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Volume II, Number 11– July 15, 2007

Chrismation
by the Rev. David Stringer, Rector, All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Corpus Christi

One of the vast and, I find, sweeping anomalies among Christians, is the way we speak of resurrection as though the story of Christ’s life ends there. I always want to ask, “What about the ascension?” One without the other is incomplete.  So it is with Chrismation in its relationship to Baptism. Here we have these two Mysteries of the Church, and while the Prayer Book connects them, I have yet to have a parent say to me, “I am contacting you about baptizing and chrismating my daughter/son/child/grandchild.”  In fact, usually I am asked something much more peculiar.  “Will you christen my …whomever?” I always want to ask, “You want me to do what?” That, of course, is not the pastoral response. And, I get it.  I know what they are asking.  I hear the deeper longing. 

So, here we go -- these two Great Mysteries understood in relation to one another. Let’s grasp the stunning and compelling language and context of “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and you are marked as Christ’s own forever.” What powerful, loving images.

Tradition casts its glace backwards into the Old Covenant, to the story of our patriarch, Jacob.  There he is, tired from running from his own blood-brother, Esau. Fatigued, he lays his head down on a stone to catch some sleep. His nocturnal heart would not remain still, and so he dreamt -- a ladder, set up on the earth, and the top of the ladder reaching into the heavens. And that’s not all.  Angels, ascending and descending the ladder. Now that the dream has the attention of his heart, God appears within this dream, and he becomes aware he is being pursued not by God alone, but by other patriarchs known to him as well -- Abraham and Isaac. Then comes the clarity: “the land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your offspring…and the earth shall be blessed by you and your offspring.” God has spoken, and Jacob is ecstatic.

Then comes the promise: that wherever Jacob goes, God will be present and protecting. Furthermore, no matter how far away he wanders, God will always  bring him back to this land, for God will not leave Jacob until God has done what God has promised. Incredible!

When Jacob awoke, he took the stone from under his head, set it up for a pillar (another way of saying that this is foundational and a root driven deep for life) and poured oil on the top of the stone. And then he named the place where this has happened, Beth-el -- meaning “House of God.” And so it was and is and so on.

There is the promise for us as well! We are to be built into a “spiritual house.” And the oil signifies for us, as it did for Jacob, that God will never leave us. We may abandon God, but never will God abandon us. Wherever we go, no matter how far, into whatever wilderness awaits us, God is there, present, waiting. It is true: once a child, always a child.  Irenaeus spoke this eternal truth in his assertion, “What God creates, God loves; what God loves, God loves everlastingly.”  Pay attention. This is the great tradition that has now become our Beth-el. 

This oil is the place of our being “christed.” Just as the dove appeared over Jesus at his baptism, so now does this oil become the living mandorla of God’s protection and presence in our lives.  Interestingly enough, tradition says that there are some charisms directly expressive of this anointing. Tradition speaks of constancy, steadfastness and the gift of knowledge as expressions of Chrismation. These are uncommon expressions in most of our vocabularies, but they manifest something of the depth and quality of Jacob’s experience that night under the stars. It is God’s steadfastness, God’s constancy that becomes the trust of Jacob’s existence.. Furthermore, this trust will become a part of the memory and trust of Israel as they reflect on their ancestor Jacob and what they might learn from him as they navigate the troubled waters of their longing for God.  So the first two -- steadfastness and constancy -- are of God’s nature, and from these two attributes Jacob will “build” his life. So what then of the gift of knowledge? 

It is just here that we encounter a most unusual word in our Ancient Tradition -- noetic experience. This was the way in which the early mothers and fathers spoke their experience to affirm that there are some things that will simply bypass the rational aspect of knowing. Additionally, there is another kind of knowing. This “knowing” is a knowing of the inner essences of created things by means of direct apprehension or spiritual perception.  In other words it is not what we know by way of reason, but rather a way of knowing divine truth by means of inner experience. Desert spirituality says that the “intellect dwells in the depths of the soul, and constitutes the innermost aspect of the heart.” They called this “seeing with the eye of the heart.” 

I wonder? The next time we attend to the Baptism, will we attend as well to the Chrismation? Will we begin to speak in terms of the “christed” moment, refusing to bifurcate the totality of the event? Perhaps we might insist that the Book of Common Prayer not create this separation and re-entitle this event Holy Baptism and Chrismation. Why portend otherwise?