A Note From Rob ...
Week of Jan. 11, 2009
I have been reading about the practice of christening ships. I have learned that in the 3rd century BC prayers were offered to the deity de jour. The invocation was to protect the sailors from harm on the seas. I discovered that everything from wine, holy water, whisky and champagne has been used the bathe the vessel before it slips into the water.
US ships are sent forth to sea with these words, "In the name of the
United States, I christen thee,"____________________" as a bottle of bubbly
is broken on the vessel. The naming, commissioning and sending forth into service is called "christening." I wonder where they got the concept.
Well, they got it from the Church. In the early church baptism and the naming of a child were seen as the beginning of life's journey. The naming was an integral part of the baptism. The name was important. How would the child know they were being summoned without a name? How would the earthly parents or Heavenly parent call the child if they or the child did not know who they were? The child was baptized and at that event the naming was made known.
This was linked with baptism which was the claiming of the child by God. Unfortunately, the distinctions between christening and baptism became blurred. Many believed the two were separate events. Therefore, one might be asked, "Were you baptized?" The answer might be, "No, but I was christened." In most of the traditions of the Christian Church they are one and the same. That is true in the United Methodist Church. To be christened was to be baptized.
For us, the primary actor in the event is God who calls us to baptism, names and claims us as His own children. We often are given the gift of baptism and are claimed by God before we acknowledge or claim the gift. From a Christian and eternal perspective being adopted into the family of God at baptism is more important than our biological birth. Both are gifts given without our participation but must be accepted and lived into by choice.
This Sunday we will examine Jesus' baptism as we remember our own. It is a re-claiming of our birth into the family of God. We will come to remember, claim and begin to live into our baptismal gift. It is an opportunity to symbolically die and claim new life for one day we will die in this life and our hope will be in the God who named and claimed us as His own.
RETURN
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