“This dying and rising, this crossing over from death to life which happens at baptism, is not a one-off thing—but it is to be our daily vesture as Christians.”
—Br. Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE, in “Brother, Give Us a Word,” a daily email sent to friends and followers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, a religious order for men in the Episcopal/Anglican Church. www.ssje.org
If we were baptized in a river or by full immersion, we might better understand this well-known theological concept of Baptism as a dying and rebirth, and compare it to our life in the world. There is something appropriate about going totally under water in the arms of someone else, totally surrendering—and wondering for a brief second if we will resurface. When we do again experience our heads above water, we cannot help but look around, shake our head of dripping hair, and give thanks for being alive—a new beginning, a fresh start, a new person. Suddenly we see the world a little clearer. Some of the fog is gone.
Each day a little of us certainly dies physically. Each day we try to learn a little more about surrender. My prayer is that each day a few of my character defects die or are chipped away. When that happens, I do indeed know resurrection, a new life, a life of peace and love and joy. But as so often happens, pieces of those character defects or sins seem to come right back, like magnets, to places in our mind and body and spirit where they once so comfortably lived. Sometimes they return like some fiery, ugly dragon from a place inside of us that we never knew existed, and we end up having to make more apologies than we did in the past.
Baptism in our tradition is a onetime thing; but dying and resurrection are a daily, sometimes hourly event. The concept that in Baptism we experience dying and resurrection is still important. I love Br. Geoffrey’s use of the word vesture, meaning a garment that covers us like a vestment. He is offering to us the opportunity to try to imagine wearing our baptism like a vestment throughout the day. An amazing concept!
As we watch infants, toddlers, youth, and adults being baptized, we might imagine them putting on vestments to cover them throughout eternal life, as a sign that they are marked as God’s own forever. God is always with them in each dying and each resurrection in their lives. We hold on to this sacrament as an outward and visible sign and symbol of our life, in and with Christ in the world.
There are parts of us that are dying, but there are parts of us that need to die; and God offers resurrection to us daily at each death on both sides of the veil.
Joanna . joannaseibert.com