#181 He Did All This for You, Little One

Yesterday Mia Grace Hofman was baptized. Since I am an ordained minister, I had the incredible privilege of administering the sacrament (or, in less official church language, I did the baptizing). I love the sacraments. In my Christian tradition, we have two: baptism and the Lord's Supper. We believe that God confirms His promises to us through the sacraments. He nourishes and strengthens our faith by making His grace visible and tangible through the water of baptism and the bread and cup of the Lord's Supper.

One of the things baptism symbolizes is our new life in Christ Jesus. We are saved because Jesus unites us to Himself in His death and resurrection. Going under and coming back out of the water points to our dying and rising with Christ. Baptism challenges us to respond (and really demands our response) to God's grace by turning from our old, sinful, selfish life and following Jesus in a new, holy, loving life. In a very real sense, we no longer live; Christ lives in us. But we only respond to God's actions. We can't earn our new life, our salvation. This is entirely a gift of God. When it comes to saving ourselves we are helpless. In my tradition, we baptize the babies of Christian parents, which reminds us that our salvation is completely God's work. As our liturgy beautifully says, "[Dear child], for you Jesus came into the world. For you He died and conquered death. He did all this for you, little one, though you know nothing of it yet. We love because He first loved us." God saves us because He loves us. He did everything necessary to save us long before we can even begin to realize we need saving. He decided to save us before we were even born. Seeing a small and fragile baby be marked as God's child and welcomed into Christ's church reminds us all that we are helpless without Jesus, that we have become God's children only because of God's grace. He did it for us.

Grace and peace,

BMH