In this and last month’s Theology 101 columns – Servants of the Word & Visible Words Rev. Dr. Stephen Farris looked at the sacraments of Communion and Baptism. Here, he shares some personal stories about these sacred events.
Baptism
One of the richest experiences of my life was to serve a term as a member of the Executive Committee of the then World Alliance of Reformed Churches. WARC was the umbrella organization of Presbyterian and Reformed Churches around the world. (It is now called the World Communion of Reformed Churches or WCRC.) My term culminated with the 1997 General Council of that organization held in the ancient Reformed city of Debrecen, Hungary. Debrecen is a city that stayed Protestant through the rule of the Turks, the persecuting ultra-Catholic dynasty of the Hapsburgs, the Nazis and the Communists. The famous old Reformed high school in Debrecen was reputed to be the only Christian school east of the Iron Curtain that never closed under the Communists.
In a world conference, a very large percentage of participants can speak English either as a native tongue or a second, third or fourth language. When it was announced that for the first Sunday of the conference the sermon would be translated into English at the “Little Church” of Debrecen, most participants, whatever their national origin, decided to attend. The “Little Church” seats about 1,200 people and by the time my wife and I arrived, it was nearly full. In honour of the event, many wore their national costumes. It was quite a sight!
The service began with a celebration of the sacrament of baptism. A very young couple, perhaps in their teens, holding what was very likely their first precious child, was led to the font. The young mother looked around; saw an enormous congregation drawn from every race and most nationalities around the world, standing to recognize and to welcome her child. She burst into tears.
We are not baptized into our local congregations only. We are baptized into the Body of Christ, the Holy Catholic Church, a great and noble fellowship. What is true of every baptism was visibly true that day.
Communion
Aunt Letty
When I was a boy our family shared all the special events, Christmas, Thanksgiving and so on, with the family of my Aunt Letty. I remember when I was very young, barely able to see over a table, I wandered into the kitchen. There on the kitchen table, at the level of my eyes, was the great golden bird, steaming hot with rich aromas of wonders to come. Aunt Letty caught sight of my staring eyes. With a knife, she nipped off a tidbit, just a tidbit, and offered it to me. She said, “This is because you’re special and I love you.”
Communion says, “You are special and God loves you.” By the way, the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper is a tidbit, just a tidbit, that points back to the sacrifice of Christ for us. But according to an ancient teaching of the church, it also points forward, forward to the feast of the Kingdom of God that is to come.
Give us, we pray, that bread, the bread that meets our needs today and the bread that holds within itself the promise of your future kingdom.
Saint Maximilien Kolbe
During the Second World War, Jews weren’t the only ones sent to the Nazi concentration camps. In those dreadful camps were also gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, communists, socialists, union leaders, Protestants, Catholics, and people who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. One such person was a Polish Roman Catholic priest named Maximilian Kolbe who was held as a prisoner at Auschwitz. He was an ordinary priest and probably quite flawed in many ways. Ironically, he himself may have been deeply anti-Semitic. But that is not the point of the story for there is no such thing as a saint without flaws. The Nazi guards became displeased with the prisoners in Maximilian Kolbe’s hut for some reason, and announced that they would deliberately starve to death one out of 10 prisoners, their names to be drawn by lot. Maximilian Kolbe drew one of the long straws and was safe, but standing next to him was a young Polish man, a husband, the father of young children. The young man drew a short straw but he was saved when Kolbe volunteered to take the young man’s place and was executed.
Some years ago Pope John Paul II returned to his native Poland to declare Maximilian Kolbe a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. How wonderful to have a Polish pope presiding at the canonization of a Polish saint! But the Pope was not the most special guest at the ceremony. There was an even more special guest at the magnificent ceremony in Kolbe’s honour—an old Polish man, now a grandfather.
Of course he was there! After all, wouldn’t you be there? Wouldn’t you be present at a ceremony in honour of someone who died for you?
Every time you go to church and share the bread and wine … you are.
Only, at this ceremony, you are the saint. Because, in truth, in order to become a saint, you don’t have to die for somebody else. Somebody else has to die for you.
And he has.
The Little Church in Debrecen
But back to that day in Debrecen: A choir from across the border in the Ukraine was there to sing that day and took their place in the balcony very close to where I was seated. The choir director was an older woman, quite fierce looking, as if determined that everything should go well on this day of days. If any choir members dared whisper or giggle, she glared at them as if daring them to be anything but solemn.
The preacher was an older minister, also from the Ukraine. I was told after the service that, as a young minister, he had been arrested by the KGB in 1946 for corrupting youth … by preparing them for confirmation. The KGB had sneaked a camera into the church and had photographed him confirming these young people.
He was arrested, confronted with the photos and asked, “Who is doing this?” Life was all ahead of him — he had recently become engaged — but he did not deny his role. “Who else would it be?” he replied. He was sentenced to 10 years’ hard labour in a Siberian prison camp, the Gulag. Did his Christian faith seem foolish those long years in the Gulag? Was there any point in standing up against these forces?
In 1953 the dictator Stalin died, and as a result of an amnesty the minister was released. He went home to the Ukraine. His fiancée had waited for him. She was the choir director. No wonder she wanted things to go right!
When the choir sang, they sang in Hungarian an old gospel hymn based on the story of Jesus walking on the water. In the hymn the disciples complain to the master, “Do you not care, Master?” And Jesus responds, “Peace. Be still. Do you not know that even the winds and the waves obey me?” And the Hungarians, who could understand the words and had lived through the long night of oppression, wept.
It is into this fellowship that you have been baptized and it is with these sisters and brothers that you share the Lord’s Supper.
Open our eyes, Lord, so that we may see what is true.
About stephenfarris
Rev. Dr. Stephen Farris is dean of St. Andrew’s Hall at the Vancouver School of Theology.