Instead, my parents dedicated me to God in prayer in front of the church. They promised to see that I was brought up in the Christian faith and encouraged to make my own profession of belief in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour as soon as I had reached the "age of reason." In my case, this promise was easy enough for my parents to make, since my father was also the pastor of our church and my mother the church organist. It was pretty much a given that in my family, I would be made aware every day of the centrality of faith in our life together.

When I was five years old, I was sent to the church school across the street from the parsonage. In many ways, it was like St. James Academy, for I attended that school from Kindergarten through 8th grade. We had chapel every Friday in the church. Sometime during the course of the year, one of the women of the church was invited to be the guest speaker at chapel. Her name was Mrs. Rowina DeWit, and I knew her well, for her son Dan was friends with my older brother Paul, and Dan and I later became friends, and remain so to this day.

Mrs. DeWit told the story of a little boy in a far away village in Africa who helped his mother collect fire wood and do other chores during the day. He did not go to school like we do, she said. But one day a missionary came to the village and told the people that Jesus had come to offer forgiveness of sins to those who believed in him. She went on to explain the basics of the gospel, the story of the cross and empty tomb, and then she said that the little boy decided he wanted to accept Jesus as his saviour, so he prayed a prayer known as the "Sinner's Prayer." She invited us to pray, too. It went something like this:

"Dear Jesus, I know that I am a sinner. I believe that you died on the cross for my sins. I want to accept you as my personal Lord and Saviour. Please forgive my sins and come into my heart. Amen."

I bowed my head and prayed that prayer will full conviction. I went home from Kindergarten that day and told my father, who was very happy for me, but despite my religious precocity, he waited three more years, until I was eight, to baptize me by full immersion in the name of the Trinity.

And now, twenty years later, here I stand, a newly-minted Episcopal deacon, giving a homily on baptism in a tradition that baptizes infants. In my own family, I have members who attend churches that practice only "believer's baptism," and others who attend churches that practice infant baptism. And I imagine I'm not the only one here in this situation.

Now, I can imagine that the parents and sponsors of our baptismal candidate[s] today might be thinking "who cares about infant baptism versus believer's baptism? We're doing this because it's our particular church's tradition." [And, in the case of Geoff and Griffin, it's a moot point anyway, because each of these young people is old enough to choose for himself.] But I'd like to take a couple of minutes to look at this issue, because I hope it will clarify for all of us the importance of the promises we are about to renew in our Baptismal Covenant.

The two practices of infant and believer's baptism are assumed by many to be theologically incompatible. Before I became an Episcopalian, I used to think that any church that practiced infant baptism must not take baptism very seriously. For how can a baby make a commitment to Christ? Isn't it presumptuous to baptize someone on the mere assumption that he or she will later decide to become a Christian? We may promise to do our best to bring a child up in the faith, but that doesn't mean we'll be successful at it. And won't those people who were baptized as infants go through life with a false sense of security, as if baptism conferred upon them salvation?

Seen from the standpoint of the relationship of our own actions to God's salvation, infant baptism runs the risk of looking like cheap grace. The argument against baptizing infants in its strongest form boils down to this: if baptism is the sign of conversion to Christ, then baptism should only be given to those who have been converted. Since conversion to Christ is through personal faith in Him, then baptism is appropriate only for those who have believed.

This rationale makes good sense, but there are two things wrong, in my opinion, with this view. First, it defines baptism narrowly as a sign of only one thing, namely conversion, rather than as a sacrament whose symbolic richness in the New Testament and the Tradition of the Church carries with it many more meaningful associations than I can tell you in one homily. Baptism alludes to God's covenant with Noah and God's covenant with Abraham. Baptism is a new covenant, new birth, death and resurrection in Christ, the washing away of sins, and so much more. It is both the anticipation of and the result of conversion, but one does not necessarily precede the other.

Second, the argument for believer's baptism does not take into account the fact that Christ died even for those who by mental handicap or other frailty are unable to meet the litmus test of a rational conversion experience. It places too much emphasis on our own subjective decision, and not enough on God's objective grace. This view thus runs the risk of attributing salvation to the act of faith of the person who is saved, a sort of works-righteousness, rather than to God.

But "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" In both the dedication of infants and the baptism of infants, a seed is planted and the parents and sponsors are charged to nurture that seed. The main difference is that when we baptize infants, we assert that God's grace is not dependent on our finite conscious decisions, influenced as they are by partiality, ignorance, social conditioning, peer pressure, or any other thing. Our decision for Christ doesn't save us; it is rather our response to God's grace freely given. And even our acceptance of Christ cannot bear fruit apart from God's grace. The bottom line is that both traditions agree that it is God's grace that saves, and our response to God's grace is the flowering and fruit-bearing of God's gift of salvation.

It is not up to us to erect roadblocks to God's grace. Heaven knows there are enough of them already. Rather, our duty as Christians is to proclaim Christ's love, celebrate Christ's love, and have faith that Christ's love is powerful and effective for all who would come in contact with it. As the Church, we have been assured of the means of grace, and it is our job to make it accessible, not as "cheap grace," but in as many different ways as might spread the good news of God's salvation through Christ Jesus. We can only plant, and water. It is God who gives the growth.

As our baptismal candidates are planted in the fertile soil that is the Church, and watered with the sacrament of baptism, we can pray that God will give them the growth necessary to take on the promises of our Baptismal Covenant someday for themselves. [And in Geoff's case, that's already happening through his simultaneous preparation for confirmation.] We can promise to nurture our newly baptized in the Christian faith, but always "with God's help." Amen.