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I want to be baptized too
 

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I want to be baptized too

Alex Sider / Bluffton, Ohio
Page Image
Baptism of Christ painting by Dave Zalenka
Image Caption
"Baptism of Christ" by David Zelenka, 2005. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.​



Opening paragraph
​​Martin will turn eleven this year. He knows everything there is to know and more about U.S. presidents, first ladies, vice presidents, and lots of things pertaining to states that I didn’t even know are things. A few Christmases ago, when I visited his family in nearby Wooster, Ohio, I sat in front of his desk while he showed me pictures of states and asked, “What is the state bird of North Dakota?” “The cardinal?” I guessed.

Page Content
​​

“No, the state bird of North Dakota is the Western Meadowlark; the state bird of North Carolina is the cardinal.” He corrected me, mercifully assuming that I must have gotten confused about my states—more than one of which begins with “north,” after all. Since his family moved to Texas, Martin’s interests have expanded to hiking, kayaking, Legos, and OK Go, a musical group that produces hilarious music videos for the internet. It might be because he lives halfway across the country, but I can’t keep up with all the things he’s into now, which seems about right when you consider that I’m a 41-year-old man talking about a 10-year-old boy. 

When Chapel Hill Mennonite Fellowship formed in 2004, Martin was the first child dedicated in the congregation. I held him during the service of dedication, and, as I walked him around the aisles of the sanctuary, members welcomed him, laid hands on him, prayed over him, and tickled him. It was a sharp and breathtaking moment in my life, in the life of our congregation, in his parents’ lives, and, I hope, in Martin’s life too. Memory, after all, isn’t merely conscious recollection; it’s the way the past lives in us now, shaping us in ways infinitely greater than we can ask or imagine.

Sometime last year, Martin’s mother contacted a couple of her friends, including me, and posed this (true) scenario: Martin has a pen pal, a man named John, who’s in prison. John, while in prison, has become a Christian and is being baptized. Martin said to his parents, “I want to be baptized, too, so that I can be like John.”

“What do you think we should do?,” his mom asked. I couldn’t think of any better reason for baptism than wanting to do things with other Christians, who, as members of Christ’s body, are the way that Christ is present with you. The “doing with” is crucial: baptism is one activity that demonstrates exactly what Christians share, namely the death and resurrection of Christ. But, baptism does more than forge common bonds among Christians who otherwise might not know each other; it builds bridges in broken lives, connecting what is injured and chaotic in each of us to the power of God in Christ through other members of God’s family.

As a healing, justifying, or sanctifying force in human lives, Christian baptism is not magical: it is intensely social. Indeed, among their other complaints about  infant baptism, the early Anabaptists were uncharacteristically united in rejecting interpretations of baptism that depended on an objective healing action of God connected to the administration of water that minimized the participation of the human being in the sacrament. So, we might say: Christian baptism is not God dunking or pouring water on people, splashing, sprinkling, or dabbing them with moist towelettes and then saying, “Aha! You’re clean. Now you can go to heaven.” Christian baptism is much more like the mark of being in relationships with other people that transform us into more fully human versions of ourselves.

I hope that in reading the paragraphs above you see the life of a boy. I hope, too, that you realize how many more stories there are that even I, a person on the edges of Martin’s life, could tell you.

Yet, Martin is also on the autism spectrum. And, it chafes to tell you that, as if the only reason to write this piece of Martin’s story is that special, atypical fact, or as if my relationship with him is the token of credibility that legitimates my views, or as if his diagnosis mars his otherwise intact humanity. That said, his mother’s question has been marvelously clarifying for me: Martin may never name his baptism in ways that mimic the “right” responses from the Minister’s Manual, but he’s been made who he is today by living his whole life within relationships of friendship with the baptized.

I’d like to call that “the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out” on him and treat his request to be baptized with the joy it deserves.





Alex Sider is Associate Professor of Religion at Bluffton University.​

 In this issue

  • ADN Welcomes New Executive Director
    ADN welcomes Kathy Nofziger Yeakey to the role of Executive Director. In mid-May Kathy began working alongside Program Director Christine Guth.
  • Pastors and Depression
    Paula Snyder Belousek reviews A Pastor's Guide for the Shadow of Depression by Gary A. Lovejoy (Wesleyan Publishing House, 2015). Also included are suggestions on where pastors experiencing depression can get help.
  • His Sacred Space
    In Laughter is Sacred Space, actor Ted Swartz (Ted & Company TheaterWorks, tedandcompany.com) uses drama to explore his relationship with friend and business partner, Lee Eshleman, who took his own life in 2007.
  • Blessed Are the Crazy
    Review of Blessed Are the Crazy, by Sarah Griffith Lund (Chalice Press, 2014). This book excels as a resource for faith communities to facilitate conversation on mental illness, a subject that is painful and often frightening. Reviewed by Pat Bergdahl.
  • ADNet Updates June 2015
    Visit with ADNet program director Christine Guth at the Mennonite Church USA 2015 Convention or read about all that ADNet accomplished last year in the 2014 ADNet Annual Report.
 

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