They say the Church is dying, especially this week. Especially since the Pew report came out, the blogosphere is lit up with apocalyptic predictions of the church’s death and resurrection, or stories denying the proclaimed death, or fingers pointing. Conservative voices say, “The Church is too liberal and has gone too far from Christ. It is just a community organization with pretty music. It is just Christianity Light.” Liberal voices say, “The Church is too judgmental, too out of touch, too busy spouting off about sexuality to take care of the poor and love the world as it should. The church must die in order to be resurrected.” Now, I am no closet liberal; I wear my bleeding heart loud and proud: theologically liberal, spiritually liberal, socially liberal, politically liberal. But, I can’t quite get on board with the death march. Perhaps I am sitting happily on the deck, listening to the band play Nearer My God to Thee, as the ship sinks under me. Perhaps I am utterly oblivious to the death throes all around me. Still, I can’t fathom the death of the church I love so dearly, because today, we baptized some babies.
I know that two little souls initiated into the body of Christ does not a revival make. I know it is a mere drop in the bucket, and that many parents of baptized children do not become active church members. It’s not the act that got to me today, it is the symbolism, and the memories of what it means. Unlike many Episcopalians, I remember clearly the day of my baptism. I was raised in the Mennonite church. I grew up wrapped in the bosom of a church, eating crackers and candy to keep quiet during church, making crafts out of coffee filters and yarn in Sunday School, playing hide and seek in the choir loft, memorizing hymns in the youth choir, swimming in the lake at church camp, rebuilding areas devastated by tornadoes on service trips, being minded, raised and loved by a community of mothers and fathers who kept me safe, taught me manners, and acted out the love of God in their daily lives.
I was baptized at 15, the age of consent, the age at which a young person is supposed to be able to understand the mystery of Christ, the meaning of sacrifice, and the power of grace, the age at which a person can commit to a life of humble service. What 15 year old, or 30 year old, or 95 year old can actually understand all of that? I suppose they pick 14 or 15 because it’s old enough to have an intelligent conversation matters of faith, and young enough to still do things to please one’s parents. I remember that spring morning, after a year of catechism, when I stood in front of my congregation and said the baptismal covenant, pledging to renounce evil and to turn to Christ. I remember looking out at my parents, my Sunday School teachers, my choir directors, my youth group leaders, and telling them, “Yes, I respect what you taught me.” I remember the cool water on my head. I remember the congregation greeting us, the newly baptized, shaking our hands and hugging us. I remember the little old lady who hugged me fiercely, saying, “You are blessed.” All of those memories flooded back as I spoke the words of the baptismal covenant today.
I know what it’s like to leave the bosom of the church, too, to walk away happily and freely, unwounded and proud. Not long after my baptism, I decided I was done with church. I loved the people there, but I didn’t see my beliefs reflected in their theology. I didn’t believe in some old-man-in-the-sky who was judging me. I didn’t buy the idea of original sin. I wasn’t sure about the immaculate conception, or about Jesus’s divinity. I had learned all the answers to the questions in my catechism, but I just didn’t quite feel them. Church wasn’t for me. I went out in the world, formed from my church’s teachings, but sure I could figure things out for myself. I was going to be a Buddhist, or maybe an atheist, or maybe just a spiritual-but-not-religious type of person. While I was gone, the church may have been dead to me, but God was not. (You can see that I made a pretty poor atheist, no matter how much I tried.) God sustained me through my father’s death, through years of infertility, changes in career, challenges to life and love. God loved me when I knew I was unloveable. And, when my babies came to me, I sang them to sleep with hymns. I didn’t realize, until I had to sing babies to sleep, how few songs I actually knew by heart. All those years of the church choir came back to me and my children fall to sleep to the words of Amazing Grace, Be Thou My Vision, ‘Tis a Gift to be Simple, and many others. Those songs were engraved in my heart, buried deep, but indelible. So, I loved God, but I didn't think he lived at church. I had left that part of my life behind me... I thought.
It took over fifteen years for me to realize that the Sunday School version of faith I left was my childhood idea, not the actual mystery of the Christian faith. Eventually, I realized that Christ was an agent of unearned, universal grace, and that my own need for control and power was my deepest, darkest original sin. Eventually, I gave in to the lure of the story of Christ, the God who laid down his divinity to become human, and then laid down his very human life, so that we may connect with the divine. Eventually, I began to understand the words to the hymns I knew by heart, how amazing grace can save a wretch like me, how the fount of every blessing can bind my wandering heart to God. Grace led me back to church, searching for a message of love lived out in human life, like I had known as a child.
I am currently embroiled in raising my own little family, and, once again, I am wrapped in the bosom of a church. My children now play hide and seek in the social hall, make crafts with coffee filters and yarn, and learn the Doxology in Sunday School. My entire family now is cared for, watched over, taught, inspired, and challenged by my church. I guess that’s why I can’t understand that the church is dying. Because, today, we baptized babies into the DEATH of Christ, and proclaimed their (and our) everlasting LIFE. We are the church, my friends! We are the body and blood of Christ! Are we living out our love in commitment to service, in expanding our education, in embracing the needy? Are we living out our baptismal covenants? Are we loving our enemies as we love ourselves? Are we loving our God, with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds? Because my friends, if we are, then death has no sting for us. If we are truly laying down our lives for each other, then there is no life but Christ’s for us anyway. If we are truly the church of the risen Christ, then we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the LIFE of the WORLD to COME!
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