Yesterday was the seventy-second anniversary of my baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. On November 20 (St. Andrew’s Day), my father and mother took me to a Lutheran church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and there my father, a Lutheran pastor, baptized me “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (back then, I suspect he said “Ghost” rather than “Spirit”). And so God adopted me into his family, into the life of God, the Holy Trinity, and into the life of the church. From that day on, as my self-consciousness began to grow, I slowly but steadily learned from my parents, my god-parents, my teachers (I went to a Lutheran parochial school), from my classmates, from my extended family, from my Sunday School teachers, and from nearly everyone I knew, that I was a Christian. From infancy on, I had no other identity but that of Andy, a Christian.
All of my life that has been God’s Good News to me. Even as God was forming me in my mother’s womb, God was getting ready to adopt me and to claim me as His own. Created in His image, even though I was to be born within the tragedy of sin, God made sure that he was not going to lose me as his dear Andy. Having reached down and into the tragedy of sin when he gave His son to us, God reached down to me, picked me up, took me to the Church, held me in my mother’s arms, and asked my pastor/father to baptize me. From that day on, my first, middle, and last name has always been “Christian.”
Sometime soon June and I plan to see The Blind Side, the story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. While I don’t know the details of the story, one of the trailers (if I’m remembering rightly) foregrounded this little conversation between Michael Oher and Leigh Anne Touhy, the woman who has brought Michael into her family’s home:
Leigh Anne Touhy: Would you like to be a member of our family?
Michael: I thought I already was.
That’s a conversation about grace. When Leigh Anne brought Michael into her family and home, she gave Michael a brand new identity. Once she had introduced Michael to the family, showed him his new bedroom, served him food at his new table, Michael was “hooked”; that is, he had no other way to think of him but as a “Touhy,” an “adopted” member of a wonderful family. When Leigh Anne asks, “Would you to be in our family”? Michael is astonished at the question and can simply tell the truth, “I thought I already was.” Yes, Michael already was!
That’s the way I grew up. I always thought “I already was a Christian” ever since God took me by bpatism into his family, the Church, the Body of Christ. O yes, I had to learn how to live as a Christian, what sort of manners we Christians observe, how we love one another and other people, how we worship our adopting Father, Son, and Spirit, but all of that came “naturally” and spiritually as the Holy Spirit of God led me on my journey and cultivated my growing faith and trust in the mercy of God. God the wonderful Obstetrician, gave me a second birth and delivered me into the Body of Christ, the Church. God made sure I was born again. God “hooked” me to the cross of Christ and, as St. Paul says, “into the death and resurrection of Christ” (Romans 6). How wonderful always to know that. Like any child adopted into a good family, I was delighted being a Christian. I learned to pray, clean my room, read Scriptures, do my homework, learn to ride a bike, manage a newspaper route in the sixth grade, and let Jesus meet me Sunday after Sunday in Holy Communion. I learned what forgiveness, grace, and mercy is all about. What a life God has given me! I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you, mom and dad, for bringing me to the baptismal font. Thank you, Church, for welcoming me into your blessed family. And thank You, Most Holy Trinity, for baptizing me me into your Name, the best name I ever got and will always have: Christian.
Want to know more about the movie? Read this perceptive review of The Blind Side.
A Benedictine friend sends this little story to all of us: 
