August 15, 2014
Taking the Plunge
Lydia, my nine year-old granddaughter,
took swim lessons this summer and although she passed her class, she is still
really tentative in water. A few weeks ago she was baptized in a local
reservoir and I joked it was a good thing she had the lessons or else she would
have been too afraid to take the baptismal plunge. Lydia’s granddad on the
other side of the family, a Presbyterian minister, laughed, “Yeah, she just
might have had to become a Presbyterian!”
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Gail;
-----It’s odd to me that Presbyterians can get so much of their theology to match Scripture relatively well, and then stumble all over an institution simply discussed and clearly pictured in the Bible. Every Sunday morning at the Presbyterian church I attend, I have to let this pass my attention without mental comment. Among the worship service rituals is the filling of the baptistery. If it were only a representative act, the roughly five seconds it takes might pass without a thought. But it's not. So it stands out like a sore thumb to someone who understands baptism by its Greek word, which of course is “baptism”, meaning to submerge under water. The pitcher of water poured into the little, glass basin brings to mind either someone’s inability to read, or their inability to relate what’s been read to what’s being done, or their anticipation of the Lord doing with that little basin of water when needed what He did with the two fishes and seven loaves.
-----As a layperson, I can laugh. But as someone teaching error in the face of a procedure so clearly defined by Scripture as is baptism, I would be too terrified to laugh. But this Presbyterian minister is not me, nor are they who dreamed up the convoluted pathway taken around immersion to pouring or sprinkling. The Lord will have His mercy for their honest mistakes, no matter how arrogantly retained, as He will have for mine. And this is good. Though I draw expressions of criticism for thinking God’s manifold wisdom being made known through the church to the powers and principalities in the heavenly places is His grace and mercy, it fits most of what the church needs. Although the church has for the most part gotten the core issue correct - Jesus is the Christ and our salvation is through Him - it has shown a tendency to buck and fight humility in a way that it can’t seem to get correct even the simplest of other Biblical ideas beyond that core one.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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