Homecoming :
Stories of Living in God's Way
John Dalton—Spiritual Practice of Baptism
First, I’d like to thank everyone at the Church of the Pilgrims for welcoming our family and for allowing us to become a part of this wonderful congregation. Last Sunday, our little boy William was baptized here in a truly lovely ceremony. Since then, I’ve been trying to think about the meaning of the practice of baptism and our experience here last weekend.
One of the benefits of getting older is that you become a better judge of your own limitations. So, it quickly became clear to me that I would not be able to offer you any insights about theological concepts pertaining to the meaning of baptism. Rather, I’ll just try to tell you what it meant to me. And, I’d like to apologize ahead of time if what I say today is merely a statement of the obvious. For reasons that I’m about to share with you, what has been a bit of a revelation to me is probably second nature to you.
By way of background, until William was born, I really wasn’t any kind of a regular churchgoer. I was born and raised a Christian, but around the age of 16, I wandered away and really did not have much of a spiritual life over the next 25 years. As a result, my ideas about religion remained immature, to put it mildly. [In college, I became infatuated with the study of Big Ideas. Like many people who shared similar interests, I began to live largely within my own head.] Accordingly, my view of spirituality was that it was pretty much purely metaphysical – that real spiritual experience was somehow necessarily contemplative, to be accessed through meditation or reflection. Perhaps this was a matter of convenience for a lazy young man. If this was, in fact, the nature of religious experience, it didn’t require much activity.
Maybe it was also an introvert’s dream – it certainly provided a pretext for concluding that I could, in fact, be a believer and even a passably good Christian without having to engage too frequently with other people.
Looking backward, it’s obvious to me now that a spiritual life structured primarily around my own convenience wasn’t much of a spiritual life at all. That view of religion also very conveniently ignores the Bible. But, more on that in a minute.
So, along came William. And, he has really shaken up our lives and, in so many ways, gotten us out of our old comfort zones. It was William who brought us back to church because we wanted to him to be baptized and to have the benefits of a Christian education like the ones we had. We were lucky enough to come to the Church of the Pilgrims – partly by chance, partly due to proximity, and partly because the banner that hangs over the front door resonated with us. What we found here was a very warm and welcoming community. And, that made a very deep impression on us. It was not at all what we were accustomed to. Our past experiences at church consisted entirely of showing up, passively absorbing the service, and heading straight back home – usually without interacting with anyone. But as you all know the Church of the Pilgrims is a very different kind of place.
This Homecoming, we’ve heard passages from the letters of Paul that have really highlighted for me the way that being a Christian is centered around being a part of a community. Six weeks ago, we heard from Paul’s letter to the Romans that the commandments can be summarized in the words: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The following week, we heard from the same letter that we do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves and that, as Christians, we must be tolerant and accepting of the practices and customs of others. Two weeks after that, from Paul’s letter to the Phillipians, we heard that we should not look to our own interests, but to the interests of others. And last week, just before William’s baptism, we heard Paul’s advice that we should let our gentleness be known to everyone. And, the New Testament is literally filled with stories illustrating those principles and others like them. So, it’s become increasingly clear to me that living in God’s way is not about going it alone. To the contrary, I’ve come to believe that living in God’s way is very much an active undertaking based upon being a part of a community.
William’s baptism was a wonderful experience for us. It also struck me as a very apt expression of this concept of a Christian community. We felt very supported by the way the entire congregation gathered around the baptismal font. We felt that the church embodied the principles of tolerance and acceptance by allowing our visitors, who were predominantly from other faiths or denominations, to stand side-by-side with the congregation and by inviting everyone to participate in the ceremony. And, we were very moved by the many thoughtful hopes and prayers that were offered for William. Most of all, we appreciated the way that the entire community acted as one in welcoming our little boy into it. Holly and William and I would like to thank you all for helping to make his baptism such a beautiful and touching moment. We hope that we are able to carry forward into our daily lives the lessons we’ve learned about being a part of a Christian community this Homecoming season.
