The Baptism of Thomas Richard Hosto

I will begin these remarks by sincerely thanking Pastor Arnold and the congregation at Living Christ for the opportunity to baptize my third grandchild here in these familiar and friendly confines.

Prologue: Some History

            Almost nine months into our country’s participation in WWII, my mother and father found themselves at an Army installation in Little Rock, Arkansas named Camp Robinson, a long ways from their families back in Minnesota. They were not alone! They also had a newborn child less than a month old – me. They had both been raised as Episcopalians and so it was that in late September, 1942, my parents took me to Trinity Cathedral in Little Rock and there a young clergyman named Fordyce Eastburn initiated me into the Anglican branch of the Christian Church. This was a great gift the significance of which only later in my life did I begin to appreciate. That gift of course was Holy Baptism into the Body of Christ, and by that baptism, entrance also into the Church, an institution which I grew to love.

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            Thomas Richard Hosto will reach the milestone of his first birthday in roughly three weeks time, on September 3^rd to be exact. Six days prior to his birthday, on August 29th, I will be seventy-one. During the course of my seventy- one years, society has changed a great deal. I don’t think that too many people are going to argue with me about that. There is one thing that hasn’t changed: the importance of Holy Baptism as an initiation into committed membership in the Church.

Holy Baptism 

There is one body and one Spirit . . .

                                One Lord, one faith, one baptism

                                One God and Father of all. . .

                                                                                    Ephesians 4:4

            Again I will make the statement that meaningful baptism is critical to the life of the Church and to the life of the individual. If we stopped baptizing, theoretically the church would cease to exist. It is the door through which one enters the life of the Church. Many churches place their baptismal fonts near their front door to forcefully make that point.

            The Church has high expectations of those it baptizes. That includes everyone sitting here. Baptism is not something we do because it is cute and seems like a nice idea.

           Almighty God through the agency of Jesus and the Holy Spirit placed the church in the world with very definite purposes in mind, one of which is the active confrontation of evil and falsehood. The Church needs committed people to attain its goals. That is why baptism involves promises. Hopefully, everyone was paying careful attention to the content of the baptismal promises which were made on Thomas’ behalf.

            We live in a society that has developed real skill in converting everything into something that serves the needs of the individual. It is relentless in its efforts to secularize the church. Why is this so? Modern society is obsessive in the promotion of individual autonomy and the rejection of all external objective authority. The existence of the Church as an objective authority in society sometimes seems to be an affront which society does not want to tolerate. Society therefore is always trying to bring the church down to its own level. In theology that’s called reductionism! One of the most difficult selling jobs in our society is convincing people to accept any authority for their lives other than their own needs and wants. That statement is a modern truism!

            Unfortunately, membership in the Church, i.e. becoming a Christian, cannot lend itself to self-serving purpose. The lives of the original followers of Jesus are instructive. Whatever preconceptions and illusions Peter and Andrew and John and James and the rest of the disciples might have had about the benefits which would follow their individual decisions to follow Jesus, were quickly dispelled when they watched their leader executed on a cross. Remember them arguing about who would be privileged to sit  at his right hand when He came into his kingdom? Jesus tried to warn them! That is what you heard about baptism in the Gospel reading from Luke. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.” The point is that Christian witness and commitment is probably not always going to be an easy road to follow. As a matter of fact, it sometimes leads to the cross.

            By executing Jesus as a common criminal, society tried to bring Jesus down to a common level. Or so it thought! Following the resurrection, the eyes of his followers were opened to the realization of the victory (not defeat) of the suffering servant Jesus whose life of compassion and sacrificial service was able to triumph over apparent defeat and death. Selflessness had defeated the sin of self-centeredness, the sacred presence in life had defeated the fear and despair of secularity.

            I say all this to dispel the idea that Holy Baptism that Holy Baptism is simply a “fun” occasion in the life of the Church and the child’s family, a sort of “coming out” celebration. That’s what we see on the surface, but there are much deeper issues at play here. Baptism is the foundational sacrament of the church, the entrance rite in which we return again and again to the issue of deep personal commitment, the decision to follow Jesus and all that follows or should follow that decision.

“Remember us? Marriage in ’58, Baptisms in ’61 and ’64 . . . ?” 

            I am painfully aware after thirty-six years of parish ministry of the difficulty inherent in most attempts to stress the seriousness of the meaning of the sacraments of the church, many of which today have today been converted to life transition moments and occasions when people make cameo appearances in the church. One of my favorite cartoons shows a couple exiting a church following worship and saying to the clergyman at the door: “Remember us? Wedding in ’58, baptisms in ’61 and ’64. . . ?” That attitude is both amusing and painful because in too many instances it is all too true.

            The baptism of any individual is seen by the church as merely the beginning of a lifetime of active, ever deepening relationship and involvement in the church, the Body of Christ. When I think back on my life, the lives of my brother and sister, and the lives of my children in the church, my mind is flooded with irreplaceable memories. All those years in Sunday School learning the basic stories of Christianity, all those children’s Christmas pageants, all those Sundays of being acolytes, and most importantly, all the memories of those committed church people who gave so much to us while we were all growing up. Can you put a value on that kind of nurture and support? I don’t think so! When you live your life within the congregational life of a parish church, at a certain point the time arrives when it will be your turn to pick up the responsibilities that had previously been shouldered by those who went before you. The church is intended to be a generation to generation experience. When it isn’t, we are in trouble!

 

The Parish Church 

            I read the statement years ago by Bishop Richard Emrich of the Diocese of Michigan (1948-1973), that the parish church is the most important unit in the organization of the church. Certainly, most of us because of our experience would attest to the truth of that observation. The parish church is where we were baptized, the place where we have worshiped Sunday after Sunday, the place where we obtained an ongoing Christian education including confirmation, and the place where we enjoy Christian fellowship. Most importantly, it is the place where we have been given the gift of faith. During my thirty-six year of active parish ministry, I reiterated over and over again my belief in the great importance of the parish church in the common life of American society. The strength of parish churches depends upon the process which begins today with this baptism. It is the process of Christian development. This morning is only the first step.

            In 2007, a year before I retired, St. Barnabas’ celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. As a part of that, the North County Journal – when there still was a North County Journal – sent a reporter out to talk with me and a few parishioners to obtain information for the story about this milestone. It was published on July 11^th of that year. One of the parishioners the writer talked with was Joe Reagan who at the time was 92 years old. Joe told the reporter that he had been a member of the congregation from the beginning, and that, “It’s been the best thing in my life to belong as a member.” What a testimony to the importance of the parish church!

Conclusion

            The future of the Church will depend on its ability to develop a membership who take seriously their commitment to follow the example of Jesus and who see their lives of discipleship as a life long struggle to reflect on the meaning of their lives in the light of this commitment.  As we heard in the Gospel, there is no guarantee that the Christian life is going to be easy. Each of us is caught between the attractive pursuits and assumptions of our modern, materialistic society, and the Spirit beckoning us to ignore most of that which is largely illusion anyway and choose lives of true discipleship. The choice is put daily to each one of us. Choose wisely because both your life and the common life of the Church is at stake!

 

Postscript 

 In 1968, I went to Berkeley, California for my first year of seminary at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Shortly after I arrived, I happened to be looking at a list of faculty members and one name jumped out at me. Fordyce Eastburn, the individual who had baptized me back in 1942 in Little Rock. The first chance I got, I introduced myself and told him of our connection. I was crushed when he didn’t remember me. 

In July of 2008, Liz and I attended a family reunion in Little Rock. On Sunday, July 13, I officiated at a Service of Holy Communion in the chapel at Trinity Cathedral. Following the service, Liz took my picture standing at the font where I had been baptized almost 66 years previously.