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The Sacraments of Hospitality ˜ 217
shared experience of miraculous grace that happens most often at the table, in
the company of strangers.
Let us renew our commitment to each other. Let us lock arms and stand
strong again. Let us go into the world and find people with whom to share our
food. For as we welcome the stranger, our lives are transformed; each time we
do this we welcome the image and incarnation of God into our lives again. If we
are all created in the image of God, then we welcome Divinity to our table.
If there is one thing that I am sure of, it is that my life has been created and
shaped at the dinner table. This occurred not because I felt happy or satisfied or
comfortable, but because, by sharing my conversation with people whose mere
presence pushed me to think in new and deeper ways, everyone at the table was
transformed and made new.
And what a simple act it is.
A Death in the Family:
Reflections on Romans 6:1–11
and Matthew 10:24–39, by Stan Saunders
S e p t e m b e r 1 9 9 6
Editor’s note: On July 23, 1996, Stan Saunders and his wife, Brenda Smith, had
their seven-month-old son, Carson, baptized during the Open Door Sunday worship.
Ed Loring, Murphy Davis, and Chuck Campbell, a professor at Columbia Theological
Seminary, participated in the baptism. What follows is the sermon Stan preached
at that service.
You’ve probably heard by now that we are planning to have Carson baptized
today, and if you’ve seen any baptisms lately, especially baptisms of babies, you
may be thinking that this will be a pleasant experience, a chance to look at a
cute, little baby—the very image of sweetness and purity. You’re probably thinking
that someone will splash a little water on him, and as a worst case he might
cry a bit, and then he will be “saved”—as if by magic—and we can all relax and
have a nice supper. If this is your basic sense of things, you’re probably not alone,
since most of us have witnessed baptisms like this somewhere along the way.
“A Death in the Family” also appeared in Stanley P. Saunders and Charles L. Campbell,
The Word on the Street: Performing the Scriptures in the Urban Context (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 41–47.