Baptism

The original opening line of this post "within the last year" is no longer strictly true as it has taken so long for me to finalise, but the rest of it is as valid today as it was when I decided to try and write something on this subject.

Within the last year I have had the privilege to attend three baptisms: each very different from the other, each attached to a sense of huge privilege to be part of the story, each a window into something of the mystery of faith and grace. I feel I want to in some way try to capture here something of what it meant to be a part of three very different expressions of a community of faith welcoming a new member.

The first was Rasul, an Iranian friend, expressing his new found Christian faith by full immersion baptism, as an adult, into the Vineyard church. I knew before I went that this was going to be somewhat outside my church comfort zone. But there was certainly energy and a deep sense of faith. For Rasul, there was also the very tangible, visible expression of great joy and deep peace: an undoubtedly welcome respite in a troubled life.

The next was the baby son of an Eritrean friend, baptised into the Orthodox tradition at forty days old. I think I am probably relatively well-versed in a wider range of different church traditions than many; but this involved spreading my ecumenical wings a little further than they had stretched before. I had little idea what to expect (and a lot of the time, little idea what was going on). I was the obvious outsider (not a bad thing to experience from time to time), and I was made to feel wonderfully welcome, not just by the family who had invited me, but by a wider community who opened their arms to embrace me. It felt like an immense privilege to have been invited into something I will undoubtedly rarely have the opportunity to experience.

And the third was our niece, and now God-daughter, who, at four years old, was being welcomed into her local church community and into the Church of England. This one was a much more familiar tradition, I knew what to expect, how to participate. I too, after all, was baptised, as a four-year-old into this same denomination, and while I may not remember that day itself, it is a tradition which, while it is no longer all of my now many-faceted Christian identity, has certainly played a significant role in forming it, and which still feels comfortable and familiar.

In many ways, everything about these three occasions was different.

One participated with not just full consent but commitment and great joy; another, too small to have any idea at all what was going on; the third, a generally willing participant. One was modern, lively and loud; one deeply rooted in tradition that has probably hardly changed in many generations; the third embraced a certain informality while still drawing on liturgical structures. There were differences of language, and fusions of cultures, and a thousand other ways in which they differed.

Yet at some deeper level they were, in many ways, all exactly the same. Each was a community of faith and love opening its arms in welcome, expressing a willingness to support someone on their journey, desiring to share something that matters deeply to them with another, full of hope for the gifts of the kingdom, however that may be understood. And tea, they all involved tea.

For all three it was important to be there. Important, and a wonderful privilege. To be there as part of a community, to be there to stand as witness and to open arms in welcome. To be there to express a willingness to share in the journeys, wherever they may lead.

I think the reason this has sat for so long as a "draft" is I probably thought I could use it as a vehicle for some significant theological point, but maybe there is no need to do that. Maybe it's fine just to acknowledge the beauty and privilege of being part of these special days for these three different people.