Pastors are genuinely shocked when Christian people delay receiving the rites and sacraments of the church for unspiritual reasons. How often we hear people declining to be married because "they can't afford the reception," while those same people are living together. A big party trumps the divine command to keep the sixth commandment, by holding our spouse and purity and honor. As St. Paul says: "Each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God" ( 1Thess 4:4-5). When we live this way, we are living like those who do not know God.

 

We hear similar things when people delay the baptism of their children until their family and friends can be present, sometimes for months. "Oh pastor, we are going to wait until Grandma Schmidlap can come from Peoria." With all due respect to Grandma Schmidlap, the baptism of a child is not about her. It is a gift that God wants to give to our children. What would happen if you (God forbid!) won the "Power-Ball Lottery" worth $100 million? The lottery commission would establish a date on which you would receive the check for your winnings. What would happen if Grandma Schmidlap was unable to be with you on the day you were presented with $100 million? Would you ask the lottery commission to wait several weeks, months, or even years, until she could come? I think not. You would be so excited about getting your winnings, that you would not be held back by Grandma Schmidlap's inability to be present. Why should we be any less excited about conferring this gift on the children whom God gives us? Isn't baptism far more valuable than $100 million? Infinitely. Yet so often God's gifts are held hostage to the whims of family, tradition, and social custom.

 

Gowns, parties, banquets, and family gatherings are all enjoyable. They may be beneficial accoutrements to a baptism or a wedding. But they are hardly the essence of the thing and must not be allowed to intrude upon God's gift to a child, who ought to be baptized or God's gift to an affianced couple, who ought to be married. Such delays are worse than those of the early church, which at least had spiritual reasons for delaying baptism, even if those reasons were misguided and based on a works righteous theology. In our day, we are often hostage to family relations. And as important as family is, baptism introduces us into a new family, the church, which supersedes the family of this world. Jesus, our Lord, asks who His mother and brothers are ( Lk 8:21), and looking around Him He sees us, because we have been baptized into Him and have done His Word. We are baptized into a new family.