This coming Sunday we are planning on having a couple of deaths and resurrections otherwise known as baptisms. As I read the scriptures I see baptism not as something I or others do to show our commitment to God so much as it is God’s way of making disciples of all nations, God’s way of delivering us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Christ, God’s way of putting Christ upon us and making us a new creation. I know Christians do more than quibble over this, they stubbornly, obstinately, and even disrespectfully disagree over it. The disagreement, the obstinance, the stubbornness can always be a problem, but the disrespect always is. 

Two weeks ago, we had an actual death as the service was scheduled to start. A man who had just turned 70, who had faithfully served in various roles over his many decades as a member (his family arrived when he was a kid in the late 60s and were a fixture ever since) had a medical emergency while he stood at his post as usher in the rear of the sanctuary. We had people in the pews who were equipped for such emergencies (retired doctors and ICU nurses), we had first responders on the scene, but he died as he lived, in the hands of his Lord. He now awaits the promised resurrection. 

One of the points I made during our service for him was that for many of us that sanctuary would be the place he died even if technically that happened in an ambulance. It was fitting though, because he had died in that room many times, every time he confessed his sin, every time he served as a faithful usher, because to serve is to die to self and live for others. And yet, walking into that room for me is forever changed. As the usher, he was always the last person I’d commune from the congregation, this last Sunday, obviously, it wasn’t him, and the emotions hit hard. That room will never be the same, but for me, and for those who are baptized, the room never is after a death. 

Truth be told this job can be difficult. I don’t mean it can be difficult to deal with people I mean that this job puts you into situations you never expect to walk into. You don’t know when you are shaking hands that first Sunday of your installation who it is you will struggle with, who it is you find a close connection to, whose death bed you will pray beside, who you will bury, whose spouse and kids you’ll be tasked with comforting. This job can be difficult not because people are difficult, but because you never know what is coming next. And yet, I wouldn’t trade this coming Sunday, last Sunday, or the Sunday before for anything. I would rather it have gone differently, I’d rather he’d still be the usher and husband and father he was, but I wouldn’t trade the moment of walking through that with the people entrusted to me for anything. 

In much the same way, I wouldn’t trade the moment this coming Sunday either, nor any moment when I get to be the hands, the voice, the feet, that carry the good news. Baptisms are great, especially when it is two members of a family, one of whom is too young to know what is going on and the other old enough to know she has so much to grow into. I’m looking forward to it, to walking through that moment with the people entrusted to me. 

For me, theology worth considering, much like the theology of baptism, is about people. It is more than just water, it is water connected with a promise that doesn’t sit outside of our lived reality but grasps us, splashes us, drowns us, actually touches us in the places we live and move and breathe. You don’t actually baptize ideas, you baptize people, or I should say, God does. Life is not about abstraction but about engagement, about dealing with who and what is in front of you. And yet, for more reasons than worth recalling here, we often dehumanize, disrespect, and abstract the people in front of us for the sake of positions and ideas that have no blood poured out for them on a cross. Christ dies for people, he rises for people, he doesn’t do it for abstract ideas or impersonal doctrines. 

We Lutherans have a history of being cantankerous around our doctrine, for good reason, you want to get it right, I want to get it right. But, and this is the part we often miss, the reformation was not simply about getting it right for the sake of being right. Luther was concerned about people, about pastoral care, about how God actually spoke into the lives of people to bring them hope for all their days to come. Doctrine matters, yes, but not merely for its own sake, it matters for people. 

As often happens, I was walking through library and book found me—one I wasn’t looking for. It was written by a titan of a theologian, Martin Marty, now also of blessed and holy memory. With his trademark flair he unpacks how he understands his Lutheran identity in the form of questions and answers. Here is an example of the structure of the book asking a question about what we call the Confessions, the Book of Concord, the documents from mainly, though not exclusively, the sixteenth century that have become the grammar of Lutheran theology. 

“Don’t the confessions and creeds define Lutheranism? Indeed they do, but they define in a special way. In effect they say, ’This we believe!’ and not ‘This you must believe!’ It is true that some Lutherans use them to build fences, to rule heretics out and the orthodox in, to enforce loyalty. But such activity is doomed over the long pull of history. People who share the confession cannot keep from being loyal and expressive; people who do not cannot be forced to pretend or to conform. The church is healthiest when it causes people to study, inquire, persuade each other, teach, willingly confess, and happily live the reality of grace and faith in Jesus Christ.” [Martin Marty, Lutheranism: A Restatement in Question and Answer Form (Royal Oak, MI: Cathedral Publishers, 1975), 9]

I love that, the church is healthiest when it acts in such a way as to invite people to join in exploring who God is and what he has done. Marty knows, all too well, that Lutherans aren’t always known for that. “The church lives between the poles of contending for truth and contending for unity. Lutherans, for better or worse, have sometimes done less for unity than for the zeal for truth” (28–29). And it is the zeal for the truth that, while in and of itself isn’t a problem, can lead to the disrespect, dehumanization, and depersonalization of people for whom the truth exists.

Make no mistake, the truth exists, including the truth about how it is God at work in a baptism claiming that person as his own special possession. We do well, even in our zeal for the truth, to remember Marty’s suggestion that, “Love is prior to the claims men make for the truth they hold” (39).  It is prior not just in time but in deed. The world, with all creatures, is created long before that creation is recorded on the pages of a text. God rescues his people Israel with a mighty hand and outstretched arm well before any one sings of it. Christ dies and rises again before that truth is proclaimed or held by anyone. Christ commissions that disciples are made by baptism and teaching far before water is splashed or truth contended for.

The truth is, my job isn’t the only one that is about people, it isn’t the only one where you don’t know what is going to happen next, where you are unaware of the relationship you’ll have with hand you shake and the hello you share. That is life in this world. And while you may not bury or baptize those hands, they are still hands worth shaking, even if you disagree with them, even if they hold destructive positions and ideas and concepts, even if they are cantankerous and dehumanizing and disrespectful to you because those hands belong to a person—a person for whom other hands were pierced. Theology, life, it is about people or it isn’t really worth pursuing. 

I’m not trying to minimize the damage people to do each other or suggest some sort of pollyannish “let’s all hold hands and get along” but I am suggesting that for those of who who have been baptized, those of us who have been moved from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Christ, who have put on Christ, who have been washed and made a new creation, seeing people for who they are and in light of whose we are isn’t optional. You never know what room you are walking into and who is going to walk out of it with you but you always know that the people in the room are inherently valuable and if your truth matters it doesn’t just matter for you, it matters for them too. Love, though, love is prior to that truth we hold. Love gives us the strength to grasp the hand of even our enemy, a truth that couldn’t exist with the love that poured itself out prior.