Session 9 Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Introduction to the Episcopal Church

Session 9 

Understanding the Book of Common Prayer (BCP)

Part 5: The Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation and Ordination

The Book of Common Prayer is a strategy of prayer to invoke God upon the times of our life.   Sacraments are the prayers that pertain to the crises in our life that confront us as we grow up within a community.  Sacraments, like baptism, confirmation and ordination may be a one-time rite but the rite does not exhaust the meaning of what is being celebrated in the rites.

Our common conceptions of these sacraments may include the following.  Baptism is done with water; the Baptists a lot of water and Catholics and Episcopalians a little water.  Baptism is for our salvation to save us from going to hell.  Baptism is like a birth ritual that all families do because that is what our parents and grandparents want us to do to our babies. 

Many people come to the church to ask to have their babies baptized without having any intention at all of ever bringing their children to church.   It is sort of like, “just in case there is something to all of that hocus pocus, I want to have my children covered.”  What people don’t realize is that if they do get their children baptized and respond to all of the baptismal vows and then do not follow up with honoring the vows, they have in fact begun their children’s life by lying to God and to themselves or they may just be ignorant about what is involved in the meaning of baptism.  People need to know that Jesus said the kingdom of God belongs to children and he said that about children who were not necessarily baptized.  So there should be no pressure to get children baptized if one does not commit to baptismal living.

What is the crisis that we live into in our baptism?  The crisis involves setting the values to define and express the meaning and worth of our lives.  How do I come to know who I am and my value?  This is the major crisis of our entire life at every age and baptism is a particular way of determining and setting value in our lives.  For adults who are baptized (and remember that even though infant baptism may be a more common practice, the words of the baptismal rite assume adult maturity) they have come to discover that the value of their lives has received significant definition because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as it has been received and practiced within Christian tradition.  To be baptized is to come to understand that one is loved by God, one is forgiven by God, one is perfectible (always able to be better through educative repentance) and that one is gifted by God for purposeful worth and value to other people in the community. 

Living in an imperfect world with imperfect people means that we can take on unenlightened self-value and value of others.  In baptism we commit to a willingness always to be on the path toward more excellent values in knowing who we are and what we are to do with our lives as it pertains to loving God, loving our neighbors and loving ourselves.  Each person is constituted by the way in which he or she has taken on the words of their lives.  Our lives get scripted by our learning environments even as we exercise some freedom of choice for the discovery of new values through the ways in which we take conscious steps in learning.

For parents and adults in a community of baptized infants and children, we become the ones who express the prevenient grace of God to the young ones whom we have promised to mentor with the example of our lives.  As adults we are to give the word framework for our children to value their lives in the very best possible way.  We want to constitute the word lives of our children with the following values: they are loved by God, they are forgiven even as they are encouraged to understand their perfectibility, they are gifted for their own self care and for their value to their community.  In a community that practices infant and child baptism, the adults need to embrace their ministry to “be God’s prevenient grace” to our children.  Prevenient grace simply means that grace and love is expressed towards us before we ever fully understand the significance of that grace and love.  With the word environment that we give to our children we are in effect setting the context for how they come to understand their value.  And this is real and active grace.

In the next sessions, we are going to look at baptism, confirmation and ordination.  Confirmation historically became a maturation rite when infant baptism became the prevalent practice.  Baptism involves the proclamation of the gifts of the baptized.  Gifts pertained to our value to our community and so ultimately baptismal grace is articulated in what we do in our lives because of our gifts.  This will be the tie in that we will make with confirmation and ordination.

Exercise:

Ponder the meanings of baptism in your experience and in the experience of the culture in which you have lived.  How have you understood baptism?  Reflect upon different baptismal practices.  Jewish proselyte baptism.  The baptism of John the Baptist.  Why did Jesus get baptized by John the Baptist, if his baptism was a baptism for the remission of sins?  Is there infant baptism in the New Testament writings?  Who were the Anabaptists?  Why do some churches require that you get re-baptized as an adult?  What is the relationship between salvation and baptism?  Why do some churches say that baptism is not related to salvation, only a public witness after one has been “saved or asked Jesus into one’s heart?”

Don’t be afraid of doubt or questions.

Father Phil