As we gather closer to Good Friday, here is a reflection on baptism from Craig Hovey.
The church's failure to be a martyr-church is supremely seen in those cultures that continue to baptise the young for sentimentality's sake. For many, baptism involves neither incorporation into the life of the community of faith nor incorporation into the death and resurrection of Christ. It is not a drowning in the surging waters, a participation in the suffering Christ, a commitment to undergo the discipline of the church relative to its new life and mission made possible by Christ's resurrection. For many, baptism does not recall and invite the promises of God to the new member, those promises that will be necessary in a life marked by dedication and risk. Rather, it forgoes the weightier matters of life and death in favour of sanctioning the life and choices one will make on one's own. In absolute contrast to the gift God has given the church in baptism for marking the difficulty of discipleship and God's upholding, for many baptism only enshrines one's individual life apart from God and entrenches one's autonomous freedom from the church. It becomes a quaint ceremony for an innocuous blessing, a hopeful but ultimately bland sign for receiving good things from life, a plea for calm and good luck, a positive omen, and perhaps an exercise in superstition. What is certain is that many are baptised who have no intention of dying with Christ or suffering for their faith.
But just as baptism is a gift by God enriched with promise, the church must continue to trust that God will preserve its life for its gospel mission despite the way that the life appears to be undermined, in this case, from within. This is surely the more difficult of the challenges to the martyr-church: not persecution from the outside but weakening from the inside. It is tempted to think that its common life can be marked by the calm displayed by those who want the church but do not want to suffer because of it. It is asked to provide fellowship but not challenge. It is asked to provide blessing but not discipline.
Craig Hovey, To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today's Church (Brazos, 2008), pp.40-41.
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