Baptism 1

I am on vacation in beautiful North Myrtle Beach, SC.  Today is the last day.  We leave tonight for Louisville and then on to Evansville.  I will miss the beach!!

I have begun emailing with a close friend about Baptism. So, I thought I would begin my thoughts here.  This first post is rough and raw.  It's the baseline argument for infant baptism.  It's not as nuanced as I would like, but, that will come later, maybe. The point of the following posts hopefully will be to show it's importance in our culture.

The basic argument from my perspective runs like this:

1. God is a covenantal God and works out his will through the work of covenants.  The ultimate covenant being that of the new covenant in the person of Jesus.  The sign of the covenant began with Abraham as that of circumcision. This was the marker of God's covenant people and was applied to male infants at eight days old. In Christ the covenant was no longer with an ethnic people and so the marker of the covenant was moved to baptism, this is now the sign of inclusion in the covenant community.


2. The NT references to baptism consistently speak of household baptism which is most easily and normally understood to include children.


3. Jesus blesses the children.


4. There is no statement of change to the inclusion of children in the covenant community.  A change this radical would require at the very least Apostolic teaching, if not Messianic teaching.


5. Believers children should be baptised as  covenantal members of the community of God's people.


6. This in no way means that they are saved, it is simply the outward expression of God's promise to bring about their salvation and that their parents and the body of believers will bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord believing him in his covenantal faithfulness for their salvation.

The Baptist argument creates a distinction that I do not believe exists in the Bible between Old and New Testament.  I believe that it is a coherent whole which builds upon itself and finds culmination in Jesus. The Baptist position seems to argue for a decisive distinction between Old and New where once the NT was complete the OT becomes obsolete and is understood as a relic. That's a bit over the top, but, I am on vacation.

The covenantal understanding of the story of the Bible is the only one that stands up to coherently reading the whole story of God. The Baptist position does great harm to Biblical coherence.  In so doing removes the children of believers from the community of God's people.  It also does harm to the significance of communion which is truly the sign, biblically, of the adult who has "searched himself" and partakes with Christ at his table.  The Baptist position does harm here as well by making the Communion table something that means little more than a once a month, or so, ritual of saltine scraps and warm juice concentrate.

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>There Are No God Forsaken Places

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The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. Mark 14:7

Posted by Doug Walker on July 20th, 2008

The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want.Mark 14:7

The scene was a dinner party, and Jesus was the guest of honor. Everyone was reclining at the table, sharing stories and enjoying one another's company. Then a woman, perhaps an uninvited guest, approaches Jesus, and without a word breaks an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume and pours it on his head. This strange and extravagant gesture brought strong condemnation from the others around the table: "Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor." And they scolded her for her foolish act and poor money management skills.

Many of you are familiar with this story from Mark 14, and you might remember that the main point is the "beautiful thing" she did for Jesus, without concern for what it might cost. It's also the passage where Jesus points to her action as a preparation for his own burial - another foreshadowing of his atoning death. But it's the statement Jesus made in verse 7 (seen at the beginning of the article) that often leaves folks scratching their heads. If the poor will always be with us, does that mean that God has no intention of changing the plight of those in poverty?

Despite what seems like an ever-increasing population of the poor around the world, God is at work (and always has been), bringing forth outposts of his coming kingdom in the communities on earth. The problem is, unless they take the form of a huge relief shipment of food, or direct financial aid, we don't recognize these outposts as ministry to the poor. That's because our notion of helping the poor is one dimensional, limited to changing their economic condition. If we can put a roof over their heads, food in their mouth and a few dollars in their pocket, then they are no longer poor. While this type of relief certainly helps, it doesn't address the much larger issue of poverty.

Remember how John the Baptist was confused by the way Jesus conducted his mission? Jesus was expected to launch a campaign of God's justice against the echelons of wealth and power, but it didn't seem to be going in that direction, so John inquires whether he should be expecting someone else to come as Messiah. In Matthew 11, Jesus replied, "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." He was healing broken lives and communicating the freedom and forgiveness of the gospel to the poor. This mission to the poor is the same mission Jesus would later turn to the people of all nations - and the outcome is promised to be a triumph of God's justice in which the nations will have life and hope.

You see, ministry to the poor must be holistic - addressing physical needs, but also emotional and spiritual poverty as well. The outward face of poverty is easily recognized as the lack of basic resources - food, shelter, clothing - but there's so much more under the surface. Spiritual darkness, injustice, political corruption, social oppression, crime, addictions, and a myriad of other factors contribute to being poor. At the root of all this is sin, and the only remedy for sin is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Christ is the only comprehensive approach that brings lasting, life altering change to the plight of the poor.

This biblical hope should inform and free us to be more active in the fight against poverty. We often turn our attention away from despair and suffering, finding it difficult to gaze very long at the magnitude of hurt in the world. But a closer inspection of what God is doing actually reveals there is not a "God Forsaken Place" on the earth. God sees and anguishes with every person who suffers, and is active in sending help and healing in Christ's name every day. It's not so much about analyzing needs and opportunities as much as it is anticipating the progress of the gospel, and seeing the hope that brings to the poor. Of course, it should also compel us to action - not because of the overwhelming need, but because everything we do to love and care for the poor spreads the glory of God throughout the earth.

One of the final statements in the bible is "behold, I am making all things new." That sums up what God has always been doing: making the entire world new. The gospel begins the re-creation by transforming people from the inside out. But the transformation doesn't stop until a sample of God's new kingdom is on display throughout communities and villages around the world. And that's where we come in - notice the second half of Jesus' quote from Mark 14. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. Poverty is everywhere, and if you possess the truth of the gospel in your heart, you can bring hope and help - anytime you want.

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Why are people so mean?

So, I was reading some blogs recently, alot of them, about the missional church.  I have been surprised by how mean people are, especially those who claim to be gracious, open-minded, post-moderns. It came to a head with the debacle between Obama and Dobson.  The anger and dare I say hatred expressed by many toward both men (in missional circles predominantly at Dobson, in attractional circles predominantly Obama) was amazing.

The vehemenance can also be seen in conversations that have to do with the mega-church movement. I just don't get it.

I understand being frustrated with other believers who disagree with you.  It gets hard to keep on communicating the same thing over and over and people "just not get it".  I think it's sad though when there is not an open heart and open mind that goes both ways.  It seems like folks on both sides of the coin forget that they are indeed on the same coin and part of each other.

Oh, would it not be awesome for kindness, gentleness, and respect to be a real thing in the conversastion between fellow Jesus followers and even people outside the community?  The more I interact across the board with people from different traditions in the faith I am seeing more and more the wisdom of my father-in-law who makes some clear distinctions between what should be discussed publicly and what should be done "in the family".

I hope that if I ever come across this way that I will get slapped upside the head and fast!!

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Communion 2...

My friend Tim challenged me to go deeper with this.  So, I have been thinking about it for the last few days and meditating some more about why Communion is so significant right now in our time and place.

I keep going back to mystery and transcendence.  So much of our world today is "real" there is no imagination.  There is no mystery.  Our movies leave nothing to the imagination when it comes to sex, violence, or anything...really. Neither do sports.  I was struck by this when I heard a caller on the local sports station talk about his experience as a boy going to his first Tiger game.  He said that when he would watch a game on TV it was black and white.  He had to imagine the grass being green, the colors of the uniforms, and the color of the stadium.  He said that when he walked through the tunnel to enter his seats for the first time he was blown away by the color, the green grass, the green seats, the whiteness of the baseballs, the brownness of the dirt, the blueness of the steel.  It seared deeply in his memory.

We have lost that.  Now we have 'High Def' TVs were you can even see the sweat drip off the foreheads of the players and the individual blades of grass sway in the breeze. Mystery is gone.

That is the beautiful thing about the supper.  There is a mystery to it.  There is something that we can't get our hands around.  There is an engagement of our imagination as we enter into the presence of the raised Jesus with us at the meal (or snack as it is now). If we will engage our imaginations in the mystery of this sacrament then we can regain something that has been lost. We can enter into the story of our faith and with the church invisible taste and see that the Lord is good. In a culture where our imaginations are stolen from us, actually, where we willingly give our imaginations away, this is our one opportunity to engage them again and embrace the mystery that is supping with the Lord Jesus!

The second thing is transcendence.  It seems that much of the Christian life is considered to be humdrum and boring.  But, oh, the supper is anything but.  It is in this supper that we enter into an experience with Jesus that is beyond us and takes from the normal and we enter into communion, into fellowship, into the presence of our Jesus with one another.

People want to know what is so different about the Christian life? Is it any different from being a good Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu?  Yes, in every way!  It is found in the transcendent reality of the supper.  The supper should bring us into an experience that changes us and draws us into a passionate and emotional and physical and spiritual engagement with our Jesus.  With the one who really died for us.  With the one who looked at our sin and our turning away and went to the cross anyway.  With the one who conquered death and thereby made us conquerors too.  With the one whose love for the Father led him to that cross.  With the one who sits at the right hand of his Father and intercedes for us. This is the transcendent reality that the Christian alone can experience as he or she eats and drinks with the Lord at his table.

Mystery and transcendence.  These two things have been lost in our churches, our culture, and our world.  They have gone the way of the dinosaur.  It is in the Supper that we can reclaim them, reengage with them, and get lost with them again.

If you want a great picture of getting lost in the mystery and transcendence of the supper grab a copy of the Dawn Treader by CS Lewis.  The interaction with Aslan and Lucy in the house of the Magician is amazing.

Tim, I know that this barely scratches the surface.  I can hardly put all this into words. I am still processing and am thankful you keep pushing and drawing me deeper.

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