Baptismal Hospitality
Baptism is the sacrament through
which one enters into the Church and is united to Jesus Christ. As the prime
sacrament of initiation, baptism does not simply signify the universal call or
promise of the gospel, but it actually incorporates one into Christ at the same
time into the eschatological community of hospitality. We might be tempted to
make fine logical distinctions here, in the hope of establishing the correct
order of things. But the Scriptures do not seem concerned about which comes
first: our personal union with Christ or our membership in the Church (cf. Acts
2:14; 1 Cor. 12:13). Karl Rahner has rightly cautioned against an
individualized understanding of baptism. It is the individual person who is baptized,
but this person is baptized into the people of God. To belong to Christ means
to belong to his Church and vice versa. Since Christ is the representation of
Israel, who recapitulates her life, death, and resurrection, faith and baptism
unite us to Christ and lead us into the Church. . . . Baptism into Christ and
into his Church implies a bond of unity with everyone who likewise has been
baptized into Christ and his Church. We can only deny this objective bond of fellowship
(koinōnia) if we radically limit the implications of baptism to the
local Church. Such a limitation hardly seems justified. To be sure, the local congregation
and the baptized person’s life in and participation with it are of supreme
importance. But to be incorporated into the local Church means to be incorporated
into Christ and so to become part of his universal body as well. . . . Baptism
is often referred to as both a gift and a call. God not only gives us his grace
by incorporating us into Christ and into his Church, but he also calls on us to
accept the responsibility of this gift. Baptism is a call to continue in faith;
it is a call to respond to God’s hospitable invitation both now by joining the
Church and in the future by continuing in the meal of the host and by a life of
fellowship with Christ and with one’s fellow believers. (Hans Boersma, Violence,
Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2004], 212-13, 215)
