Imagine a girl wearing a white gown. She steps into the moving waters below a waterfall. Surrounding her are names and faces who smile back at her, proud of her. To her left stand her parents who have waited for this moment since the beginning of her existence, her mom wiping the mascara from her face. The girl holds the laminated paper in front of her face and tries to speak to the whole world. Instead, she begins sobbing.
Because, of course, her sobbing tells the truth of what is happening to her and what she deeply feels. She can’t contain herself and why should she? We hear her sobs in silence. It’s awkward for us watching. Nobody wants to see someone cry in public, and we pity her because she’s nervous, humiliated, or something. But then it stirs the truth of our inner world as we watch her. Her panting, convulsing crying transcends her experience and even our own--waiting for her to make sense of the silence so we don’t have to. Within her world she knows that what she is about to do will define and change her forever. For whatever reason, she’s decided to be baptized and when we ask for a speech all she can muster are the sobs of her tiny soul. When she finally gets to her formally written “profession of faith” her words are more mute than her tears. So she sobs. The older lady next to me joins her. The mom’s face gathers fresh mascara. Because whatever she’s sobbing after we all are feeling, and she just has the guts to tell the truth of it in her baptism.
I’ve always believed that the day someone is baptized is the day where that person is marked for the rest of their life. That person is owned, bought, purchased, redeemed, and everything else that comes with those words and their meaning. And so, in a sense, they are also dead to their old life and entering a new one.
When Jesus told men and women to follow him, he usually asked them for something. “Give it up” might be more appropriate. He tells a rich man to sell everything he owns. Sell the swiss bank account, the portfolio, and all the assets with it, and then give it to the bums, homeless, and lazy ones then, “Follow me”. He tells everyone else to carry a torture device around them and dares them to eat his flesh and drink his blood if they want to even have the name “Christian”. It all sounds frustrating, psychotic elusive, cannibalistic, and disgusting. On this side of paradise, we can only see the glass darkly and can only try to take Jesus at his words. But that seems impossible. Jesus leaves us confused, mad, disappointed, or apathetic to the whole thing. But I wonder if we really should smile at it. We shouldn’t smile for the words, but because somehow we can’t make those things happen. Only with God are all things possible. It might be great if Jesus says these things, but to really listen to them is about the same thing as listening to a tiny girl sobbing before her transformation into new life.
“Buried in the likeness of his death...” Salvation is a requiem that transforms into a hallelujah chorus. The invitation to everyone is very similar--death to life. The death Jesus refers to, first and foremost, is his own. Whatever ethical, theological, or convenient ideas we conjure about Jesus and his teachings are turned upside down when he dangles by nails on two pieces of wood, saying more with the blood dripping down his body than words could begin to say. Somehow that love reverberates through eternity into the sobs of a tiny 16 year old girl in a white gown about to descend into her own hell. Before she holds her last breath I wonder if her entire life until that point flashes through her mind before the back of her head smacks the surface of the water. Whatever life she had before her descent will be dangling on a cross waiting for her upon descent, and maybe she sobs because, somewhere within, she can see it all in front of her. Some traditions renounce Satan before this moment, and I believe this brave girl saw Satan and renounced him during her burial.
“Raised to walk in newness of life...” are the words often said on the way up the other side of paradise. Her small head lifted up out of the water with these words given to describe something new. And they are important words. Because with Jesus death is never experienced or discussed apart from the victory of resurrection. Death is necessary, but only because it’s through the cross that God reveals the true identity of who we are--dangling on a tree, but praying to God for resurrection. It is also true that only through the cross of Christ could we even see him for who he truly is, and only through that cross could she begin to see herself for who she truly is. It doesn’t appear ideal, but it really is the best possible way God revealed himself to all humanity and to reveal ourselves to us. But the grave didn’t contain Him and I suspect it didn’t contain this girl either.His resurrection wipes every tear from her eyes and soaks her entire soul in the newness of life in the Spirit. “Jesus is Lord” and she sees that in a new, eternal, and fresh way. She smiled as she rose from the water, realizing that, perhaps for that moment, her life was new. Of course her life is new in the eternal sense, but the gift of baptism is to see it or look back on it and remember the truth and reality of redemption in the present.
Somehow a smile cracked upon my face and the faces of all around me. Somehow we got it because it had gotten us. Redemption in Christ raised her from the deadness of the submersion, to the first breath out of hell. We were there with her and she brought all of us into her world to celebrate it. She opened her eyes to the entire faith family laughing, smiling, and celebrating with her. I bet she saw heaven. Revelation was right before her eyes, and I felt a small stream of water around my eyes, perhaps from my own baptism.
“Buried in the likeness of his death...Raised to walk in newness of life”
