Chris Russell writes a letter to Sammy, a child he baptises at St. Laurence in Reading. This letter is one of ten which make up his book Ten Letters: To be delivered in the event of my death. He hopes one day that the 2yr-old Sammy will one day read this letter and come to understand what happened on his baptism day. Below is some of the letter's edited highlights.
Dear Sammy,
I am writing this to you on your baptism day. You’ll be pleased to know, for the record, that you didn’t cry, you didn’t have to wear a dress and the whole of the front row were soaked, including your grandmother. As I am sure your parents will show you photos and the cards, this letter isn’t about telling you what happened; this letter is a foretelling of what I hope might be.
That might sound a bit weird, like an attempt at fortune telling. But that’s not my intention in writing it down. My strong conviction is that baptism states things, claims things and enacts things in categorical ways.
Today, 11 October 2009, is your baptism day …
Today you were baptized into Jesus Christ. You become a participant in him, because in this baptism event of his, he became a participant in your life. He participated for you, he lived for you, suffered for you, died for you, rose again for you. Your identity is his. His identity is yours. This is the kind of stuff I mean when I say, baptism states, claims, and enacts. Because today we stated, claimed, enacted that you never stand alone. That you stand in him.
It is not that you bring anything to this to make it a possibility, or to make it happen. You simply come to the waters … For you, Samuel, are on equal ground with the young orphan girl who was baptized today in Rwanda, with the illiterate grandmother who was baptized today in Argentina, with the teenage Afghan refugee who has found a true home while fleeing, with the child of the royal birth in St. Peter’s Basilica … Baptism declares you are one with Jesus of Nazareth, and so you too can hear the voice of the Father through his ears: ‘You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’
Chris Russell, Ten Letters: To Be Delivered in the Event of My Death (DLT, 2012), pp.159-173.
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