Baptismal Meditation, August 1

Luke 14:21-24

The parable of the wedding feast is a parable about the kingdom, where the kingdom is envisioned, as it often is in Jesus?Eteaching, as a dinner, a banquet, a wedding feast. The key point in this particular parable is about who is invited to the wedding feast. First the man?s social peers are invited, and when they refuse the man sends his servant to gather in the lame, the blind, the crippled, the poor, to fill the empty seats at his banquet table.

Baptism is an invitation to the feast, an invitation to the feast of the kingdom. Baptism brings the person baptized into the visible church, making him or her a member of the Eucharistic community. Baptism is an admission to a people whose life centers on table fellowship.

Infant baptism in particular displays the meaning of this parable of Jesus. Infant baptism shows that God calls the weak things of the world, the foolish things, the little things. Infant baptism shows that God?s kingdom is made up not of those who have glory and honor in themselves, but that God bestows abundant glory and honor on those who have none of their own. As Paul says, ?the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary, and those members of the body, which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our unseemly members come to have more abundant seemliness, whereas our seemly members have no need of it?E(1 Cor 12). Infant baptism shows that the Eucharistic community has a guest list like the guest list of the man in the parable: For God calls the weak, the poor, those who can make no apparent contribution to be with Him in His kingdom.

Emmaline is doubly weak. She is a helpless infant, and God is claiming her as His own. More, she is suffering from a disease whose consequences are still unknown. And yet God is claiming her, and calling her to His table, to take her seat with all the poor and weak and unseemly whom God has made His own.