Banjos and Baptism

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

    As a fan of country music, I love the sound of the banjo.  The banjo got a bad name from the movie “Deliverance,” but it’s a beautiful instrument with a great sound, almost part and parcel of country music.  When I served as a priest in East Lansing, I decided one year to get a banjo.  I’ve played piano, saxophone, and the bassoon before, so I felt I could handle a new instrument.  I took lessons for a few months, bought a book with an accompanying DVD to help me learn, and went to it.  I didn’t pick up the instrument as quickly as I liked, and then Bishop Boyea named me pastor of St. Joseph in Adrian, so it fell by the wayside.  After years of not using it, I gave it to Jake, the seminarian who was living with me for the summer when I became pastor here.  Hopefully he has found more use for and success with it than I did!
    Sometimes we Catholics treat baptism and our faith life like a banjo.  We’re excited about it when there’s a new child, we might use it a lot at the beginning, but then things get hard, and we set it off to the side, never to use it again.  I think some of this comes from a misunderstanding of what baptism is and means.
    For years after the Second Vatican Council, there was an emphasis on how similar our sacraments were to human milestones.  The intent was good.  If all people are created in the image and likeness of God, and if all humans truly desire God, as St. Augustine noted, then it makes sense that other cultures and even other religions would have times and ceremonies that mimic what Christ Himself instituted in the sacraments.  For example, baptism is connected to birth, confirmation to adolescence, matrimony and holy orders to marriage and family, anointing of the sick to dying and death.  Many cultures and religions do have rituals during those times of life, and I do think that it reflects the pieces of truth that connect other cultures and faiths to our true religion.
    But at the same time, baptism now is often viewed as a merely sociological experience that is over as quickly as it begins.  Parents come to church to have their children baptized, and then they’re not seen again until first reconciliation and first Holy Communion, then leave again, then not seen again until confirmation, then leave again, then return again for marriage (often because it’s a requirement of the parents who are footing the bill), and then leave again, hopefully returning again at the baptism of their own children. 
    But millennials in particular, and the generations that are following them, are not into empty rituals that are done for the sake of being done.  Many young people who leave the church during college never return, unlike the generations before them.  And when they have kids, fewer and fewer are having their children baptized.  In some ways that’s troubling, because baptism is the ordinary way that eternal life is opened up for humans, but in other ways, it’s almost more honest, at least if the parents have no intent to live out their faith. 
    Baptism means seeking the Lord, like Isaiah said in the first reading, but it also means the scoundrel has to “forsake his way and the wicked mad his thoughts.”  It’s the beginning of the growth of new life and a relationship with God, the first watering of the field of the soul, not the harvest and the rest that comes after.  Jesus didn’t quit telling people about God the Father and drawing them into relationship with the Father once Jesus was baptized; He began His public ministry of calling all to repentance and the fulness of happiness.  As a pastor, it seems like many take baptism to mean that they never have to work at keeping the commandments, unlike what St. John said in the second reading.  Baptism is treated as a Get Out of Hell Free card. 
    But Baptism really means that the person will try his or her best to make the life of Jesus his or her own.  Baptism is the grace-assisted and grace-empowering beginning of a habit of: listening to the Holy Spirit; trusting in and following the will of God; dying to our own preferences and fallen desires and habits; putting behind us sinful life and living for God above all else.  Yes, it washes away original sin; yes it imparts a character with which we are sealed for all eternity as a child of God; yes it gives us sanctifying grace which pushes us toward heaven.  But it’s not magic.  It’s not a “do this and then you’ll never have to do anything else” ritual. 
    Baptism is the beginning of a grand adventure with God.  Baptism is the beginning of a saintly life.  It doesn’t mean that we always get the saint part right, but it means we’re trying to, and we put behind us things that don’t help us be saints.  It is a life-long commitment to strive to do the will of God in every circumstance.  It gives us the identity of a son or daughter in the Son of God, which isn’t so much a badge that we can scan to get to exclusive areas, but rather a mission to live like Jesus would in our own day, a life that truly begins happiness, and share that call to happiness with those we meet, both by word and by deed. 
    Don’t let your baptism be like my banjo.  Don’t just start and then not follow through.  Don’t just pick it up every now and then.  Allow your baptism to be the strength which allows you to live each day in the freedom of the children of God, a freedom God gave us not for license, for doing whatever we want, but for holiness, for doing what God wants.  Live your baptism every day, and at your judgement you will hear from the Father: “‘This is my beloved…with you I am well pleased.’”