adult baptism and the disabled

Today Jacob and I finished our final membership class at Portland Mennonite Church. It took us a long time to start the process. Since we never know how long we are going to be in the Northwest, becoming a member and the next month skipping town hasn’t made much sense.

J’s perspective on the matter finally swayed me – we just need to make it official. We’ve been going to this church for two and a half years. We serve on committees, are part of a small group, heck I was even asked if I would consider being nominated as an elder. Membership for us means formalizing our relationship with this particular church community in a way that we can contribute even more to the life of the body.

Part of our preparation has been reading the Mennonite Confession of Faith. The baptism article is the only one that I’ve found particularly challenging. Having grown up in the Episcopal Church, there’s a lot to “get over” in coming to the Anabaptists. While not always agreeing, I’ve been able to adapt to 7-times-a-year Communion, the lack of emphasis on Old Testament scripture and the fear of ritual I sense in many parishioners. Baptism is a little different for me simply because the theology of pado-baptism makes so much theological sense, especially for theology of disability.

I certainly understand why the early Anabaptists abandoned pado-baptism. But today those reasons don’t seem as relevant. At greatest stake for me is what adult baptism says about our ability to acknowledge the weight of the cross. Infant baptism, for those in reformed traditions is baptism into the Trinity, death with Christ and the beginning of life in the church. When these churches baptize infants it is the child’s parents and the community of believers who take on the weight of responsibility. infant baptism says, “this child is going to die and if you don’t do something about it, they are going to die eternally.”

In the Mennonite church baptism means something very different:

Christian baptism is for those who confess their sins, repent, accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and commit themselves to follow Christ in obedience as members of his body, both giving and receiving care and counsel in the church. Baptism is for those who are of the age of accountability and who freely request baptism on the basis of their response to Jesus Christ in faith.

The reason we don’t baptize infants is because they cannot “freely request” “on the basis of their response.” Neither can children truly comprehend something else required in the confession: “Those who accept water baptism commit themselves to follow Jesus in giving their lives for others, in loving their enemies, and in renouncing violence, even when it means their own suffering or death.”

You know who else can’t do these things? The disabled.

Some kind people in the membership class tried to help by saying that, because baptism isn’t efficacious and instead just a sign, it didn’t really matter if you were baptized. I don’t think this is true. Baptism is initiation into the life of the church universal, the body of Christ. Whenever I see someone with a mental illness, a profound disability or a child baptized this is an awesome reminder of how foolish we are to think we can make a confession of faith. Just like the first disciples we can’t even imagine what it would mean to carry the cross and, in the moment of truth, like Peter most of us would run.

But that’s why we aren’t left alone. The community of believers is what strengthens us, trains us and prepares us for a lifetime in the church. In many ways, baptism is the first expression of our dependence on one another and the Holy Spirit for our redemption and for bringing that redemption back into the world. It is the moment when we experience our most profound disability. We don’t know what we are getting into and we are dependent on God and others for every breath of faithfulness.

I’m not sure where to put all this. I’d like to think some wise Mennonite theologian has a great answer to this very serious theological issue. Isaac? Any thoughts? Anyone else care to chime in?