A Sign of Grace, Commitment and Discipline

A Sign of Grace, Commitment, and Discipline
Genesis 17: 9-14

As was once the custom in Britain, my parents had me baptized when I was a baby, even though this was the only involvement they had with the church apart from weddings and funerals. I don’t know exactly what they thought baptism was about, though I doubt if they regarded it as simply a social occasion. Given that they had waited a few years during which they had not been able to have a baby, they were thankful for my birth, and having me baptized would be a sign of this gratitude. When theologians seek to provide some further theological rationale for baptizing people as babies rather than waiting until they make their own profession of faith, they often emphasize that baptizing a baby reflects and testifies to baptism’s being a sign of God’s grace expressed in God’s covenant with Israel that is then extended to the church. Yet baptism is indeed also a sign of someone’s personal profession of faith, and baptizing people when they are in a position to make that profession matches that other aspect of its significance. Thus when I was a teenager and belonged for a while to a church that baptized people on the basis of their profession of faith, I was “rebaptized.” (A bishop I know blows a fuse at that expression, because really you can be baptized only once and being “rebaptized” implies renouncing your first “baptism.” So when someone who subsequently comes back to the Church of England wants to be ordained, he presses them to renounce their second “baptism.” I don’t think I have ever before come out with this shady event from my youth, so I may be in trouble.)...