Entering the Family

On Sunday, 8 August, Gwendolyn was baptized at Nineveh Presbyterian Church, by our friend and my fellow minister, Sophie Draffin. For so many parents, baptism represents a rite of passage that makes their children's lives socially complete. If asked why they want their children baptized, many respond that it's just the thing to do. At worst, they articulate a popular misconception that baptism is insurance that if the child dies, baptism ensures the child will not be lost in the afterlife.

For me, baptism is the moment of joy when the Church recognizes Yahweh's awesome claim on our lives. The claim is awesome not just because Yahweh has chosen us as children; not just because by Yahweh's claim we become brothers and sisters with fellow Christians everywhere; but also because Yahweh claims us before we can do anything to earn it. As the letter to the Ephesians puts it, "when we are still dead in our sins and trespasses" Yahweh makes us alive with Christ. Yahweh has put my daughter Gwendolyn in her high-chair at the table in the Kingdom of God, right next to Christ, simply because she is a beloved daughter.

The marks of her membership at this table include the rite of water (what we normally refer to as "baptism"), prayer for the Holy Spirit to dwell with Gwendolyn for the rest of her eternal life, and the Church vowing to care for her and bring her up in the faith. This last is the most moving part for me.

I enjoyed having grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends-as-good-as-family surround us for the big weekend. I appreciate the blood relationships that the Lord has given Gwendolyn which will provide support for her throughout her life. I rejoice in that mystical bond of family that even the faithless enjoy. But my heart leaped at a different thought on the day of Gwendolyn's heavenly adoption.

I relished most the moment when an elder from Nineveh Presbyterian Church led the congregation in its baptismal vows. The members of Nineveh Presbyterian Church, bound together by their communal commitment to Jesus Christ, reaffirmed their faith and promised to care for Gwendolyn and equip her for the moment when she, too, will confess with us an adult faith in Jesus. Until then, she is covered by the Spirit's love alive in the Church, in the family bound together by the spiritual blood of Christ. The voices of those seventy people saying "We will" spoke with the passion and power of the divine voice for my daughter.

And the significance of the moment was sealed by a divinely arranged coincidence. Gwendolyn has learned to say "Amen" with us when we pray before meals; when Sophie led the prayer of invocation (assisted by the laying on of hands by the whole congregation), Gwendolyn added her own "Amen" to that of the adults. The Spirit is already working to show this newest Daughter of Sarah where her home is. Hallelujah!

~emrys