Sunday, January 11, 2015: Mark 1:4-11
I eschew the danger of the river, but I know that it is where God leads me.
"Have you ever done a river baptism?” We were in the church library when she asked it, a large group of us sitting in a circle and talking about baptism. Later at our evening service there would be two babies and a two-year-old baptized in the font in our small chapel. But for now, we were sitting around talking about what would happen that night, why it was important to us, and what we believed about it.
“I have been reading about river baptisms lately,” she went on. “I think it would be really powerful to be baptized in a river.”
I had to admit that while I wasn’t against river baptisms, I had never done one. All of my baptisms have been indoors, in fonts of one sort or another, in places with walls and ceilings and central heating. When she first said “river baptism,” I thought of the Mississippi, which flows not too far from our church. A baptism in the mighty Mississippi could be dangerous. You have to know what you are doing in a river.
