A Sermon Preached at the Baptism of Molly Robertson
On April 26, we’ll be celebrating baptisms at saint benedict’s table. A couple of adults will be baptized, and several others will be confirmed and/or renew their baptismal vows. We’ll also be baptizing an infant, which will cause at least some folks to pause and wonder what that is all about. How it is that we can proclaim words which confess the faith and pronounce regeneration over the life of a baby or young child, who clearly has no idea as to what is going on? The following is a sermon preached at the baptism of my niece, in which I hopefully manage to set out some framework for understanding how this tradition has made sense of this action. I should, however, add that in fact adult baptism remains the defining norm in this tradition, and it is only in light of the adult rite that the baptism of a young child of baptized Christian parents can even begin to make sense.

I
want to offer something by way of an interpretative word regarding this thing that we have just done; celebrated and administered the sacrament of baptism, and thus, as the Book of Common Prayer phrases it, received Molly “into Christ’s holy Church, (making her) a living member of the same.” In some real sense, it could be argued that we have, in the words of that liturgy, said all that needs to be said. In those extraordinarily rich and powerful words there is already a fully articulated baptismal theology, and that to suggest that I need to say more is to imply that I can somehow go Thomas Cranmer one better. I make no such claim. Yet in a community in which this action and these words are so familiar, it is useful to sometimes dig in a bit deeper, and remind ourselves of just how potently subversive is this act of baptizing an infant or young child.
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