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OCIA: Prayers at the Presentation of the Lord’s Prayer

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This week we turn to one of the final rites of the period of Enlightenment before Holy Saturday: The Presentation of the Lord’s Prayer to the Elect. As I indicated in a previous post on this rite, the presentation of the Lord’s Prayer takes place either on or following the Third Scrutiny on the 5th Sunday in Lent. The RCIA recommends a weekday, while Welcome to Christ designates the Fifth Sunday in Lent.

This rite, along with the presentation of the Creed, makes the most sense in the midst of a regular dismissal of the catechumens to study the Word during the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. They would not be praying the Lord’s Prayer as part of the liturgical assembly. While this would presumably not be their first introduction to the Lord’s Prayer, it would be their first opportunity to truly make it their own.

In the RCIA and OCIA, following the presentation of the Our Father, there is an invitation to prayer and a collect for the rite. While surprisingly the invitation and prayer in the RCIA/OCIA do not contain any explicit references to the Lord’s Prayer or to prayer in general, Welcome to Christ includes a call to commitment to prayer for each season of the church year. The text for year B reads, “As the disciples were taught to follow Jesus by living their life for others, so the church prays for you and for all the needs of the world, confident in the life-giving presence and mercy of Christ” (Welcome to Christ, 32).  With this rite the elect have been given two primary elements of their catechetical formation in the faith and are prepared to confess and pray them at their initiation into Christ through Holy Baptism.

And since this is our last nerdy post comparing the prayers during Enlightenment in the RCIA and OCIA, I decided to follow Rhoda’s lead and nerd out completely by including the Latin of the prayer texts. (Those of you who have put up with all of this can be comforted in knowing that it all comes to an end on the eve of Palm and Passion Sunday!)

Even more so than last week, since these prayers are translated in a much different fashion, the contrast between formal correspondence and dynamic equivalence is apparent. As Rhoda noted last week, here the RCIA text reflects poetic language evocative of the human experience. And yet some of the language in the OCIA texts is bold and evocative of the moment in the catechumenal journey.

As in past weeks I have highlighted certain words and phrases, and I will discuss them by numbered section:

RCIA, 1972

(1) Let us pray for these elect, that God in his mercy may make them responsive to his love, so that (2) through the waters of rebirth they may receive pardon for their sins and have life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(3) Almighty and eternal God, you continually enlarge the family of your Church. Deepen the faith and understanding of these elect, chosen for baptism.(4) Give them new birth in your living waters, so that they may be numbered among your adopted children (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, Liturgy Training Publications, 1988, 113).

Editio Typica, 1972

(1) Oremus pro electis nostris, ut Deus et Dominus noster adaperiat aures praecordiorum ipsorum ianuamque misericordiae, ut (2) per lavacrum regenerationis, accepta remissione omnium peccatorum, et ipsi inveniantur in Christo Iesu Domino nostro.

(3) Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui Ecclesiam tuam nova semper prole fecundas, auge fidem et intellectum electis nostris, ut, (4) renati fonte Baptismatis, adoptionis tuae filiis aggregentur.

OCIA, 2025

(1) Let us pray for our elect, that our God and Lord will open the ears of their innermost hearts and the gate of mercy, so that, (2) receiving remission of all sins through the cleansing waters of rebirth, they too may be found in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(3) Almighty ever-living God, who make your Church ever fruitful with new offspring, increase the faith and understanding of our elect, that, (4) reborn in the font of Baptism, they may be added to the number of your adopted children (Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, The Liturgical Press, 2018, 147-8).

  1. The OCIA follows the Latin closely by referring to the elect as “our” rather than “these” elect. It is a much more corporate and intimate designation, reflecting of the church’s fellowship. On the other hand, “gate of mercy,” while reflective of the Latin, fails to convey that God’s mercy is active in the life of the elect. The same is true of “opening the ears of their innermost hearts.” Some combination of the two texts would be very poetic: “opening their ears that they might respond to his love.”
  2. “Pardon” communicates much better than “remission.” I regretted that in my own tradition we didn’t change the language of “remission” in the Nicene Creed to “forgiveness.” Remission is not an obsolete word in this sense, but it is archaic. Trying to capture the language of the Latin, literally the “bath of regeneration,” the OCIA refers to baptism as the “cleansing waters.” Very evocative language. But while “be found” captures inveniantur well, it is fairly pedantic in comparison to “have life.”
  3. The first clause in part 3 makes it sound like the church is simply part of the animal kingdom. While it is still fairly common to refer to children as offspring, the entire phrase diminishes the reality of the church’s growth. The RCIA is much more active in cadence: “you continually enlarge the family of your Church.” Likewise, “deepen” conveys better what is happening for the elect at this point in the catehumenate.
  4. By creating a new sentence in place of the relative clause the RCIA better conveys the nature of this wonder in the making: “new birth in your living waters.” However, the reference to the font of Baptism, reflecting the Latin, provides a definite locatedness to the rebirth. Why not “new birth through the living waters in the font of Baptism.” “Added” versus “numbered”? Neither is particularly more evocative than the other, but “added” follows the Latin more closely.

There we have it.  As I said in the first post in this series, nerdy as it may seem, important issues such as clear understanding and participation in the process by which God through the church is making new Christians is at stake in the translations and in any Lutheran adaptation of them. Failure to understand and participate hinders the vary process of making Christians through the catechumenate itself. And hopefully these prayer texts have invited you into the paschal mystery as we have made the journey to the paschal feast in sincerity and truth.

Easter Vigil 2019 (90)

Images of Baptism: Sacrament and Seal of the Holy Spirit

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                In our last post Rhoda concluded by highlighting the two primary biblical images of baptism: the tomb and the womb. Permeating those two primary images is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is a thread through all of the images of baptism because as Maxwell Johnson says, “the one great and single mystery of our Christian faith” is the “unitive nature of Jesus’ death and resurrection and [the] gift of the Holy Spirit” (Images of Baptism, 73). Yet, as a thread through all of the images of baptism we can lose sight of the Spirit as gift and of the Spirit’s work. This happened in ritual history with the dissolution in the removal of baptismal sealing (anointing) from baptism itself and the creation of the distinct sacrament/rite of growth, confirmation. So, we must focus on the gift as a seal of the Holy Spirit as a distinct image of baptism. Paul himself does this in Ephesians when he says, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:13-14). The Holy Spirit is poured out on the disciples of Christ Jesus abundantly through baptism. It seals us in the Holy Spirit who both fills and surrounds our living as children of God. The intent is that that seal is both complete and enduring into the kingdom of God. As Johnson says,

“It is the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God in us, who conforms us to the dying and rising of Christ in our lives, who brings us to new birth and regenerates us to new life in the living waters and womb of the font, who seals us in down payment for redemption, who gives us special charisms and gifts for the building up of and living within Christ’s body, the church, the Spirit of God who directs us in our mission of reconciling love, forgiveness and justice in the world, the Spirit alone who makes it possible for us to say, “We believe” or “I believe” in the first place” (Images of Baptism, 74-75).

The Holy Spirit is sent by Christ as our anointing in Him in baptism so that we might live at the direction of the Spirit.

               It is that anointing in baptism by the Holy Spirit that is symbolized and expressed through the postbaptismal anointings in the western tradition. Historically the West has had a presbyteral anointing and an episcopal anointing. Whether we are talking about both as independent ritual actions or a combination of them, they both express that through the Word in the water the person is anointed with the Holy Spirit. As Johnson says, the baptismal water and the Spirit go together inseparably (80). “It is the presence and gift of the Holy Spirit that makes all the difference in the world in terms of baptism’s meaning and significance. Christian baptism is ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit!’” (Images of Baptism, 80).

               This should have significant implications for our practice of baptism and of the catechumenate. As Johnson shows through the New Testament witness and as an implication of the anointing of the Spirit, all baptismal life in Christ is directed by the Spirit. If the Spirit is poured out in baptism, then that should be ritually expressed by anointing in baptism. It should not be delayed to the rite of confirmation. Doing so deconstructs the reality that as Johnson says, “all life in Christ is dependent upon the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit” (Images of Baptism, 82). Baptism as the gift of the Holy Spirit calls for the practice of post-baptismal anointing.

               The practice of the catechumenate bears out the reality that all life in Christ is dependent upon the Spirit. In no way can the catechumenate be understood as some great Pelagian enterprise, as Johnson indicates (Images of Baptism, 88). “A clear baptismal spirituality places the emphasis where it should be: on God, the great author and initiator of salvation” (Images of Baptism, 88). Conversion through the catechumenal process, as Johnson notes, is grounded in the Spirit’s activity and “the Holy Spirit is active before, in and after baptism” (Images of Baptism, 89). The catechumenate is the ground for the Spirit’s activity through the Word. As Johnson indicates, “Baptism invites the gathered assembly to faith, trust, dependency and receptivity to the sheer gift of God’s baptismal grace. The minds and hearts of that assembly are to be continually directed back to the foundational realities of new birth and new life in the Spirit” (Images of Baptism, 91). That is exactly what the catechumenate does in all its fullness.

               Baptism as the seal of the Holy Spirit is in the end about everything regarding Christian faith and life post Christ’s ascension. “Questions about faith, justification, spirituality, ecclesiology, eschatology and the meaning of the eucharist are ultimately always questions about the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s role in forming people as believers in and disciples of Christ” (Images of Baptism, 102). Sounds very much like the catechumenate to me!

Banner photo: Post-baptismal anointing with chrism at Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church, The Bronx, New York.

font 1200 x 628

Images of Baptism: New Birth and Adoption

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To read Images of Baptism is a bit like being back in the classroom (as I was three decades ago) with Maxwell E. Johnson, whose teaching style was direct, straight forward, to the point, and thus quite engaging. His introduction to chapter 2, “Baptism as New Birth and Adoption,” begins by stating liturgical scholarship’s “accepted” evolution of baptismal theology in the early church: Eastern traditions had an emphases on regeneration, new birth, and adoption “rooted in Jesus’ own baptism in the Jordan” and the West had a focus on “baptism as a ritual of death, burial resurrection in Christ” (Images of Baptism, 39). He continues, “To say that baptism as ‘new birth’ or adoption ‘by water and the Holy Spirit’ is only a characteristically Eastern image or focus, however, is simply incorrect…. The image of new birth and adoption is as much Western as it is Eastern” (42, emphasis in original).

Johnson’s goal is to expand our baptismal theology to include the full range of images and metaphors expressed in Scripture; as he says, “How one thinks of baptism will shape how one views Christian life and identity” (64). He succinctly summarizes the two primary images of baptism shaping Christian identity:

For one spirituality, baptism is the tomb in which the sinful self is put to death in Christ. For the other spirituality, baptism is the womb through which the Mothering Spirit of God give new birth and new life (64, emphasis in original).

In good Lutheran fashion, Johnson does not see these images as either/or but rather as both/and, embracing the seeming paradox of baptism as a sacrament that calls for the death of the sinner while at the same time declaring that the one being baptized is a beloved child of God. This latter image, with the baptism of Jesus as the paradigm, links Christians to the Incarnation, as Athanasius said, “God became what we are so that we could be made what he is” (quoted by Johnson, 64).

I close with two of the questions Max Johnson poses in this chapter (Images of Baptism, 64-65), inviting comments from you, the reader (a new feature to our blog posts).

What might it mean to say in our catechesis of parents who present their children for baptism, that in a real sense they are presenting “their” children for “adoption” into a whole new family network of relationships …?  

What might such [language] mean for the identity, nature and mission of the church in the world, empowered by the baptismal Spirit, which understands itself to be so closely united with Christ that, as the very body of Christ, it shares in the divine nature?

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Banner photo: Font at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Wheaton, Illinois. By Rhoda Schuler.

Easter Vigil 2019 (78)

Images of Baptism: Participation in the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Christ

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It is the quintessential image of baptismal images as Paul says in Romans 6: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3-4). Since Vatican II with its proclamation of the Paschal Mystery, it has become the chief image for baptism. The primary pattern of culminating the catechumenal process at the Easter Vigil as expressing Christ’s Passover from death to life has only cemented this primary association. In its predominancy lies both the challenge and the gift. The challenge? Ignoring other images in deference to this one. The remainder of the blogs in this series will address that challenge. The gift? In Maxwell Johnson’s words, “How, then, might this foundational and rich image or metaphor of baptismal death, burial and resurrection in Christ be rescued from the realm of contemporary cliché and brought to new life within the church today?” (Images of Baptism, 5).

New life for this image surfaces under a number of themes. First, Johnson acknowledges that death must truly be death for us. There must be no escaping it. We must let death be death. That means we must experience our dying as death. Quoting Jennifer Glenn, he notes the unassailing loss of death: “The vision of death lurking within the experience of sickness seems to cut off the future absolutely, at least from the experiential and imaginative viewpoint. With the loss of the future goes the loss of meaning…life and its relationships threaten to become absurd” (8). In this experience death is not cosmetized at all. And Christ’s death must fully be death. He must be encountered as the crucified Christ who cries out in his forsakenness.

Experiencing death as death raises the question, what does our death and burial in him mean? Well, it means hope. As Johnson says, “For Paul, baptism is really about our participation in the death and burial of Christ in the hope of our ultimate resurrection in him….Whatever the future holds in Christ, because of baptism death itself is a reality and experience already behind us! . . . Because of baptism into Christ we are already dead! (18-19).

This means for Christians that baptism becomes, as they approach death, the rehearsal for death. Quoting the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin who wrote of his own impending death, “Our participation in the paschal mystery—in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus—brings a certain freedom: the freedom to let go, to surrender ourselves to the living God, to place ourselves completely in his hands, knowing that ultimately he will win out!….It’s in the act of abandonment that we experience redemption, that we find life, peace, and joy in the midst of physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering” (23).

That experience of hope in the midst of death—a baptismal experience—has implications for a church that lives as though dead in the world. Living in hope as a result of dying and rising in Christ means that the church can fully live in mission to the world that God will renew in the living One. As Johnson expresses, “A church dead and buried by baptism into Christ is liberated from the fear of death itself and, therefore, can dare to risk itself in a mission of suffering service in the world because it knows and seeks to know only the cross and suffering with the world as the way to resurrection” (28). A church buried with Christ in baptism into his death is a church that can live in the resurrection for the sake of the world. So Johnson can affirm, “From that watery grave emerges a servant community of the cross, which expects nothing other than what its Servant-Master himself endured and experienced. Who knows what kind of church might yet arise when such baptismal-Paschal Mystery imagery is embraced by the baptized themselves?” (29). Then baptism into the death, burial and resurrection of Christ will truly be a living metaphor in the life of the redeemed community of the crucified One.

 

 

Advent_u_Čakovcu_2023.4cropped

Expanding the Seasons for Baptismal Preparation

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All four congregations where Kent and I did our research on adult faith formation followed a similar calendar, one inspired by many early church literary sources from the fourth and fifth centuries. Like the early church, these congregations shaped the stages of the adult catechumenate so that the stage of “final preparation” for baptism or for the renewal of baptism culminated with Easter Vigil. Thus, the language and imagery of the Lenten three-year lectionary served as inspiration for the public rituals associated with the stage of final preparation. The Roman Catholic Church paved the way in the 1970s with the development of the Rites of Christian Initiation of Adults; various Protestant denominations have revised and adapted the RC rituals since then.

By the time Kent and I were in graduate school in the 1990s, liturgical scholars were critiquing the limitations of this annual process for pastoral and theological reasons. Pastorally, scholars noted that messy nature of adults seeking to connect (or reconnect) with Christ and the church. Offering a catechumenal process only once a year raises a host of complications and barriers. Theologically, scholars pointed out that while the Lent/Easter pattern was well suited to the baptismal imagery of Romans 6, the biblical language and imagery for baptism is multivalent and richer than this one image or metaphor.

What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. [Romans 6:1-4, 5-11]

Many of the scholars critiquing the Lent/Easter model proposed the season of Advent/Christmas as a suitable, alternate time for final preparation, with baptisms/renewal of baptisms taking place on the First Sunday after Epiphany, the Baptism of our Lord. Two working groups associated with the North American Association for the Catechumenate (aka, Journey for Baptismal Living) are currently engaged in some preliminary work on catechetical and ritual materials that draw on the Advent lectionary for images and themes, and it’s been my privilege to be part of one these “conversations.”

As background for our upcoming blog series highlighting themes in the Advent lectionary appropriate for the stage of final preparation, I’m sharing a summary of the “western conversation” proposal and rationale. Those part of the “western conversation” agreed it was important to mirror the five weeks/Sundays of the Lenten season and came to consensus on two points. First, theologically, the lectionary readings for the fourth Sunday of Advent anticipate Christmas and the Incarnation and carry themes with more affinity to the birth and baptism of Jesus. Not only does the Advent 4 lectionary move away from the emphasis on the call to conversion and repentance in the first three Sunday of Advent, by Advent 4 many people are traveling. Thus, we agreed that Advent 4 does not lend itself to Sunday rituals involving candidates and sponsors in the stage of final preparation. Second, by extending back into the final Sundays of the previous church year (the readings appointed for November 13-19 and for November 20-26), we would have five Sundays to mirror Lent with appropriate lectionary themes.

Thus, the Season of Advent is imbedded in a five Sunday pattern of final preparation for baptism/renewal of baptism, with these lectionary themes (from the Gospels of the three-year lectionary):

  • The Gospel readings for the final two Sundays of the church year have common themes about the end times. Because the Gospel reading for Sundays between November 13-19 include some form of call to repentance and faith, this is a fitting Sunday for both rites inaugurating the stage of final preparation: the rite for Calling to Baptism or for the Call to Continuing Conversion.
  • The Gospel readings for the final Sunday (November 20-26) share the theme of Christ as king; our group agreed that this call to confess Christ as King and Lord lends itself to the ritual of handing on the creed of the church.
  • The Gospel readings for the First Sunday of Advent continue the end-time theme with Jesus teaching his disciples; the readings share themes of dread from the events in the world and include warnings to be awake or alert for the coming of the Son of man. This Sunday would feature the first of three rites for repentance, healing, and deliverance—the primary themes for the stage of final preparation.
  • The Gospel readings for the Second and Third Sundays of Advent introduce John the Baptist and his call to conversion and repentance. These texts also fit well with the rituals of repentance, healing, and deliverance.

In the coming weeks, Kent and I will examine in detail the appointed Gospel readings for these six Sundays—the last two Sundays (using Year C lectionary) and the four Sundays in Advent (using Year A lectionary), drawing out images and language from the biblical texts that can inform the accompanying rituals. Rather than focus on the current lectionary texts, we have chosen to write about the appointed lectionary for a year from now; perhaps our work will inspire a reader to inaugurate an adult faith formation process next year that will culminate with the core rituals on the Baptism of Our Lord. If so, it is our prayer that these posts may serve as a resource.

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Banner Photo: Snowy 2023 Advent in Čakovec, Medjimurie County, Croatia; Silverije, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Advent_u_%C4%8Cakovcu_2023.4.jpg

font and fence

Luther’s Four-Strand Garland: Lessons in Baptismal Living

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Introducing Luther’s “Four-Strand Garland” method of Scripture study last week, Kent wrote: “In contrast with the African method, this method begins to expand more fully into the life of prayer and into the discipled life of the Christian.” While the African Method lends itself to the earliest of the four stages of the catechumenal process, the period of inquiry, Luther’s method is better suited to those participants further along in the journey toward discipleship. We see its greatest value in the second or third stage (the second as a period with more formal catechesis; the third as a period of “enlightenment” or intense preparation culminating with the rites of baptism and affirmation of faith/confirmation at the Vigil of Easter).

The first and fourth strands, instruction and presence, begin and end the study by listening for God’s voice and resting in the assurance of God’s presence. These strands anchor the entire method in God’s grace, God’s initiative toward us—God is speaking to us, calling to us; God is present with us always, whether we realize it or not. The inner strands call us to respond to God’s grace, first by inviting us to be thankful for what God has done, and then by training us to examine ourselves, identifying our “woundedness” and “sinfulness” brought forth by the biblical text. The invitation into thankfulness reorients participants’ prayer life away from a “sugar daddy” view of God (focused on asking God for what I want or think I need) toward recognizing that God is the source of all good gifts in our lives. Then the confession completes “the garland,” drawing us toward wholeness and healing, toward dying to self and rising in Christ, and into a closer relationship with God.

In contrast to metaphors of the Christian life as a journey (such as I used in the opening paragraph of this post!) or as following a pathway with a beginning and end or goal (Psalm 1), the image of a garland, “a circular or spiral arrangement of intertwined material,”[1] evokes the repetitive aspect of a life of discipleship. Our wholes lives are “a living from and returning to that holy font [of baptism].”[2]

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/garland

[2] The phrase is from the closing portion of the diaconal litany of the Lutheran Diaconal Association.

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Image: Font in Notre Dame Cathedral, Riems, France; June 2024; photo by Rhoda Schuler

Berlin Wall Reconciliation

Juxtaposing: Becoming Aware of Being Imitators of Jesus

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When I was in Germany 37 years ago the wall dividing West and East Berlin had not yet come down. We visited East Berlin, going through Checkpoint Charlie. One of the things I remember about East Berlin was the drabness of East German and Soviet construction: bland, grey building after bland, grey building. When I entered Berlin this time, I realized as we rode the train from the airport to the central train station that we were passing through the former East Berlin. And my jaw dropped. There were still some of the old drab buildings. But next to them were colorful, innovative new buildings clearly constructed since 1990. Startling juxtapositions.

In many ways that was my experience on this trip to Germany: A series of juxtapositions. This was a spiritual pilgrimage for our family. None of us had ever visited the Luther sights in East Germany, so going to Wittenberg, the Wartburg, Erfurt, and Leipzig immersed us in the promises of God’s Word into which we were submersed in our baptisms (represented by the font in the Roman Catholic cathedral, St. Mary’s, in Erfurt).

We stayed in Berlin, the capitol of a united Germany. But juxtaposed to that unity are the signs of a formerly divided Germany. We walked the length of the Berlin Wall Memorial, parts of the wall still intact, to remind subsequent generations of the conflict, separations, divisions, and death that the Cold War created.

There are of course other juxtapositions to the sights of faith and hope. The remnants of Hitler’s Nazi regime cannot be avoided (nor should they be). The moving Memorial to Murdered Jews, near the Brandenburg Gate and Hitler’s former bunker that is now a parking lot, juxtaposes the evil that humans can inflict on one another and the whole creation with the call to trust in the God of creation. Entire cities can be juxtapositions. We visited Nuremburg and stood in the cathedral church of St. Lorenz—which survived but was damaged—aware that outside of that core historic part of the city, 90% of the remainder of the city was destroyed during World War II. Juxtapositions abound in the land of the Reformation: peace and conflict, unity and division, life and death, despair and hope.

Museums manifest those juxtapositions in abundance. For example, Van Gogh’s lilies just down the hall from Albrecht Dürer’s self portrait.

And that self-portrait is itself a juxtaposition. Dürer painted himself according to the model medieval paintings of the head of Christ. Dürer juxtaposing himself to Christ.

Creating such juxtapositions is at the heart of the catechumenate. The woman at the well juxtaposed to where we find our identity and hope. The young rich man asking Jesus what he must do to attain eternal life juxtaposed to those things we are chasing after. The entire story of God in Christ juxtaposed to the sin, conflict, division, evil, and death we perpetrate and experience.

And out of those juxtapositions we should envision the world and ourselves in line with Dürer’s own vision of himself: conformed to Christ. As Paul says in Ephesians 5:1-2, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.”

 

The Berlin Wall Memorial led to this sculpture, “Reconciliation.” There, juxtaposed to the no-man’s land between the wall’s divisions, it lies encouraging us to strive toward the vision of peace overcoming conflict. That is the imitation toward which the juxtapositions of the catechumenate should lead. “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).

Cranach Altar Triptych 1

A Perfect and Complete Sign: Drowning in the Baptismal Word

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Last week Rhoda presented us with a picture of her standing in an ancient Ethiopian cruciform font, that, as she noted, is still in use! It was clearly a deep enough font for submersion, that is, the complete submersing of the body under the water during baptism. As with Rhoda, I was recently traveling, but in my case to Germany. I studied in Germany 37 years ago and this was my first opportunity to return since then. 37 years ago the wall was still up and we didn’t visit any of the Luther sites in Wittenberg or other places. This trip afforded the opportunity to do so. Like Rhoda I have an abiding interest in fonts (go figure!).

Here are four fonts or depictions of fonts from Luther sites:

This first is a 12th Century font that is part of the museum at Wartburg Castle.

The second is of course the famous Cranach altar triptych in the city church in Wittenberg which shows Melanchthon baptizing.

This third is the font in the city church, St. Mary’s, in Wittenberg.

The fourth is the font in the castle church in Wittenberg. These latter two date after the 16th century.

            What is noticeable about these fonts extending from the Ethiopian font to the font in the castle church is the shrinking size of the fonts. Over time the symbolic imagery or sign value of baptism has eroded. It looks less and less like a washing into the death and resurrection of Christ, as a drowning. While the promise of  baptism still holds no matter what the nature of the washing’s symbolism, still the loss of the full symbolic value chips away at the recognition of the comprehensive nature of the promise: “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

As Luther himself says in Babylonian Captivity, “It is therefore indeed correct to say that baptism is a washing away of sins, but the expression is too mild and weak to bring out the full significance of baptism, which is rather a symbol of death and resurrection. For this reason I would have those who are to be baptized completely immersed in the water, as the word says and as the mystery indicates. Not because I deem this necessary, but because it would be well to give to a thing so perfect and complete a sign that is also complete and perfect. And this is doubtless the way in which it was instituted by Christ. The sinner does not so much need to be washed as he needs to die, in order to be wholly renewed and made another creature, and to be conformed to the death and resurrection of Christ, with whom he dies and rises again through baptism. Although you may say that when Christ died and rose again he was washed clean of mortality, that is a less forceful way of putting it than if you said that he was completely changed and renewed. Similarly it is far more forceful to say that baptism signifies that we die in every way and rise to eternal life, than to say that it signifies merely that we are washed clean of sins” (Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 36: Word and Sacrament II, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 36 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 68.)

I have become convinced that the fullness of the baptismal sign—a complete washing and drowning in a substantive amount of water such as through immersion or submersion—is central to the conversion experience of the catechumenate. Through the catechumenate we come to die and live in Christ alone. The fullness of the baptismal sign reveals that to the newly baptized and to the entire Christian community.

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Christianity in Ethiopia: Ancient buildings, living congregations

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Last week’s blog featured the Church of St. George, part of the monolithic churches in Lalibela. Also of interest are the churches and monasteries on the islands and peninsula of Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia and source of the Blue Nile River. The churches, said to be built on “earlier religious sites,” date from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries and introduce “a new church architecture … based [on] the designs of regular round houses with conical thatched roofs.” Today’s banner photo is an example of this architecture. The interiors of these churches have three parts: an “outer ambulatory,” which pilgrims may enter; an “inner ambulatory” where worshipers gather, and “the inner sanctuary,” which only priests may enter.

As one enters the outer ambulatory, the exterior side of the inner ambulatory walls are covered with Ethiopian iconography of biblical stories and the lives of the saints. The diptych is easily recognizable as Jesus praying in Gethsemane (top) and carrying his cross to Golgotha (bottom panel). Characteristic of Ethiopian Orthodox art is the contrast between those who are part of the household of faith, shown with full, frontal view of their faces (Jesus, the sleeping Peter, James, and John) in contrast to those outside the faith, shown in profile, as the Roman soldier is depicted in the lower panel.

If our guide shared the story of these two saints with a snake in the basket, I do not recall the details; but I can say with confidence that both are followers of Jesus by their full-on frontal faces.

For the past 25 years of traveling to Christian pilgrimage sites as a liturgy geek, I have rarely missed an opportunity to hop into ancient baptismal font for a photo. What struck me as posed in this font from Lalibela was the realization that this font is still being used by an active Christian community. Though we may have theological differences, I share with those baptized her a faith in Christ Jesus, whose death and resurrection raises us to new life and bring us into the household of the Triune God.

Sources consulted:
https://www.nationalparks-worldwide.com/eaf/ethiopia/lake-tana/lake-tana.html
https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6580
Photos by Rhoda Schuler, June 2024

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Christianity in Ethiopia

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The long history of Christianity in Ethiopia begins with the account of Philip and the Ethiopia eunuch (Acts 8:26-40). Ethiopian Orthodox Christians claim to be one of the earliest nations to embrace Christianity when King Ezana, leader of the Kingdom of Aksum (located in the northern part of the modern state of Ethiopia), embraced the Christian faith in the fourth century. The church was strengthened by the arrival of “the nine saints” from Syria (frequently depicted in churches’ iconography) in the 5th century.

Today’s banner photo is a baptismal font from Bete Amanuel (House or Church of Immanuel), one of numerous monolithic churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia, named for King Lalibela (r. ca. 1181-1221). According to legend, after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, King Lalibela received a vision to build a “new Jerusalem,” and this complex of churches, carved out of mountains, was the work of the king with assistance of angels. While twenty-first-century Christians may approach this hagiography of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church with skepticism, one can say that King Lalibela’s decision to create these amazing structures indicts strong devotion to the Christian faith.

The most spectacular of the Lalibela churches is the Church of St. George, which, like the baptismal font, has a cruciform structure. Again, putting aside one’s skepticism about the story of their origins, the structures themselves communicate the core witness of the Christian faith—that Christ’s death on the cross has accomplished the salvation of the world, and a person is assured of that salvation by being joined to Christ’s death and resurrection in baptism (Romans 6).

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Sources used:
“Ethiopian Church” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edition
“Ethiopia” in Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity
“The Rock-hewn Churches of Lalibela,” https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lali/hd_lali.htm
Photos by Rhoda Schuler, June 2024

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