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220 ˜ A Work of Hospitality, 1982–2002
share with us is that we no longer need to live under the power of sin and be defined
by our old stories.
According to Paul, there is only one way out of Adam’s story of sin and
death. We have to learn how to die as Jesus did. Baptism is a training in dying—
dying especially to sin and the old self—so that new life can come into being.
Now you might say that Carson doesn’t have much of an Adam story yet,
but the reality is that his stories of sin and death have been in the planning stage
for some time now, just waiting to swing into place at the right moments. The
powers of this world have been ready and waiting for Carson to come along, just
as they were ready for all of us.
As we all know, in this culture, our humanness is determined by how closely
we stand in proximity to the standard that is usually held up as the norm for
what it means to be human—white maleness. What do people see when they
look at Carson A boy. A white boy. These factors determine who he is, how he
will be treated, what expectations we have for him, and how he will relate to
other people. In real and powerful ways these definitions of humanity and his
participation in them will determine what Carson’s life means and what his options
are.
Today, when Carson dies with Christ, all of these pieces of his identity, and
all of our fleshly hopes and dreams for him, die, too, for baptism means the
complete obliteration of this reality and these marks of identity. From this day
forward his identity is in Christ, and Christ alone. This is the good news of the
gospel. It’s precisely what Jesus has in mind when he calls his disciples to give up
their lives in order to save them. But, as the mission discourse (Matthew 10)
makes clear, there are very real dangers attached to the call to follow Jesus in his
mission. Think about how strange Carson’s baptism today will make him, and
how hard his life will be, after he has been raised from the dead today.
We fully expect that his dying and new life in Christ will eventually make
him the butt of jokes and ridicule, like the disciple of Jesus, like Jesus himself,
who was called Beelzebub—the king of the garbage pile—by his enemies. We
expect that he will find it difficult sometimes to understand and get along with
his playmates and peers, who may speak a much different language and have different
codes of interaction than he has learned in the community of faith. He
will have to struggle throughout most of his life to find ways to shape an identity
that is not tied up with his being white and male, and if he succeeds it will
make his relationships with women and men and with people of all colors more
complex and difficult. He will need to learn to get along with others, and get
out of trouble, without turning to dominance and intimidation. And we worry
that learning these baptismal arts will make him vulnerable. We hope that he
will not suffer because he has not learned to use violence to defend himself.
Carson’s death today also has important and potentially painful consequences
for Brenda and myself. In the first place, we know that if he’s going to