On Theology and the Christian Life - Baptismal bookends to my first year in the parish

The youngest member of my congregation recently celebrated his first birthday. In August of 2017, Aaron Anderson joined what one prayer calls the “human family.” That petition goes on to plead he be united to Christ’s Church through the waters of Holy Baptism. Christ be praised, he has been and is joined to this immortal body! Aug. 20, 2017, marked the time in which Aaron was “separated from the multitude of unbelievers” and brought “safe and secure (into) the holy ark of the Christian Church,” (excerpts from Luther’s so-called “Flood Prayer”). So, Aaron has most recently celebrated the new life he has been given in Christ through this blessed sacrament. I was ordained and installed as pastor of St. Paul (Havre) and Zion (Chinook) on Aug. 6, so Aaron’s baptism was, in many ways, the first bookend of my first year in the parish.

As many no doubt know — and as I’ve already written about — I was privileged to lay to rest Randy W. Martin on July 27, 2018. He, a beloved member and parishioner, also joined the human family in December 1958. Randy, likewise, was joined to Christ’s immortal body through Holy Baptism — interestingly — on the same day he was born. He fought the good fight of the faith and has been carried to the bosom of Abraham by the holy angels, kept safe unto the resurrection of all flesh. His funeral and committal was about as many days before my first anniversary as Aaron’s baptism was after my ordination and installation and is, therefore, the second bookend of my first year in the parish.

While these two circumstances seem worlds apart — especially with regard to the emotions each evoke — they could not be nearer together. The funeral liturgy in the Lutheran Church is so saturated in the waters of Holy Baptism it was easy to see a correlation between these two events. For, in the first place, Aaron came into the world, born in sin (Ps. 51:5), and, in a certain sense, was put to death and raised to new life in Christ through the waters of the font (Ro. 6:2 — 4). In the words of King David, Randy “went the way of all the earth,” (1 Kings 2:2). Yet, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die,” (John 11:26). Aaron and Randy were both brought through death and into life by the very same gift that Christ our dear Lord instituted and commanded.

What Aaron received on Aug. 20 is the very same sacrament that, through the whole of his life, prepared Randy to enter through death. It is as “The Small Catechism” of Martin Luther teaches in answer to the question “What does such baptizing with water indicate?” “It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” A daily death to sin and a resurrection through Christ Jesus is the shape that the life of all baptized Christians takes and it is the shape that the life of all baptized Christians heads toward.

I think it appropriate that a baptism and a funeral — so inextricably linked as they are — should bookend my first year in the parish. For as Luther wrote in “The Large Catechism” “(Baptism is the sacrament) by which we are first received into the Christian Church.” So it is that I was given the profound honor to baptize one member into the body of Christ here on earth and to minister another baptized member into the self-same body of Christ, kept safe in the heavenly dwellings. As your pastor, then, I bid you a blessed baptismal birthday, Aaron. I also give thanks to our Lord Christ for the faithful witness of Randy, who now rests in peace and will, without a doubt, rise in glory.

I leave you, dear Christian reader, with the words of the fourth and fifth stanzas of the wonderful hymn sung both at Aaron’s baptism and Randy’s funeral (“God’s Own Child I Gladly Say It): 4 “Death, you cannot end my gladness:/I am baptized into Christ!/When I die, I leave all sadness/To inherit paradise!/Though I lie in dust and ashes/Faith’s assurance brightly flashes:/Baptism has the strength divine/To make life immortal mine. 5 “There is nothing worth comparing/To this lifelong comfort sure!/Open-eyed my grave is staring/Even there I’ll sleep secure./Though my flesh awaits its raising,/Still my soul continues praising/I am baptized into Christ;/I’m a child of paradise!”

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Pastor Marcus Williams

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Havre

Zion Lutheran Church, Chinook