Into the Gulf

A friend was recently serving as chaplain at Mustang Island Conference Center and someone from his church asked to be baptized in the gulf while they were here. He called to ask for advice, and I talked about my experience with beach baptisms and gave a few pointers. It reminded me of when I first moved here and called Pastor William Campbell to ask him the same question before my first beach baptism. Now, I have lost count of how many beach baptisms we have celebrated now. Some still prefer to be sprinkled to being dunked (baptism literally means to be dunked), but either way, standing just off shore on the edge of the gulf which connects to the oceans is a profound place to be initiated into an intentional life in the Body of Christ. 

There is an early church text simply called the Teaching, or in Greek, the Didache which describes baptism in the first century church. The preference is for "living water" such as a stream or sea. If that is not available, it recommends cold water in a font. The imagery of baptism in St. Paul's letter to the Romans is of being dunked, immersed, submerged into the death of Christ, then being raised to new life with him. Once we come up from those waters life is never the same. Why would we ever go back to that old, dead half-life we lived before? Once we come up from the waters, raised with Christ, we live in Christ. We set out learning to see the world as Christ sees it, as God's Good Creation, full of humans made in the image of God. We strive to love as Jesus loves us and as Jesus commanded us to love. 

It is an unimaginable life and love we are baptized into; just as we cannot imagine all the oceans of earth as we stand on the beach here in Port Aransas. We can look at a map and hear stories about what's out there to get a sense of it, and to find our way. So, we cannot imagine the vastness of our life in Christ, but we can read Scripture, and hear stories about this adventure of learning to love as Christ loved us. We will make mistakes, and that is how we learn. We will wander astray, but our baptism never wears off. We will forget we are the beloved of God, and the Holy Spirit will send us a reminder; maybe this is yours: You are loved. 

Whether it was in a baptismal font, like our beautiful shell font, or in a steam, or the gulf, we share one baptism into one Lord, Jesus Christ. Each time we witness a baptism, we get to return to our own cleansing, liberating, empowering baptism into something more wonderful than we can ever imagine. We are initiated into a community of Jesus followers, into the Body of Christ, freed from what would hold us back, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to continue his reconciling in the world.