How to Remember Your Baptism

How to Remember Your Baptism

This Sunday, the lectionary passages recount for us the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptizer. It is common on this Sunday that we ask the members of the congregation to remember their baptism, for many Presbyterians a difficult task since it is traditional practice to baptize infants.

Maybe it is more accurate to ask us to live up to our baptism. The Scriptures and the confessions teach us that baptism for us involves the in-grafting of the baptized into the body of Christ. As parents baptizing children, we do this in the same way God commanded the Israelites to circumcise male children on the eighth day of their birth. These children are now a part of the covenant family and members of the Kingdom of God.

This entrance into the covenant is also why we refer to the period of instruction leading up to membership in the visible church as confirmation. The individual is not merely being given instruction regarding the church sacraments and his/her ability to understand what happens through participation in them, nor are they learning about the governmental structures of the church or denomination the person is seeking to join. These persons are confirming the faithfulness of God through his covenant, that they have indeed grown up into their faith, into the promises made on their behalf by their parents years before.

The promises were originally made for you, if you were baptized as an infant, when you were unable to voice your own choices. Your parents made a commitment to pray with you and for you. They promised to live the Christian faith before you in such a way that finding Christ would be as simple as watching them and how they acted, reacted, and treated those around them. So, remembering your baptism means remembering and living out that moment in your life when your parents’ faith became your own faith. This is the time when the covenant became real, when the faithfulness of God came through, when your parents’ prayers for you became reality and you allowed the Holy Spirit to draw you to your Savior, Jesus Christ.

Pastor Craig