Yesterday during the 8 AM service there was no water on the altar to afford a reenactment of our baptismal vows...an activity in synch with the feast commemorating Jesus's baptism of that day. I offered to fill the pitcher and even gestured to a field expedient solution of using water in the flower vase! Wisely, Pastor Richard Allen waved away all the commotion and suggested that we just "imagine" the water sprinkled on us at our baptisms.
This had the effect of setting the experience more deeply.
And it made me recall a sermon I had heard on baptism as "walking wet." I think it was by Bishop Chris Epting yet I think it's not original with him. It's an intriguing concept and we even dedicated a chaplain's conference to the idea. Why? Because beyond the momentary moisture of the act of baptism we are branded, "marked as Christ's own forever." A fine thing but living differently (and consequentially) is something else again and the idea of being perpetually wet is catchy and an image closer to the intent of the sacrament.
At the suggestion of friend Bishop Charles Jenkins I'm reading--and taking refuge in--Martin Luther King's address "Beyond Vietnam" given at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. Charles was trying to shore me up after the arrest and I welcome the support...I urge you to read King's response to his sense of "walking wet" even when it wasn't popular. As you may recall he stepped forward from the institutional church and criticized that war.
He said, "we are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless..." This, for him, was a "vocation of agony" because we are all asked to wrestle with conscience beyond acts of charity as in "The Good Samaritan." Moreover, he said, "(One) comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Indeed, it is the "whole Jericho Road which needs to be transformed."
Dr. King's plea "to enter the struggle" has a direct parallel to the OWS phenomena and our appeal to mainline churches who are glued to the sidelines. "They" prefer to confine actions (and the transformative power of sacraments) to pre-cleared parameters. In most churches the eucharist is celebrated, followed by coffee hour, and then everybody goes home. The "dangerous memory of Jesus Christ", as Tracy put it, is nestled in the caress of a cultural side street so as not jostle anyone.
I post an abbreviated version of this blog on Facebook (contact me, I'll friend you) and the reaction was easy to predict. Most were well-meaning church goers who wanted to rhapsodize about sacraments. It is not what it is but the miracle of activity quickened later in doing. We seem to have lost a sense of where to look for wonder.
Which brings me to the street again. Our current understanding of "Church" either needs to reform or to get out of the way...let The Body of Christ be the celebrator and not the caretaker.
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2 comments:
George, I'm not surprised that you heard from Charles Jenkins. He was my bishop, and I watched his transformation after the tragedy of Katrina and the flood. He got down in the mud with those who were suffering and became a different man in such a wonderful way...not meaning that Charles was not a good man before, but I saw the visible change in him as he became one with those who were hurting.
This 'walking wet' takes me to Hebron, Palestine, where the Palestinian shopkeepers and others walking in the Old City often have water or other less pleasant liquids dumped on them from the illegal Israeli Jewish settlement above them. I wrote about it once as a sort of baptism-by-heavy-sprinkling. It was a privilege to stand with and live with the Palestinian community there, an opportunity to live out my baptismal vows.
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