Thursday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
The other day, as Bill and I were returning from a lovely but also exhausting week-long trip, we passed through Xenia. We were, to say the least, wiped out and ready to be home.
Despite all that, we found ourselves in an animated conversation about all the Baptist churches in Xenia that we encountered. We passed the Lighthouse Baptist Church on Second Street where (according to their website) they believe that every word of the Bible is the Word of God (passed on to holy men by means of dictation), that the creation happened in 6 literal 24-hour days less than 10,000 years ago, that baptism is by immersion, and that there is a fundamental difference between “the righteous and the wicked.” Bible Baptist Church, right next door, emphasizes in its statement of beliefs (again, as articulated on their website, like the folks at Lighthouse) that the Bible is the inerrant (without error) recorded Word of God, that the church consists only of “born-again believers,” that the local church is completely autonomous from any (human) authority whatsoever, and that Christ’s return is imminent and will include his rapture of the truly faithful, leaving behind all unbelievers to suffer during a seven-year period of “tribulation” as well as an eternity in Hell. At Calvary Baptist Church, the Bible is also taken as the completely accurate and inspired Word of God. In addition, they emphasize the importance of substitutionary atonement—that Jesus’ suffering on the Cross justifies all true believers such that they will escape eternal damnation. I could share core beliefs from the other Baptist churches in Xenia, but I suspect that you get the idea.
So much similarity among their core beliefs. Yet also difference. For whatever reason(s), they find it necessary to be three churches rather than one. Seeking unity with other Christians, never mind even Baptists, is not a core belief mentioned by any of these churches on their websites.
New York Times bestselling author and life-long evangelical Christian, Rachel Held Evans (1981-2019), wrote this (in her book, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church) about some of the subtle yet seemingly crucial differences that she noticed among Christians in the course of her faith journey:
Our church believed the Bible, so we practiced immersion. Believer’s baptism, we called it. Had we lived in sixteenth-century Switzerland, we might have been killed for such a conviction, symbolically drowned or possibly burned by fellow Protestants who considered the “second baptisms” of the radical reformers heretical. (Fun fact: more Christians were martyred by one another in the decades after the Reformation than were martyred by the Roman Empire.) If I’d been born into an Orthodox family, I’d have been submerged as an infant three times over—first in the name of the Father, then in the name of the Son, and then again in the name of the Holy Spirit—before being placed, stunned and sputtering, into the arms of a godparent. If my family had been Catholic, I’d have worn a soft white baptism gown and a priest would have poured holy water over my bald baby head to remit the stain of original sin. If we’d been Mormon, two witnesses would have stood on either side of the front to ensure my entire body was totally submerged into the water. If we’d been Presbyterian, a few sprinkles symbolizing my place in the covenant family of God would do. (8)
When I arrived at the University of Dayton, I was quickly schooled (especially by my Catholic students) that the crucial error of the Reformation was its decapitation of the Church. My students argued that leaving it to “the priesthood of all believers” to figure out what the Bible means and what theology to embrace and what it means to live a Christian life, was bound to produce a lot of division. And it did. So much so that, as Evans points out, more individuals seeking to follow Jesus were killed by other Christians who just couldn’t bear their beliefs or practices than by the Roman Empire. Incredible.
At the time I joined the faculty at UD, I was a member of the First Baptist Church of Dayton. And I was proud to be a spiritual descendant of those radical reformers who insisted on, among many other things, believer’s baptism. It made sense—how can an infant sign on to follow Jesus? Wouldn’t it be better to give them some time to figure out what that means along with whether they were up to being a disciple?
But, as I read the Gospel of Mark before us today, I have to confess that a big part of the reason I became Catholic is that I heard something deeply true in my students’ reaction to the Reformation and its effects.
I don’t know how Jesus could have been more clear. Do you want to be faithful to God and to me? Then it’s simple. Love God with all you’ve got and love your neighbor as yourself. Love God. Love others. That’s it.
He’s not splitting hairs about whether during one’s baptism one is immersed or sprinkled or dunked three times. He’s also not focused on how exactly each of his followers reads the Bible—whether they read it as the word-for-word dictation of God or more loosely inspired and also immersed in the human circumstances in which each book was written. Of course, he probably had/has his preferences. I’d wager (given the clarity with which he articulates the values central to his Kingdom) that he’d be delighted if we chose to emphasize in our daily lives his Sermon on the Mount. What a hopeful vision of Christianity we might embody. One, perhaps, our youth could boldly embrace.
Sometimes I think Jesus must be sitting at the right hand of God, scratching his head and trying to wrap his mind around why it is so hard for us, who claim to follow the Prince of Peace, to get him.
These days, lots of folks want to say that taking Jesus at his word—that we are to love God and neighbor (even the neighbor next door who identifies as Christian and thinks we are their enemy) makes us “liberal”— not serious Christians.
I don’t know. I certainly want to be a serious Christian. But, again, I take my students’ point that focusing on doctrinal exactitude seems, at least on the face of it, contrary to his commandment.
As I reflect on all of this—on how hard the kind of love that Jesus preached is to pull off—it doesn’t sound liberal (aka weak) to me at all. It sounds really hard. But then he never promised that following him would be easy. On the contrary.
My prayer: That I am up to his command. Lord help me. Amen.