus taught during that week. So we heard warnings about the Scribes who "devour widows" and the widow who gave her mite (her "whole being") and the fortelling of the destruction of the Temple. These are all things Jesus said during Holy Week ... the kinds of things that push the buttons of the establishment and can get a guy crucified.

On Christ the King Sunday, we hear a portion of the reading from John 18 where Jesus is being questioned by Pontius Pilate. Some call this a "trial" but it really wasn't one. It was an interrogation into a minor matter as far as the Roman Procurator was concerned. But it was far more than Pilate or Jesus' accusers had ever imagined.

The lectionary text ends just before Pilate utters the question, "What is truth?" I plan to extend the reading to include that question ... precisely because it is the wrong question. When we fall into the trap of asking Pilate's question, "What is truth?" we can begin to believe that truth is something we can grasp - a thing to be possessed. The real question is "Who is Truth?"** and the answer to that question stands in front of Pilate - Jesus Christ is Truth. Jesus is the embodiment of the Truth of God and John tells us this at the beginning of his Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1,14)

And what is the nature of this truth? It is found in the new commandment Jesus gives his disciples:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. (John 13:34-35)

Loving one another requires Christians to be in relationship - not just with other Christians, but with the whole world. When we live in loving relationships, God gives us the grace to become more honest and authentic with ourselves and others. Through the grace of honesty in relationships we come to know the Truth of God's love.

**(N.B. In the Greek, Pilate's question to Jesus in verse 38 is actually a bit more ambiguous. The Greek phrase "Ti estin alhyeia," "ti" can be translated as either "what" or "who." English Bible translations have historically rendered this as "What is truth?" but suffice it to say we cannot know for certain what Pilate intended.)