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218 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
Not long after I moved to Atlanta, I happened to watch a baptism on TV.
It was the TV broadcast of a local church service, and the pastor—a kindly looking,
older, white-haired man—took this cute little baby in a pretty white gown,
said a few words and poured a little water on her head, and then held her up for
everyone to see. The people in the church on TV “oooohed” and “aaaahed” and
smiled and seemed to think it was all just the nicest thing. Watching this event
on TV gave me a kind of critical distance, leading me to the observation that
baptism has become, at least in the mainline churches, a benign rite, at best a
cheap, sugarcoated salvation spectacle, designed mostly to make us feel warm
and happy.
When we baptize we are telling a story. And it seems to me that the basic
story line most observers would get by watching this ritual in many churches is
that pastors are old, babies are cute—even cuter next to old pastors—and that
something magical and nice happens when the two of them get together. I do
not mean to disparage this image altogether, and I have to admit that I very
much enjoy watching babies being baptized, but I do think there is something
wrong with this picture. It has do with what’s usually missing. Whatever else we
might think is going on during a baptism, there should be no way to avoid the
conclusion that while baptism is about new life and celebration, it is also about
a death in the family. And I worry that when we baptize without making the reality
of this death painfully clear, we are telling a version of the gospel story that
has no cross in it. And that just isn’t the gospel. So, in case you are tempted to
watch what happens here today and merely smile, I need to tell you what will
really be going on here.
In a few minutes we are going to put my son Carson to death. And soon
after that we hope to raise him again. In fact, if all goes according to plan, these
events will happen so quickly that you might think the death didn’t really take
place. But don’t be fooled. Carson Paul Smith-Saunders is going to die today.
Brenda and I have come to believe that this is necessary because we no longer
trust our capacities, as sinners living in a broken and distorted world, to raise
him up in a way that befits the dignity and beauty he possessed at the moment
of his birth, and to preserve his life from the powers of violence and death. We
are convinced that his ongoing participation in this world will only corrupt and
finally destroy him. So, we’ve decided to give him back to God.
For us, his death today is real, not just a symbol or an abstraction. This reality
is tempered only by the hope we hold for what this death means. He will
cease to exist under the powers of this world, and will be transformed and transferred
to a completely new and different kind of existence, with different powers
and possibilities for life, with new eyes to see the world, and most important,
with a new family and a new Lord. To use Paul’s words, today Carson will be
united with Christ in a death like his, he will be buried with him, and he will
be crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be destroyed. And when