Categories: church
Tags: confirmation, baptism, Anglicanism, Christianity, church
Date: 15 May 2006 10:10:38
Yesterday I mentioned my baptismal verse (Isaiah 43:19) and Robin commented that this was a practice with which he was largely unfamiliar. It got me thinking that actually, now you come to mention it, it's not something I've ever seen at an Anglican baptism, but it's something I've seen at pretty much every non-conformist baptism I've ever attended. I wasn't baptised as a baby, and was baptised at age 19 (fully dunked) at a Baptist church. The verse was the one that was given to me by the church as I was being prayed for after being brought out of the water. I was the only person being baptised at that service, but at services I have attended with multiple baptisms, each person has been given a different verse, and I really like the fact that the church had made the effort to pray for each individual and give them something personal.
It got me wondering if other people have also had verses given to them at their baptisms, and if so which one? Has it been important to you, or a comfort, or just something nice that you've since largely forgotten about? For me, I've never forgotten it, and I've found over the years that the whole desert metaphor has resonated quite a lot with my experience (that sounds awful, like I lead a really miserable life! I'm not really such a misery!), which means that whenever I've thought about the baptismal verse I've found it rather comforting, a reminder that my circumstances aren't the sum total of what it's all about, that God is doing new things and that ultimately there is hope. As I mentioned yesterday, if I'm honest I'm not sure I can ever answer the question in the verse ("do you not perceive it?"), and sometimes it is quite frustrating. I want to be able to perceive what God is doing, and live in hope that one day it will make more sense. But in a sense that frustration is something of what keeps me going - there's more to Christianity than my experience of it, and by hanging on in there I'm sure I shall perceive and experience more of God's grace.
This also got me thinking about church more widely. As the practice of giving baptismal verses, as far as I can tell, is largely a non-conformist thing (and probably therefore more of an evangelical practice), it seems to sit really well in the evangelical focus of our personal relationship with God. For me, over the years, the personal side of things, whilst remaining important of course, now sits more alongside the corporate, churchy side of things. I was thinking about my baptism, and whilst it took place in a Baptist church I never ever felt like that meant "I am a Baptist". It was about me being an individual Christian, and took place in the church I happened to be a part of at the time. Now I'm thinking about confirmation/affirmation, I think it's more that I need to be able to say, as well as "I am a Christian", "I am part of this much wider bit of the body of Christ known as the Anglican church", acknowledging my debt of gratitude to God for placing me in the Anglican church, and my debt of gratitude to the Anglican church for showing me more of God, helping make more sense of God for me, and providing me somewhere I can regard as "home". I'll be proud* to call myself an Anglican.
* in a good way ;)