Following on from yesterday, comes a story of baptism from Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran minister and pastor of the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado. Her most recent book is Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People.
Some of us in this congregation were baptized as infants, some as children some as teenagers, some as adults and some of you – and I’m not naming names, but some of you were baptized more than once. As for me, I was 12 when I was baptized and I remember so much of it…I remember wearing white sandals, and how the little golf pencil felt in my hand as I sat up front at church, so many eyes on me as I filled out the little card that said “I desire to be baptized”. I remember the walk up the stairs to the little room where the women would change into baptismal robes. I remember the strong hands of the man who was baptizing me and how the water wasn’t as cold as I thought it would be.
It would be just 4 or 5 years later that I would break with the church of my upbringing – and forget about my baptism entirely, since it took place in a church I no longer felt comfortable in or even agreed with in any way.
My sojourn away from Christianity lasted 10 years until I discovered Lutheranism and this beautiful grace-based theology and our gorgeous liturgy and it felt like I was choosing to be a part of a Christian path that just felt right to me and with great excitement I told Pastor Ross Merkle at St Paul Lutheran in Oakland that I wanted to be baptized. I was crestfallen when he said that he couldn’t do that since I was already baptized. “Nadia” he said to me, “Baptism is always God’s action upon us, no matter the circumstances. Which means that baptism is for you, it’s just not about you so it doesn’t matter that yours happened in a church you ended up leaving. Baptism is about God.”
Nadia Bolz-Weber, “In The Beginning”: A Sermon on the Occasion Of Paula’s Baptism, Jan 14, 2015.
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