Baptism as passport to Christian journey

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 13, 1996 by Dawn Gibeau

The sacrament of baptism occupies a central place throughout the spiritual journey, contends the Rev. Maxwell Johnson, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America minister and assistant professor of liturgy in the St. John's University School of Theology, Collegeville, Minn.

During the Collegeville Pastoral Institute's 1996 conference on Place and Displacement in the Spiritual Journey, Johnson asserted that everyone's spiritual journey in Christ "is a journey about place and displacement, a journey of death and resurrection, the birthing pangs and the bringing forth of new life, the paradigm for which is baptism."

He said further that baptism places us into the world "as a community of formerly displaced people, people on a pilgrimage who belong nowhere except where we are led, a people sure of little else but our identity as the body of Christ."

He recommended that Christians continually return to the baptismal font, their home. "The liturgy is a welcoming place in our constant experience of displacement, inviting us home always" to reclaim, renew, reaffirm and reappropriate our baptism, he said, "so that we might learn to become who we are, the people God has made us already to be in Jesus Christ."

Johnson, the editor of Living Water, Sealing Spirit: Readings on Christian Initiation (Liturgical Press) and author and editor of other books, spelled out implications of baptismal spirituality.

First, baptism is the great equalizer, "a foundational basis through which we might address any and all forms of racism, classism and sexism, even in the church," he said. "By baptism, we are quite literally plunged into a multicultural ecclesial reality."

All the displaced "are welcomed by a common bath, to a common table, in a common home of brothers and sisters," he said. "The challenge is to allow that baptismal reality to develop and grow in our ecclesial and our personal consciousness," so we may discern its implications for inclusive language, use of various languages, the nature of the worshiping assembly and its ministers, and for the architectural prominence given to baptism in worship spaces and other issues.

Recovery of baptismal spirituality also calls Christians to re-evaluate confirmation, "that other initiatory rite," he said. He contended that it should not be displaced from or separate from baptism. "It is rather the gift of the Spirit tied intimately to the water bath that prepares one for the reception of the body and blood of Christ as a full member of the church," he said. Thus, confirmation is "the ritualizing, the sacramentalizing of the Spirit gift, inseparably tied to the water."

Johnson called for putting confirmation "back where it belongs, as the inseparable, concluding seal of the baptismal rite whenever baptism takes place."

Baptismal spirituality further implies "advocacy for and practice of the communion of all the baptized," he contended. If confirmation and communion were celebrated at the time of baptism, whatever the age of the person being initiated, "the unity of the paschal ministry could be better signified, and the Eucharist would again assume its proper significance as the culmination of Christian initiation."

This is not sacramental romanticism, he insisted, and quoted from an Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada statement: "The Lord's supper is God's meal for the baptized. Admission to the supper is by Christ's invitation."

God "through both word and sacrament" always takes the initiative, Johnson said, leading us "by the Holy Spirit to the response of faith, hope and love within the community of grace."

That reality of God always taking the initiative, and the recovery of baptismal spirituality as the center "out of which we live and to which we return," calls Christians to shun passing fads in "what today is generically called spirituality," Johnson said.

Quoting Lutheran theologian Daniel Erlander, he said, "'Never does our status before God depend on how we feel, having the right experience, being free of doubts, what we accomplish, our success or our position. We are Christians because God surprised us. Coming in water, God washed us and grafted us onto Christ.'"

Therefore, "a clear baptismal spirituality will place the primary emphasis where it should be, on God, on the Spirit, the great author and initiator of salvation," Johnson said. Catechesis will be lifelong, reinforcing that "we are all invited to return constantly for refresh meet, renewal and reorientation" to the new life begun in initiation.

This understanding also grounds the practice of full initiation of infants,, he said. "What a stand the church could take" against displacement and victimizing of innocent children by poverty, violence, hunger and crime, if the church would "simply initiate and continue to form them fully," he said. "How we think of infant initiation speaks volumes about our understanding of the giftedness of God's grace and the role of the Holy Spirit and the community in the Christian life."

Johnson called also for renewed focus on baptism at the center of the liturgical year. That year is "not a dramatic enactment or retelling of the life of Jesus. Nor is it the annual, recurring, cyclic meditation on and devotion to the historical life of Jesus." Rather, the liturgical year is "about us, our spirituality in Christ, our identity as the body of Christ in the world."