When I was a young man I watched the new guy strut into my pastor's pulpit and preach with a scripted yet impersonal eloquence. The next week I saw that all the pew racks were fully stocked with the proper number of hymnals and Bibles and with newly sharpened pencils and everything. The next week I was on my way out the door because the new guy was a control freak. It may have taken a couple more months to accumulate enough reasons to leave that church, but my tipping point was literally a sanctuary full of sharpened pencils.
I didn't make an appointment to talk with him about the pencils. We spoke about other things that were on my mind, and I pretended I was listening but was really just checking off my list of accumulated offenses to justify breaking fellowship with that congregation to go to another. Once I'd done my duty of giving him a chance to talk, I walked.
Never once did it occur to me how I'd hurt that church's members or pastor. Never once did I consider what it meant to the congregation that baptized me to take all their love and care and support for granted and leave without so much as a thank you. I mean, these people poured money into the plates to I could make crafts in Sunday School. They bought cases of grapefruits and oranges and lightbulbs and popcorn to help me experience more than they could give me. They came to my performances and applauded my trumpet playing and celebrated my successes and prayed for me from the time my parents carried me to the font.
My baptism didn't mean much to me. I didn't understand nor appreciate the depth of the promises which that little church both made and kept on my behalf. Neither did I think I owed them a thing. I let sharpened pencils push me over the edge and broke fellowship with them.
Anxiety has a way of gathering all our attention onto just one fearful thing until that fearful thing becomes all we see and care about and talk about. That one fearful thing then becomes emblematic of all the problems connected to it, and we bind ourselves to that emblem of our fear, and we spread our fear, and we become consumed by our fear. Not wanting to be accused of such anxiety-ridden perspectives, we begin to apply reason to justify anxiety, and we lay a path to alleviate anxiety by cutting it off either by eliminating the source or removing ourselves from the source.
It wasn't about the pencils. This young man who loved his pastor was grieving his absence. No one could take his place. No one should even try. It's offensive, don't you know, to see anyone else step into that pulpit or sit behind that desk. But I couldn't deal with my grief. I didn't know how. So I bound it all up in criticisms over freshly stocked pew racks and the like until I actually believed this is what was really bugging me, and I left.
My lack of understanding the meaning of baptism back then proves to be more profound than in the way I dismissed the church gave itself to me. I also did not allow my whole self to belong to Jesus. I did not look to him to bind up my wounded and broken heart. I did not place my fears over losing my blessed pastor into his hands. I did not act like one who belonged to Jesus, and did not avail myself of his peace that passes all understanding. So I denied not only my belonging to that congregation, but also my belonging to Jesus.
Today I have the privilege of standing on the other side of the font to baptize those who come, either by virtue of their decision or by their parents making promises on their behalf. I get to reach into that font and seal promises made, sacramental promises, of belonging both to God and to each other. Somewhere in the midst of water and promises there comes the Holy Spirit to make the belonging both binding and effective in the eyes of God.
Today I also have the heartache and grief of watching people in droves miss the point of baptism. I get to see those whose accumulated grief and anxiety have pushed them over the edge and caused them to believe breaking fellowship is what they must do to find relief.
If my church sees baptism is only a single event and not a life-long metaphor to continually call us into belonging to God and each other, then I'm failing as a Minister of Word and Sacrament to drive that point home. Because of baptism, we belong to God and to each other. Because of baptism, we work things out. Because of baptism, we rely fully on Jesus. Because of baptism, we give him all our anxiety and fear instead of spreading it amongst ourselves. Because of baptism, we live, not as fearful folks, but as forgiving folks who bear with one another in love. Because of baptism, we belong.
And so the Spirit combines with the water to bind us together in a commonly shared seal of belonging to God and to each other. "For you are not your own; you were bought at a price," (I Cor. 6:19d-20a). We belong to God for all eternity. And by baptism in Christ, "we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others," (Romans 12:5). We belong to each other from cradle to grave.
And now that this blog on the Font is joined with that previous blog on the Table, I've got to ask a question. If the Font calles us to belong to God and to each other, and if the Table calls us to reconcile with one another as Christ has reconciled us to God, then why aren't these sacraments sufficient counter-balance to all the anxiety over how the church chooses to relate to people who are gay? Why is the call to belong to God and each other, and the call to reconcile with God and each other, not of sufficient value to keep us together?
