Sep 11 | The Hidden Work: Baptismal Covenant

On Friday, six Anglican students and a priest drove out to Surrey for two nights at the beautiful Rosemary Heights, a Catholic retreat centre. The retreat was undertaken in order to strengthen bonds between the students and to do some formation pertaining to the sacraments. This first retreat – one of four we will have in this academic year – was on baptism.

Very few of us had been baptized at an age when we would remember what it felt like. Our retreat leader, VST’s director of Anglican denominational formation, asked us to think about what happens in baptism.

“What,” he asked, “does it mean to be ‘saved’? What are we being saved from?”

A whole host of answers followed. Our DDF graciously challenged many of them, pushing us to expand our assumptions. Once we had exhausted our theological coffers, he continued. This is not just about being saved from hell. It’s also absolutely not about learning that Jesus was a good man who loved us and wanted us to be nice to one another. There’s nothing particularly earth-shattering in that. “That,” he said, “simply makes us a religion club. If you like golf, you join a golf club, and if you like being religious, you join a religious club.” None of that actually changes a person’s life totally and irrevocably.

Really, we’re talking about a Christ-process, a process of death being the soil for new life. It’s about something happening deeply and widely, throughout the whole universe. If we are made of carbon, then we are the product of the death of stars. The Christ-process is something that infuses all of existence: a universal truth. This makes sense, if “baptism always carries an eschatological dimension.”[1]

What implications, then, does this have for baptism?

“We are drowning,” our DDF said quietly. “We drown and then rise, newly alive.” And if we are newly alive, dead to what we once were, then a change of behaviour radically follows. We are called to model the cruciform life for all. To illustrate this, our DDF had us read Romans 6:1-11.

It was very important that we recognized this not merely as a concept for our minds to ponder, but as a physical, cellular truth. And this was why we were to undergo a “baptismal experience” at 6.30am the next morning, if we chose to do so.

I rose at 6am, “while it was still dark,” dressed myself and stumbled to the conference room again. We celebrated Morning Prayer, and then broke off into groups of three for the experience.

My group found a large bowl and two jugs in the kitchen, which we filled. We had brought a Bible. The experience was to be as follows: One person would read the section from Romans we had studied the night before. Another person would lean their head over the bowl and hold their breath as long as they could. The last person was to continuously pour water over the other’s head. When the second person’s breath could be held no longer, they were supposed to stand up straight and inhale. The other two would then stop what they were doing and say, “Alleluia.”

I poured water first. I didn’t really “feel” much while I was doing it, although I appreciated the symbolism behind it. Then it was my turn.

I had thought the water would go in my nose and eyes and the like, but it didn’t. It felt a little like when I wash my hair under the faucet sometimes. I quickly remembered I was supposed to hold my breath and sucked it in. I could hear one of my partners reading the Romans passage, but I couldn’t understand all of it – just a couple of stray words or phrases: “do you not know,” “death”, “buried,” “grave.” My body started to feel constricted as I held on, wanting to prolong the experience as long as possible.

I don’t know if I made it for a full minute, but it certainly felt like it. I do know that my body started to shake. My muscles were tense and straining. I can imagine a conversation under my skin, perhaps between my lungs, or my blood cells: “What the hell’s going on? I didn’t sign up for this!”

Finally, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I stood up and took a big breath in.

It was rather shocking because I didn’t expect that big breath to be so loud. For a moment, as the water coursed down my head and onto my shoulders and down my torso and legs, I really did feel like I’d clawed up from death, from many deep, dark fathoms. I felt my shoulders tense, suddenly very emotional, as I felt my partner’s hand on my shoulder, and heard her quiet voice in my ear: “Alleluia.”

I stared out the window at the grey sky. Unfortunately, the clouds were thick, so I couldn’t see the rising sun. I knew it was there, though.

I whispered, “Alleluia.”

Many people still retain a surprising amount of Medieval theology around baptism. They talk to priests about getting their babies “done” for some imagined check-list. Anabaptists proclaim “believer’s baptism,” which is only performed on someone who can intellectually assent.

With no intent to offend, I don’t agree with believer’s baptism only. I personally think that the requirement for “intellectual assent” can be a cover-up for a struggle between communal culture and individualistic culture. Are we saying that God can only begin a work of redemption and vocation within those who are intellectually capable or willing? The Bible is predictably vague, and this seems limiting to God. Jesus’ disciples did not need a catechism class or assent to doctrinal rules. He said only, “Follow me.” Likewise, the model Jesus chose for discipleship was a child – not chosen for “innocence” or “humility” (idealizations of childhood), but vulnerability.

At whatever time we were baptized, something beautiful and inextricable happened. Whether we were brought as tiny children to the font or whether we walked there ourselves, we were given a gift. We found ourselves in an in-between place that only lasted for minutes but remains before and after us in every sacrament – a moment held in tension, outside of time, what Christians call kairos time. We became both infant and elder, submerged in a womb or a tomb (don’t you think it’s amazing that the only difference between those words is one letter?). We focus on the death one dies in the waters of baptism – being buried into Christ’s death, as Paul would have it – but water is present during birth as well. St. Cyril of Jerusalem called the waters of baptism “[our] grave and [our] mother.”

There is something beautiful in a work being begun in you before you were even conscious of your own individuality – just as beautiful as a work begun that you acknowledge fully as an adult leaning your head into the font.

The most important thing to remember about your baptism is that it was solely the work of God. The Church gathered to witness and to proclaim it in words and actions…but ultimately it was the expression of a truth that was proclaimed long before you were born and will continue long after you die – a truth you will join in proclaiming.

I like to think of it with a little help from a great spiritual advisor, Florence Welch, of the band Florence and the Machine. The track “Drumming Song” illustrates a woman’s love, which she experiences as an inner sound:

“There’s a drumming noise inside my head that starts when you’re around.

I swear that you could hear it; it makes such an almighty sound…

Louder than sirens, louder than bells, sweeter than heaven, and hotter than hell.”

I have always interpreted this song baptismally.

The first thing we hear in the song is a strong and tribal drum beat, which I interpret as the calling of God. Florence does not sing for a bar or two – her response follows the call. We are first invited, and must respond. Florence continues:

“I ran to the tower when the church bells chimed,

I hoped that they would clear my mind.

They left a ringing in my ear,

But that drum’s still beating, loud and clear.”

Here, she goes to church, and in my creative re-imagining, becomes a catechumen. This does not soften the call – indeed, it gets louder still. She sings:

“As I move my feet toward your body, I can hear this beat.

It fills my head up and gets louder and louder.”

I (perhaps fancifully) interpret this as the journey toward her first Eucharist. Finally, she seeks to drown out the call through what I interpret as baptism:

“Down to the river and dive straight in:

I pray that the water will drown out the din,

But as the water fills my mouth it couldn’t wash the echoes out…

I swallow the sound and it swallows me whole, ‘til there’s nothing left inside my soul.

I’m empty as that beating drum, but the sound has just begun.”

As she is immersed in the waters of baptism, she hopes that this will satisfy the restlessness of this call, but instead, she is hollowed out until there is nothing left of who she was: she has been given a new identity in Christ – and “the sound has just begun.” Her new identity is not the end of her journey – she now rises up and like us is expected to “come and see.”

Did you hear drums when you were baptized? I don’t remember that far back…but on clear nights (or cloudy mornings, as water trickles down my head) I can still hear the echo.

-Clarity