Mtr Kelli Joyce

"Jesus said, 'I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.'"

Dear friends in Christ,

Many of you may know that I wasn't raised in the Episcopal tradition. I grew up a Southern Baptist, and was in the American Baptist ordination process when I started seminary. So when I began to feel drawn by the Spirit to the Episcopal Church, there were three major theological obstacles in my way. First, Bishops. Baptists don't have those. Second, Creeds. Baptists also don't have those. But the biggest hurdle for me was the theology that gives Baptists their name - infant baptism. Or, rather, the lack of infant baptism. It was very important in my tradition growing up that baptism needed to happen after an individual made a personal and proactive choice to become a follower of Jesus, and babies were pretty obviously incapable of that.

Offering baptism to everyone, regardless of age, was something I was initially suspicious of. But eventually it became something deeply precious to me - I didn't just find a way to make peace with infant baptism, I came to believe that it's a beautiful and important reflection of a major truth about God and about us. The truth is, none of us are given access to God's grace and mercy and love because we've earned them, whether by our actions or our beliefs. Next to the wisdom of God, all of us are just as incapable of truly understanding the gift as any baby. If we're going to become part of the Body of Christ through baptism, we have to come as infants - no matter what age we are.

The task of Christian living is too much for us. We cannot come to it trusting in our own wisdom or our own strength. Instead, we remember that we never walk the way of love alone - Jesus is always with us, helping us shoulder every burden, carrying us and caring for us even when we do not and cannot understand what his Spirit is doing in our hearts. "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." God invites all of us equally - regardless of age, gender, race, class, or intelligence - to have the trust of a baby, and let ourselves be held by the one who will never let us go.

In peace,
Mtr. Kelli