Baptism

48 Years Ago Easter Turned My Life Downside Up
Moonrise over Athens, much as I remember it

A dusky early evening left a soft glow on the Acropolis, periodically visible as I walked from the hostel toward the church. Yet, the size and warmth of the rising full moon held my attention as its blush touched the hills, for a brief while silhouetting the pillars and pediments of the Parthenon.

It was the evening of Holy Saturday, which fell on March 25 that year. In other years the day would have been the Feast of the Annunciation, but in 1978 it was the eve of Easter Sunday. I walked the short distance to Syntagma Square, to revisit the Anglican parish I had found that morning. Now, in the approaching darkness, I was returning to make my first confession, and be baptized at the Great Easter Vigil.

St Paul’s Anglican Church, Athens

How this came to be was largely due to providential grace, for I had not traveled to Greece with this particular result in mind. I was on a college year abroad, having lived and studied in Florence during the autumn. Then, after Christmas in Germany, I traveled to England for two eight week terms of study at Oxford. My plan for the year was to focus on Art History, fulfilling in part my chosen college major.

But, as in the biblical Damascus Road surprise, when first walking into the piazza around the Duomo in Florence, I experienced an unexpectedly sudden conviction: That it was time for me to surrender to the divine power I had come to recognize but had yet to affirm. Asking if there was an English-speaking congregation nearby, I was directed to St James Episcopal Church near the American Consulate. Over the next few months, and with the guidance of Fr. Edward Lee, the parish became for me a place of spiritual nurture.

The autumn course of studies for our group of visiting students in Florence was a fixed one. But my subsequent program in England allowed me the freedom to choose a personal area of focus. The exotic sounding topic of Christian Mysticism had been commended to me, and upon naming this to my Oxford program administrator, I learned that she could arrange tutorials for me with a recognized specialist in the field. What a blessing this turned out to be.

St. James Episcopal Church, Florence, Italy

And so, during a cold and wet English winter, my catechesis in the Christian Faith was suddenly deepened. My growth was fed by readings from the early desert saints, on through to the spiritual writers of the medieval period. My study experience was complemented by a different approach to worship from what I had encountered in the liturgy at St. James Episcopal Church in Florence. By chance, I discovered Pusey House and Anglo-Catholic liturgy soon after arriving in Oxford. Passing by a notice board, I saw an announcement about an upcoming sermon focused on the spirituality of Thomas Merton, whose Seven Story Mountain autobiography I had read the year before. Fr. Cheslyn Jones, the Chaplain at Pusey and a specialist in the Greek New Testament, along with the history of liturgy and spirituality, became my next catechist.

Pusey House Chapel, Oxford, England

At the end of the Hilary (or winter) Term, I made the kind of plans many American students undertake hoping for spring warmth: To head as far south as cheaply possible, for what in my case would be a six week break before the Trinity Term.

I found a used tent and some economical camping supplies in local shops in Oxford, and located a round-trip bus ticket from London to Athens, offered by a discount travel bureau. This led to a remarkable pair of journeys to and from the continent, crossing between Dover and Ostend, through Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Yugoslavia, before finally arriving in Greece. Deposited on an Athenian curbside on an early afternoon, I found a local bus to the port of Piraeus. There I arranged for an overnight passage to Crete on a vintage island cargo and passenger ferry. The next morning, I bought a bus ticket to the south coast of Crete, going to a place a friend had recommended, the little seaside town of Ierapetra, near where St. Paul’s ship had sailed off the coast (Acts 27). Aside from my basic gear, I had brought along only a New Testament and a book of the sayings of the Desert Fathers for my Lenten reading. My plan to do a lot of fasting for spiritual reasons fit neatly with my need for economy.

My first couple of nights were spent in a farmer’s field, above the town and seaside. I awoke one of those mornings to a rapping on the tent pole that alarmed me, sensitive to a probable complaint about my trespassing. Instead, there was a kind man, his arms folded across his chest, cradling fresh tomatoes and cucumbers. I was very touched.

The beach along which I walked to Ierapetra on Crete

After a few days I relocated my tent to an area just above the pebbled beach, adjacent to the long shore upon which I would daily walk to the town. There I would buy a loaf of hearty brown bread, some cheese and sausage meat, as well as more tomatoes and cucumbers. These became the staples of my diet for about 5 weeks.

With just a couple of weeks to go before my return journey to England, a friend from our study program found me on Crete. He was conflicted and wrestling with a need to fly back to the States to be reconciled with his father. After a day or two, he resolved to act on his intuition, and departed on his long journey home.

A little Greek Orthodox church like the one in which I prayed on a morning of decision

Musing about his decision, I realized that I was moving toward a similar resolve, but that in my case it was a need to be reconciled with our spiritual Father. I was still fuzzy about what this might mean in concrete terms, but awoke the next morning with greater clarity. I walked into town to pray in a small Greek Orthodox church when I realized what I needed to do. That was to go back to Athens, find an English Church, and ask to be baptized. Fetching my sleeping bag from the tent and my New Testment, I booked a bus ticket back to the north shore of Crete for a return to Piraeus on the same overnight ship. It was then I learned that it was Good Friday.

The Greek inter-island ferry ship, the Minos, upon which I sailed overnight between Piraeus and Crete

Holy Saturday morning, the bus from Piraeus dropped me at Syntagma Square in central Athens where – very conveniently – I found St Paul’s Anglican Church. Reading the church sign with its parish notices, I learned the name of the priest, Fr. Jeremy Peake, and his telephone number. Taking the risk of calling him early on Holy Saturday morning, I surprised him with an unanticipated but what I hoped would be a welcome request: I wished to be baptized. In a wonderfully understated British way, he responded by saying, “Perhaps we should talk about that!” He then invited me to come by for coffee. When I shared with him about my months of study, and with whom I had been receiving instruction in the Christian Faith, he was reassured. Warmly, he invited me to come early to the church that evening to make my first confession, and receive Baptism at the Great Easter Vigil.

The garden area where new light of Easter was lit

The liturgy began in the darkened forecourt of the parish church, just off a main boulevard in central Athens. Amidst the busy sounds of the city around us, we gathered in silence to light the new fire with which the liturgy begins. Being my first experience of the Vigil, I was quite moved by the sequence of readings, starting with the Creation, through the Fall and the Flood, the Exodus and entrance into the Promised Land, with stories of God’s covenantal grace being extended and renewed again and again. When I was then baptized, I felt like I was on fire, an overwhelming experience of cleansing embrace and transformation. I received communion as a new member of the Body of Christ, and left the liturgy feeling like I was several feet off the ground.

On Sunday morning following the Eucharist I was invited to lunch by the kind couple who had agreed to be my sponsors for Baptism. During that wonderful meal, they explained a practice with which I was unfamiliar: Easter eggs all colored dark red, recalling a wonderful Eastertide legend associated with Mary Magdalene.

After a further week in my tent near Ierapetra, I returned to Oxford for another term of formation in the history of Christian spiritual theology. At the end of the term, I received the sacrament of Confirmation through the hands of a suffragan bishop of Winchester, at Pusey House on Pentecost Sunday.

My experience of what now seems to have been a magical series of months, forty eight years ago, comes back to me every Easter. Especially when the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25 happens to occur near Holy Week, as it did this year.

Additional note: Readers interested in the legend about St. Mary Magdalen and the red egg might like to read my earlier post on this topic, which may be found here. A further reflection of the impact of the story I share here can be seen in the opening chapter and the thematic structure of my book, Ethics After Easter.

“… She Is Still Out There…”
James Tissot, The Resucitation of Lazarus

(Note: At the time of publication, what has happened to Nancy, the mother of Samantha Guthrie, is still unclear.)

The beginning of Lent offers us a stark reminder of our mortality, and of our ’nothingness’ apart from God’s Grace. This may lead some of us to be mindful of the death that we fear, or the deaths of loved ones whom we mourn. Our observance of ‘a holy Lent’ provides a season when we can grow in our assurance of the New Life we are given in and through Christ. This happens through our Baptism into his death and Resurrection. The Easter season that lies ahead has much to say about this, which is one reason we might devote ourselves to particular disciplines of preparation during these Forty Days.

I want to approach this theme in light of the recent widespread publicity given to the abduction of Nancy, the mother of Samantha Guthrie. This tragedy has focused a great deal of attention on some words that she and her siblings have used with reference to their mother: “We believe she is still out there.” This cautious statement has been oft-repeated by law officers and the news media.

We hear these words in the context of learning that Samantha Guthrie has been a member of St. Philip in the Hills Episcopal Church, in Tucson, where a prayer vigil was offered on behalf of her mother. Samantha has also written a book in which she expresses her Christian faith, a fact also evident in some of her recent public communications.

For Christians, our loved ones are always ‘still out there.’ I want to offer some reflection on this phrasing, and explore what the Guthries’ quoted words may mean in terms of Christian belief.

Despite a common notion we sometimes encounter in popular culture, people who die do not become ‘angels.’ Nevertheless, traditional Christian faith teaches us that angels are like us in reflecting a divine attribute, personhood. For we believe in One God in Three Persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). This is the mystery of the holy Trinitarian nature of God, in whose image and likeness all persons have been created. From our knowledge of God, and our experience of ourselves, we know that an integral feature of personhood is being in relationship with other persons.

Yet, unlike angels, we are embodied, and remain embodied regardless of our transformation through the resurrection of the dead at the end of our mortal, physical, lives.

Since the time of the New Testament, Christians have spoken about this transformation into a new form of embodiment by employing various metaphors. In view of this, at our demise, we do not become like a drop of water returning to the sea, or move from a personal identity based on our differentiation from others into an unconscious and undifferentiated state of life. As if – at death – we will somehow be dissolved into a greater realm of ‘Spirit.’

By our Baptism into the death and Resurrection of Jesus, we become named members of His Body, the one Body of Christ. This is the Church in its essence, which comprises the communion of all the Baptized, whether they are ‘on this side of the veil’ or have gone before us to the next life. Thus, though we (as Anglicans) do not pray to saints, we pray with them as the Holy Spirit enables this activity within us. Those presently alive in this life and those who have ‘gone before us’ – are both ‘here’ and ‘there,’ in a shared living stream of ongoing prayer and fellowship.

An oft-neglected article of traditional Christian faith is that of the Ascension of our Lord, directly tied to his Resurrection from the dead. In our faith, Christ did not ‘go up’ alone, but carried with him our human nature. This enabled our own transition – with him – into the next life. When we die, by Grace we move into a greater experience of nearness with our Lord, who is already with us, and in us. Therefore, we do not cease ‘to be’ at death. And we are taught not to fear physical death in view of our belief in the significance of our Baptism into Christ’s death and Resurrection. By virtue of this Ascension-fortified faith, we have assurance about our continuing fellowship with those who have died “in the Lord.”

In view of these fundamental aspects of Christian believing, we can recognize how Nancy Guthrie continues to be among us, and always will be, regardless of what may have happened to her in the recent tragic circumstances now so familiar to us. For as Jesus is quoted as saying, in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

Note: I present these reflections without implying that my words here have negative implications regarding those who do not share our faith nor our baptismal identity. As for people whose faith (or lack of it) is known to God alone, we need to remind ourselves that, in God’s Providential wisdom, the divine will for those who do not identify as Christian remains a mystery to us.

The Further Beauty of the Epiphany

Everyday, people are tortured and killed because of their religious and political beliefs. Many of them are Christians, who are willing to die rather than renounce their faith.

This has been true throughout history, and it is a poignant aspect of the Christmas and Epiphany Gospels. Peter Koenig’s wonderful tryptic painting, Christmas—Epiphany, helps make this clear. The death of Jesus is intimately connected with the death and anticipated resurrection of others. The Lamb that was slain becomes the Temple at the center of the New Jerusalem, from which the rivers of the water of life flow. The wine at the wedding at Cana prefigures the same supernatural refreshment for which St. Stephen was willing to die. And the Twelve Days of Christmas also include Holy Innocents’ Day, the feast commemorating those killed by Herod in his search to eliminate the baby Jesus as a potential rival. Jesus’ Baptism declares his vocation, a vocation which involves each of these things and more.

An equally real but more subtle threat is increasingly evident in our society ~ radical secularism. When the culture around us no longer supports our religious faith, it becomes intolerant. People then begin to act with hostility against us. As a result, at least two things happen. We soften our religious commitments so we fit-in better with others. And, we lose confidence that the Gospel has world-wide significance, for all human beings. As a result, we draw back from practicing our faith, a faith that has public implications. We then retreat to private beliefs that now only have personal and spiritual meaning.

Think for a moment about John 3:16: “For God so loved the world…” The Greek behind these words has sweeping implications. For God so loved the cosmos (the whole creation), that he gave his only Son… in order that the cosmos might be saved through him. In other words, for John, the Gospel has universal implications, not just personal, spiritual significance. This is a gospel for which we might be willing to die, precisely because it is first of all a gospel for which we are willing to live.

It is imprecise and misleading therefore to say that ‘faith changes the world.’ Instead, we should say that God changes the world, in part through people of faith. We have faith in the God who created, and then inhabited, the whole cosmos. And, God has acted for the sake of the whole cosmos.

 

Peter Koenig’s painting is reproduced here with the artist’s kind permission. This and other examples of his religious artwork can be seen by visiting the website of his parish church, where much of it is displayed (click here).  This post is based on my homily for The Baptism of Christ, January 13, 2019, which can be accessed by clicking here.  Other homilies of mine may be accessed by clicking here. The Revised Common Lectionary, which specifies the readings for Sundays and other Holy Days, can be accessed by clicking here.