A heart of flesh

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.Ezekiel 36:26

I saw a post from a new friend of mine today on facebook that made me think about what my life was like before I was baptized.   I was a teenager.  (that sucked)  I had been a solitary practitioner of Christianity for about five years at the time and being baptized was the first step in learning how to be part of a community vs pretending to fit in just to blend in.   I should explain that I was there at the church in the first place because a friend of mine had threatened to pick me up in my pajamas if I didn't show up on my own.  I should also probably explain that I had started serving as an acolyte before I was baptized because the interim priest had no idea I came from an unchurched background and didn't think to ask.   I should also probably explain that by the time Jerry Rankin brought it to my attention that I needed to do this I'd been taking communion for months.  

And upon finding out I hadn't been baptized, that I wasn't actually Patty's kid (my friend's mother who is now my friend too), and that my parents were not members of the church, Fr. Jerry asked me to do something I found rather unpleasant.   He asked me to get their permission to be baptized, either there or somewhere else, and to abstain from serving at the alter and taking communion until I did so.   I didn't know it then, but that was the first thing in a long list of things that I would find unpleasant but see the value in during my life as a Christian.

I conned my parents into it rather easily.   They were, at first horrified I wasn't going to be immersed, and suggested I go to their church.  I countered that they didn't have one.  I told them I would go with them on Wednesday nights after they picked one out provided they came with me on Sunday morning.   I never set foot in "their" church.  They ended up liking Fr. Jerry and my mother got baptized with me.   It was about three months between the time I got found out and the time I was baptized.   I found the whole process rather strange.  I didn't feel like it was a big deal while it was actually happening.   It was anticlimactic   Church often is.  I was nervous the night before, I felt like someone who had waited too long to marry their boyfriend.  Snicker all you want---but I had been a believer for years and years--I had a healthy spiritual life.   I loved Christ and I knew that he loved me.    I didn't need that priest to tell me how to pray, or so I thought, because I already knew.  Jesus and I were tight.  We are tight.  I didn't know back then how much I needed the beloved community.

I was sixteen years old.   I had taken a class before the event.  I had been a believer for five years.   I also had no idea what I was getting into.  I don't think anyone does.   The Episcopal Church may not have introduced me to God, God did that on his own in a very real and tangible way years before, but the Episcopal Church taught me how to love him.   I learned, through liturgy, how to put prayer into my every day life.  Not just rambling on and on like a schizophrenic (who knows?) to the Almighty but how to actually pray.  To the point where those prayers and creeds and songs are probably going to be the last thing to leave if I lose my crackers.    I learned, from relationship with other people, just how wide a circle God's love draws around the human race.  How much God loves everything he has made and has pronounced it good because of the lovely horrible wonderful awful group of people called The Church.

I'm not the first person who experienced something like this.   It came up in the gospels today

.   Mark 10:35 (NRSV) James and John, the sons of Zeb'edee, came forward to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." 36 And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?" 37 And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." 38 But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" 39 They replied, "We are able." Then Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

I don't think that conversation turned out exactly as they had planned.   I thought I was joining a church, I was joining the Body of Christ. I thought I was going to finished after I did this.   This is it, right?  You get doused with water, make a few vows, and it's over, done, you're good, you're perfect, you're fit for heaven and you've got a ticket to ride the train to glory, right?  Wrong.   This is the beginning, it's hard work, it'll cost you tears, and fears, and change your life in ways you don't care for at the time.  It will bring people into your life that you're afraid to associate it with.  It will bring people into your life you would have never have had the clout to associate with.  It will make you laugh, make you cry, make you tremble inside, make you do things you didn't know you could do and most of all, most of all, it make you more you.   Who would James and John have been if they hadn't met a certain wandering Rabbi and kept following him?  Who would we be if they hadn't had the big brass ones to ask the question they asked?    Who indeed?

It isn't something to be entered into lightly.   Think about it, long and hard, but know that you don't know what you're getting into.  You don't know.  Six months old or sixty, you don't know.   That's okay.   We'll be there for you.