I started my
journey as a Christian about 3 years ago. In that time, I have been to many
services at various churches of different denominations, from Quaker to
Catholic. As a non-baptized believer, the question of whether or not to take
communion was always in the back of my mind when I would find my seat in a new
church and open the order of service. I would flip to the last page and scan
the outline for the Eucharist. There, I would usually fine a short line of text
telling me how exclusive or inclusive their Eucharist was. Open table? I would
always partake. Exclusive? Sometimes. Catholic? Never. The whole process was
kind of amusing, really. In actuality, I could do whatever I wanted. There are
no Baptism Detectors that we pass through on our way up to the bread and cup.
In fact, in all of the services and communities I have spent time in, no one
has ever asked about my baptismal status. What was I actually weighing in these
decisions, then? Whether or not I believed in an exclusive Eucharist? Whether
or not I believed in baptism?
Because no
one ever asked me about my baptism, I have felt no pressure, nor external sense
of urgency, to BE baptized. The one
exception to this was in the midst of wedding planning when my partner, H, and I
engaged in a heated debate about whether to specify exclusivity or inclusivity
of the Eucharist in our order of service. In the end, H gracefully
conceded her position for my preference, but it left me wondering. Though it
was not her intention, and her arguments were in no way directed toward or
against me, they did exclude me from full participation in that sacrament and
separate me from her understanding of whole Christian life. Whoa.
But, see,
it’s not that I was actively, passionately Not Baptized, much in the same way
that H and I were not actively, passionately Not Married. H’s and
my engagement was a vital part of our relationship. A process, more than a
period of waiting that informed our understanding of love, commitment and
compassion. I suppose I was in an
engagement process with baptism too.
But how long
could this engagement period last before I was just being avoidant? Many
traditions have some sort of age of accountability- what was mine? What did it
say about me and my faith that I refused to set the date?
Being an
Outcast is a blessing in a system that thrives on oppression. We know that
God’s chosen people are the destitute, those who hunger and thirst for both
sustenance and justice. But both privilege and and oppression have a lot of
layers and it is rare to find a person who embodies all of one and none of the
other. I live in a mix of the two, like so many of us. Being queer has been a
blessing for me because it has given me the eyes to see and the ears to hear
some subtleties of oppression that I may have missed, had I grown up to be a
white, able-bodied, conventionally gendered, STRAIGHT woman. But I live in a
time when my people are selling out to the system. Wealthy, white, attractive,
gay men and lesbian women are the faces of a Gay Rights Movement and once their
demands for assimilation into our social and political power structure have
been accepted, they will happily leave the people of color, the poor, the
genderqueer, the homeless, and generally disenfranchised queers behind. Since I
live right on that cusp, I have a choice of allegiance. This is my age of
accountability. As a Christian, I cannot make the choice to be baptized into a
kingdom of worldly power and corruption. So, it seems it is time for me to be
baptized into the Kindom of God.
First, I had
to realize that, while I had long stopped romanticizing
Community-with-a-capital-C, I was still waiting for The Perfect Community to
come sweep me off my feet and love me and challenge me an hold me accountable
and be the perfect vision of God’s Kindom. Whoops. I was still nursing the
wounds from other communities I had walked out of or been cast from and I was
ignoring the community that was growing all around me. I was hovering at the
door of our church- one foot out and one foot in. Just close enough to
criticize all the places it fell short and just far enough away that it
couldn’t hurt me. But that didn’t stop our church from embracing me. Many
times, this community has stepped up to support me and H without our even
asking. That kind of care has been humbling. We are all broken. We all fall
short of the Glory. But God doesn’t call us to be perfect. God calls us to love
and support each other through our best and our worst. Circle of Mercy has done
that for us and so you are who should baptize me.
Next, I had
to articulate what baptism would mean for me. If I believe in an inclusive
Eucharist, if I don’t believe in baptism as a key to eternal salvation from
hell, then what do I believe it is?
I believe
that baptism is an allegiance to the Kindom of God and I do believe that that
allegiance disallows for any alliances with false idols- namely: Institutions
of Oppression (The State) and Consumerism. In that way, I am giving my life
over to Christ, because that kind of statement does not generally assure safety
in our broken world. I also believe that the God I ally myself with is a living
God. One who still speaks to us, calls to us and moves in the world. In
committing to this God, I am committing to a lifetime of re-reading and
re-hearing scripture, but I am also committing to finding the voice of God in
myself and in the modern day prophets that continue to speak out against
oppression, the Jesuses in the breadlines. Lastly, and the part I struggle with
most: I believe in the God who works in miracles and, therefore, trust God over
my Self (you know, that ego part).
This last part brings to mind a verse in
Proverbs: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding; in all your ways acknowledge [God], and [God] will make your
path straight.” Proverbs 3: 5-6
This was the
verse read at H’s baptism and the verse scrawled in the presentation page
of the bible H received from her mother 10 years later. If you believe in
this sort of personification of God, you might imagine that God laughed as that
verse was read for the passionately faithful 5 year-old, who no one suspected
would grow up to be the passionately queer Christian she is today. You might
also imagine that that same verse went from being ironic to aggressive when it
was written as a reminder, a demand even, to have faith in God so that HE will
straighten your queer-broken-self out.
Now, that
same verse will not leave my mind as I search for verses that inspire me,
console me, or challenge me. There are plenty of other verses that have
done all of those things for me: A
passage from 1 Thessalonians is taped to my bathroom mirror. Last year, I wrote
a blessing for my midwifery class based on the midwives of Exodus. Our
community house in Atlanta was named for the hymn “His Eye is on the Sparrow”.
Yet, this is the verse that I cannot escape from. Perhaps God is trying to
restore the verse to its place of irony. Or maybe I really need the constant
reminder not to obsess over every tiny decision I have to make- that I cannot
actually control every aspect
of my life, nor should I. After all, I am a child of God, who works in
miracles.
