so this is real

yesterday i baptized my first baby... sort of.

we practiced performing the sacraments in worship class. we had to memorize parts of the baptismal service and the eucharist service.

we were a small group, three fairly nervous students and the chaplain from SFTS as our teacher. in a round chapel, we stood at the front, holding a baby doll (it was kinda creepy). each noise we made bounced around, the acoustics were horrible. every mistake we made seem to echo. after all three of us baptized this "baby," we practiced serving communion, from beginning to end. whew.

but once we started, it felt almost real (and it definitely made this whole training for ministry thing REAL). the words are powerful. the prayers are powerful. the tradition is powerful. and this was all of our first times doing any of this... and it is not easy. the sacraments are spiritual events... but also social and public events. at first, memorizing these texts on my own, they did not come alive. the words on the page were not mine. i had a relationship with them--i had heard them before. some of them i did not even like, and was not sure that i felt comfortable with.

and yet, standing up there, breaking the bread, pouring the wine, telling the story, the words were not dead, they reached through me, back two thousand years, embodying faith and tradition. enacting it.

this is a tomb experience for me. at chapel last week, professor inese radzins preached on the short ending of Mark... confronting the empty tomb with a mixture of ecstasy and terror.

i stand at the tomb, on the brink of ministry (well, i may be past the brink, but i don't get to do the sacraments, so on the brink of official ministry?) overwhelmed by the ecstasy and terror. the words connect me to the tradition, the community, the faith that enacts them. i am not alone and i will not do any of this alone--i can't.

after all, as charles marks said, "the sacraments are not ours, they are the church's." for good and bad, i weave myself into the tradition.