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Lutheran Forum Vol. 43, No. 2, Summer 2009

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Lutheran Forum Vol. 43, No. 2, Summer 2009 FROM THE EDITOR STILL LIFE WITH BAPTISM Sarah Hinlicky Wilson In commemoration of the five hundredth anniversary American congregations on the east coast, baptized me. I of the beginning of the Reformation was his first grandchild and born the day after his birthday. and in gratitude to God for Martin Luther, Years later on his deathbed he would bless me to take up Confessor of the Christian faith the mantle of Christian ministry, to the surprise of us both. But the greater blessing was the baptism. “Sarah Ellen,” he said, scooping the water out of the shallow bowl set in the 1976 font, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the “My faith does not make baptism; rather, it receives baptism.” Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” And the congregation said: I don’t remember the event I am about to report. I was “Amen.” only thirty-seven days old at the time. Then my young mother had the dubious honor of being St. Lucas Evangelical Lutheran Church, its name an the very last woman to undergo the churching of women Americanization of the Slovak Svätý Lukáš (Saint Luke), rite at my grandfather’s hands. “I don’t think I’m going to had blue windows. No stained-glass images of the good do this anymore,” he said afterward. Maybe it was the look shepherd or Moses with his curly snake, just drifting shades on her face. of blue. They cast a cooling tint over the sanctuary and When it was all over, I am told, there was an epic party. somehow made the roof of interlocking wooden beams Because— mounted atop plain brick walls look even higher. The bap- “It is of the greatest importance that we regard baptism as tismal font was straight out of a catalog, an undistinguished excellent, glorious, and exalted.” oak affair ringed round with vaguely Celtic carvings and a gold-plated lid shaped like a chess pawn. 1984 It was a Sunday because private family baptisms were already on the way out. But by the constituency of the “The power, effect, benefit, fruit, and purpose of baptism is that it congregation you might have taken it for a family baptism saves. To be saved, as everyone well knows, is nothing else than to be anyway. Baptism was a big enough deal to draw the New delivered from sin, death, and the devil, to enter into Christ’s kingdom, Jersey and Michigan branches of the family all the way to and to live with him forever.” St. Louis, all by car, hence the choice of the long Fourth St. Peter’s had brokered a deal with Citibank. The bank of July weekend for the event—definitely not any especial could build its fifty-nine-story Citicorp Center in midtown patriotism to mark my rebirth in Christ on the exact same Manhattan over the site of the old Lutheran church, on the day that America was celebrating its two hundredth birth- condition that it built the congregation a new church in the day. Everyone was there: both sets of grandparents, all five same spot, sealed off from the tower of Babel and its mam- of my uncles (as of yet no aunts), distant cousins, family mon ways. The resulting skyscraper had its supporting col- friends, and all the parishioners gladly claiming kinship umns at the sides instead of the corners to accommodate with fellow Slovaks. Jaroslav Vajda preached. the new church—a design so structurally unsound that My grandfather Hinlicky, a long-time pastor of Slovak- the year after its construction it was secretly rewelded at 4 FALL 2017 night over the course of three months. The general public didn’t find out the danger it could have posed till nearly twenty years later. The new church, however, was a rare case of beauty and elegance in a modern key. The ceiling soared, the vast white walls recalled the vault of heaven, right-angled blond wood pews on three sides and tangram organ pipes bespoke a conviction that the Holy Spirit would abundantly fill in the remaining space. Of great- est fascination to me was the baptis- mal font: a deep square stone pool, gently simmering and rippling across the surface. I’d seen grown men and women slide under the water at the Easter Vigil. I was excited to see my baby brother, not even a month old, undergo the same treatment. It was the eighth of January, cold and slushy outside, the baptismal water barely warm within. Not quite the full complement of uncles was in attendance this time, nor the Slovak front, though one of Will’s godpar- ents counted among the tribe. John Damm, already an old pro at immers- ing babies, took my tiny brother and me ever after was a scroll of printer 1994 plunged him in three times, once for paper, rolled up and tied with a rib- each Person of the holy Trinity. And “Thus a Christian life is nothing else than bon, presented to me ceremonially. It each time he came forth Will bellowed a daily baptism, begun once and continuing was headed: “Submitted for APPROVAL with the full force of his infant lungs in ever after.” to THE COMMITTEE TO ENSURE A FAITH- rage and protest. My year in Slovakia was drawing to FUL, HONORABLE, AND INTERESTING LIFE When it was all over, Damm a close. My family life as I had always FOR SARAH ELLEN HINLICKY.” A num- quipped, “We sure drowned the old known it was drawing to a close. I’d fin- ber of “WHEREBY” clauses ensued, Adam out of that one!” ished high school a year early to spend detailing the history of my life thus From that day on I’ve been con- what would have been my senior year vinced that Will’s was the only fitting with my parents and brother on their God Himself stakes response to everything that baptism is: adventure of moving to Slovakia, but seizure from the clutches of death and in less than two months I’d be repatri- His honor the devil; drowning of the sinful self; ating, and less than two months after being crucified with Christ; getting that starting college. On an evening on baptism. thrust into a new life without prepara- late in May we went to dinner to cel- tion or choice; enduring the radiance ebrate my eighteenth birthday: adult- far, which then gave way to a “THERE- of God’s mercy while still saddled hood, or so government and culture FORE”: “THEREFORE, WE, having unex- with reluctantly converted flesh. told me. I did not want to leave, I had pectedly but gladly become parents of “These two parts, being dipped under the never approved of growing up, and I this young person eighteen years ago, water and emerging from it, point to the power was unprepared for the next frontier. do BESTOW and BEQUEATH EVERYTHING and effect of baptism, which is nothing else Except that I was, whether I liked it upon her which she will need in order than the slaying of the old Adam and the re- or not, just as I got baptized whether to successfully conduct the balance of surrection of the new creature, both of which I liked it or not. My parents gave me her years upon this Earth.” must continue in us our whole life long.” an assortment of presents, but the My goodly heritage followed. And one that meant most and stuck with first on the list: LUTHERAN FORUM 5 of water you do the business in. But something about relinquishing your child over flowing waters, waters headed downstream as fast as gravity will allow, waters that will drown as easily as they will irrigate, eliminates all sanitary and sanitizing notions of “bath” and “washing” from the mind and focuses maternal anxiety squarely on “we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death” (Romans 6:4). Not that my dad could quite bring himself to put his first and only grand- son all the way under; he lacked John Damm’s long experience. Still, the boy went into the water, wet and cold and shocking to his eight-month-old flesh. He gasped and clenched up at each of his three semi-immersions. “—in the name of the Father,” gasp-clench, The lifelong promise given to her As it turned out, the local Luther- “and of the Son,” gasp-clench, “and of in her BAPTISM on July 4, 1976. In ans—known in the rural corners of the Holy Spirit,” gasp-clench. But no the words of Martin Luther: To southwestern Virginia as “country screaming this time. Some deaths go appreciate and use Baptism aright, we Catholics”—were delighted at the gently. must draw strength and comfort from it prospect of not only a Lutheran but a In this way, thirty years after I got when our sins or conscience oppress us, baby getting saved in the New River. baptized by my grandfather Hin- and we must retort: “But I am bap- Each of the congregations threw us licky, whose birthday was the day tized! And if I am baptized, I have the a baby shower (due as much to non- before mine, my son got baptized by promise that I shall be saved and have acceptance of their undesired yoking his grandfather Hinlicky, whose birth- eternal life, both in soul and body.” as to exuberance on our behalf), and day was the day before his. We took when the day arrived they spontane- it as a providential pattern to confirm ously organized lawn mowing to clear the divinely arranged place of our the path from church to river and van adopted son in his new family.
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