Baptism This Sunday
Dear LTCC Family,
I hope this finds you well and enjoying these warm and blue-sky summer days. We’ve had many exciting Sunday services recently where we’ve had an opportunity to look back (with the Heaths), and also look forward (with the Burtons). This coming Sunday, we have an opportunity to “look up”, so to speak, as we will be having a baptismal service.
During the past six months, we, as elders, have had conversations around the significance of baptism in the Christian faith and specifically here at LTCC. We’ve revisited questions surrounding this topic including what baptism really is and what it represents. It has reminded us of the true wonder of baptism and its important role in our faith.
As I’ve been looking to this Sunday, one thing that strikes me is the fact that baptism is a profound physical expression of the deep spiritual reality that has taken place in a person’s life. And to be honest, the act of water baptism also reminds us of the strangeness (even weirdness) of Christianity. Let me put it like this: what would you say to your unbelieving / not Christian friend if they came to this Sunday’s baptismal service? Hand on heart, I can tell you that many of my friends would think I had gone pretty hokey and sort of off the deep end. (“You guys actually dunk grown adults under water and think that is a good thing?”) Response: “Well yes, but it’s more complicated than that.”
In so many ways, baptism is a symbol (and more) of what union with Christ looks like. In writing to the churches in ancient Rome, Paul wrote these words: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3-4)
The act of baptism is a powerful physical expression of the Holy Spirit’s regenerating work in a person’s life. Baptism also signifies how we are united with Christ both in his death and in his resurrection. We are immersed in water (a type of drowning in water which represents death) and then we come up out of the water, representing us becoming a new creation, reborn.
But baptism is also a public and community expression. It is something that is done in front of our fellow believers and friends in Christ. In this sense, baptism is just the beginning of entering the new-creation-in-Christ living. It acts as a statement saying that the person being baptized is committing to live in community, even despite the difficulty that might bring us at times.
This is all to say that this Sunday is another one not to be missed. It will be a time together where we have the distinct honor of witnessing something of the beauty, truth, and transforming power of Christ in a person’s life in the act of baptism. Strange, perhaps. But amazingly true and uniquely of God.
See you on Sunday.
Nathan for the elders
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