Our party for my son's sixth birthday was a big success, mostly because we had a fire truck visit from the local fire department. We had the requisite games, music, cake and balloons, but the high point was the firetruck.
Our volunteer fire department is willing to arrange these visits, providing nothing more exciting is happening. In fact, they did receive a real call just as they were finishing up their presentation on fire safety. So all the kids got to hear the siren.
Our celebration was apparently not unlike the baptism of children at First Baptist Church, Springdale, Ark., in their Disney-designed firetruck baptistry. When a child is baptized, a cannon shoots out confetti and sirens go off. The worship area includes a light show, video games, music videos and a bubble machine.
Like my son's celebration, baptism too is a birth day as we are buried with Christ “by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead…we too might walk in newness of life” (Roman 6:4). The early church even spoke of the baptismal waters as a womb, signaling birth, new creation and new life. Although Pastor Ronnie Floyd, former SBC presidential candidate, has come under much criticism for this baptism by firetruck, why shouldn't we celebrate baptism even more than we celebrate our own birthdays? Why not video games, bubbles, a firetruck and sirens?
The fact of celebration is not so much the issue as the how or the why. How we live our baptism is reflected in how we celebrate it. Several times at my son's birthday, I had to remind his energetic young friends they couldn't go running through our house (lest we had to call another emergency vehicle). They also had to wait to be served before they tore into the cake, and my son had to tell his friends “thank you” for his presents, whether he really liked them or not. In other words, we tried (as much as is possible for 6-year-olds) to make waiting, thanking, giving and receiving central to this celebration.
So also the gestures and acts of baptism – faithfully done – reflect the drama of our life together. In the early church, many baptismal pools were in the shape of either a tomb or an octogan (signaling the eighth day or new creation). The candidate took three steps down into the baptismal waters, was immersed (often three times in the name of the Trinity) and walked up the three steps out of the pool. The significance was apparent to all: death to the old self and new birth into Christ's body, God's new creation.
Our Baptist forebears even sang, “Eternal Spirit, heavenly Dove/On these baptismal waters move/That we through energy divine/May have the substance with the sign” (18th-and 19th-century hymnals). These early Baptists sang about God's “divine energy” creating a people through the baptismal waters. These hymns, the baptismal pools and Scripture all point to baptism as a celebration not simply of ourselves but of the God we worship and of what God makes possible in the life of the church.
Videos games, bubbles and fireworks – while no doubt entertaining for children – fail by comparison. Baptism is more than fun; it's a serious celebration.
In ordinary speech, “baptism by fire” means a harsh ordeal experienced for the first time, such as a soldier going to battle. We don't think of baptism as harsh. But there is a connection between the colloquial use and Christian baptism – namely, facing death. This is why baptism is serious. But after death, new life. This is why baptism is a celebration. If we forget either of these, baptism easily becomes entertainment or a joyless tag-on at the end of a worship service. Then baptism becomes a sign of our dying life rather than a daily dying and rising as we allow the Spirit's fire to transform our lives together.
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Beth Newman
Professor of Theology and Ethics
Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond
bnewman@btsr.edu