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The Rev. Frank
Logue Baptism and Community
If someone had never heard a word about Jesus Christ, what would you tell them about him? This is a problem that Vincent Donovan faced. He served as a missionary to the Masai in Tanzania for 17 years. He came to be frustrated with missionary work in Africa as in consisted mostly of so-called pre-evangelization efforts. This means that churches would build hospitals, schools and orphanages to open the people up to hearing from Christians after first getting to know our good works. Donovan asked his Bishop and received permission to just go out and tell people about Jesus and see what would happen. He found six Masai villages willing to talk with him for a year. He would visit each one day a week and rest on the seventh day before beginning again. He told the people in the villages that he could not bring schools, hospitals or anything else. He wanted to learn what they knew of God and tell them about his experience with God. He would later write, “I think…the missionary’s job is to preach, not the church, but Christ. If he preaches Christ and the message of Christianity, the church may well result, may well appear, but it might not be the church he had in mind.”[1] Donovan discovered this for himself when his plan of sharing the Gospel first worked. As a year of visit to Old Man Ndangoya’s community were ending, he went to the community and told them that he had now told them all he had to impart about Jesus. He wrote of the encounter as follows, I had taught them everything I knew about Christianity. Now it was up to them. If they did accept it, of course, it required public baptism. So I would go away for a week or so and give them the opportunity to make their judgment on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If they did accept it, then there would be baptism. However, baptism wasn’t automatic. Over the course of the year it had taken me to instruct them, I had gotten to know them well indeed.
So I stood in front of the assembled community and began: “This old man sitting here has missed too many of our instruction meetings. He was always herding cattle. He will not be baptized with the rest. The two on this side will be baptized because they always attended, and understood very well what we talked about. So did this young mother. She will be baptized. But that man there has obviously not understood the instructions. And that lady cannot be baptized. And this warrior has not shown enough effort…”
The old man, Ndangoya, stopped me politely but firmly, “Padri, why are you trying to break us up and separate us? During this whole year that you have been teaching us, we have talked about these things when you were not here, at night around the fire. Yes, there have been lazy ones in this community. But they have been helped by those with much energy. There are stupid ones in the community, but they have been helped by those who are intelligent. Yes, there are ones with little faith in this village, but they have been helped by those with much faith. Would you turn out and drive off the lazy ones and the ones with little faith and the stupid ones? From the first day I have spoken to these people. And I speak for them now. Now on this day, one year later, I can declare for them and for all this community, that we have reached the step in our lives where we can say, “We believe.’”
Donovan went on to write, “We believe. Communal faith. Until that day I had never heard of such a concept, certainly had never been taught it in a classroom…I looked at the old man, Ndangoya. “Excuse me, old man,” I said, “Sometimes, my head is hard and I learn slowly. “We believe,” you said. Of course you do. Everyone in the community will be baptized.” It sounds almost scandalous here in south Georgia to speak of the faith of a community. When God is discussed it is more about whether I am saved or you are saved. There is little idea of a community of faith. Baptism is about a personal affirmation of faith, right? So how can a community make that affirmation on behalf of someone. Well, we shouldn’t if the person is not willing. But in Donovan’s case he found a community willing to say “We believe” even if everyone’s faith was not yet strong enough for the person to stand and say “I believe” if they had to do so alone. Today is a good day for preaching about baptism and our understanding of it. As our readings are a pattern followed by multiple denominations, I did not pick today’s readings, but when the persons who did select them decided on these it was because we are gathered on the first Sunday of Lent. And as Lent prepares us for Easter, which was historically the main day of the church year for baptisms, then there is no time like now to reconsider how we feel about baptism. Not only did we read of Jesus’ baptism, but we also read from a letter from the Apostle Peter which told that Noah’s Ark prefigured Christian baptism. And if that wasn’t enough, we read the portion of the longer story of Noah and the Ark which told of God’s covenant with all the flesh of the earth, never to cause a flood again. The story of Noah’s Ark only tells us of the faith of Noah. We are not told of the individual righteousness of every person on the Ark. Even if everyone in the family was not willing to say I believe we need to build and Ark, they were willing to say we believe we need to build an ark. They created the ark as a community and they survived as a community. Noah’s Ark has long been connected to Christian baptism. Carvings of the Ark were a common decoration for baptismal fonts for centuries. The reason is that those who got into the Ark were saved through water as Peter puts it in the letter we read today. Peter goes on to write that it is not cleansing of dirt that baptism offers, but a good conscience before God. This is because through baptism we find not just a one time forgiveness of sins, but an ongoing connection to God that allows for us to continue to seek that cleansing forgiveness as we live into our baptismal commitments. So, the connection goes, as all who got into the Ark found salvation, so all who pass through the waters of baptism find salvation and entrance into the great Ark of the church. Baptism is a chance to firmly establish your commitment, not just to God but to the rest of the faithful. For Jesus taught that we are not just to love God, but to also love our neighbors as ourselves. For this reason Christianity is always a team sport. Christianity is a community endeavor. And this is not just an Episcopal idea but a Christian one. Find any Christian church and no matter the emphasis placed on a person’s public affirmation of faith in baptism, that affirmation takes place in community and makes one a member of that community. Baptism always has both an individual and a communal aspect. We tend to stress the individual part, while almost forgetting that baptism is not just an event in the life of a family. Baptism is an event in the life of a community of faith. Next Sunday, we will baptize Shelby Armentrout and as at all baptisms, I will ask whether the congregation will do all we can to support this person in her new life in Christ. Following the words of the service, we will boldly proclaim, “We will.” This is necessary, for Shelby, like all of us may face times that may try her soul. She may sometimes want to say as one father in Mark’s Gospel proclaims when asking Jesus to heal his son, “I believe, help my unbelief.” Each of us needs all of us to stand alongside and to proclaim the faith that is in us together. As the elder of the Masai community said, “Yes, there have been lazy ones in this community. But they have been helped by those with much energy. There are stupid ones in the community, but they have been helped by those who are intelligent. Yes, there are ones with little faith in this village, but they have been helped by those with much faith.” I know you are wondering which ones in our community are lazy, stupid, or have little faith. Well the answer is sometimes its me and sometimes its you. Each of us can be lazy about our faith, or slow to learn what God is teaching us, or finding our faith flagging in the face of troubles that seem too much to bear. We are all the lazy ones, the stupid ones, the ones with little faith. However, and this is not bragging because it is true, you are also the one who is energetic, and intelligent and the one with great faith. For even when we don’t feel it others can draw strength from our strength. That’s what a community of faith does. We bear one another’s burdens and share one another’s joys. Some folks shy away from church. Maybe he or she has been hurt by a church before or by someone they thought was a good Christian. Maybe they think Christians are a bunch of hypocrites. For whatever reason they want to go it alone in faith. I can tell you by experience, both my own experience and watching others from the sidelines, going it alone in faith will only get so far. You might feel energetic, intelligent and of great faith, but eventually life will turn things around and you will be the lazy, stupid one of little faith. That’s why you need a community. Church was never an option. Community was the norm for Jesus and his disciples and remains it to this day. We are stronger than I am alone. Sometimes I may or may not have the faith I need to pray, but we do. Sometimes I may not have the strength to get through another week, but we can have that. We can have that. We can help one another in our unbelief and there is a lot of power in that. Amen. [1] Vincent Donovan’s Christianity Rediscovered, page 81.
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