Today's story of baptism is from Robert Webber reflecting on what brought him to baptism. The son of a Baptist pastor, Webber wrote a lot about worship and especially how the worship practices of the past might be important for the church of the future.
At the age of twelve, I was sitting in the kitchen eating a snack when my father pulled up a chair, sat down beside me, and looking me in the eye said, 'Robert, don't you think it is time to be baptised?' I had not given a great deal of thought to being baptised. I was a Christian, to be sure. I grew up in a strict Christian home, and while my faith was the faith of the family, I had not doubt or disbelief. Still, I found my father's question to be haunting, even challenging. for the first time in my life I was asked to affirm the faith that was mine by family environment. The question raised doubt in my mind. Was this a faith I could personally embrace? I was only twelve, so the level of doubt and the quality of my questions were superficial. After a time of personal reflection I said to my father, "I want to be baptised."
I don't remember receiving any training before baptism. I think I saw baptism as my affirmation of my faith. Though baptism was taken seriously, that particular community seemed to have little understanding of how life-changing baptism could really be. So coming to baptism in the Montgomery Baptist Church in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania, was important, but it was not nearly as significant as the Scriptures teach and as ancient Christians practiced when they baptism reveals the daily pattern of the spiritual life.
I do not recall everything surrounding the event. I do remember one very powerful question my father, the pastor, asked me as we stood in the water. "Robert," he said, "do you reject the devil and all his works?" I was only twelve. I did not even know all the works of the devil! Even though my dad had not reviewed this question with me, I knew what my answer was supposed to be, so I said, "I do!" not really knowing what that meant in the full sense. I certainly did not realise that I was renouncing my connection with fallen Adam and the cultures of fallenness and embracing union with Jesus and a pattern of life revealed in his life.
Robert W. Webber, The Divine Embrace: Rediscovering the Passionate Spiritual Life (Baker, 2006), p.183.
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