I am struggling with my faith today. 

I just read a small blurb on the internet that Casey Anthony has put out a statement that she is being baptized in order to “to ensure her own salvation so that she’ll see her daughter again someday.” She also says that she is “looking for a new beginning.” 

If you don’t know, Anthony is the young mother whose trial for murdering her 2 year old daughter was a national obsession. She is widely thought to be guilty even though she was acquitted at her trial. And in reading the comments from others who have read this article it is clear that most think that there is no redemption for her.

So the first question, which is one asked by the author of the piece is: is baptism and salvation a media event? Why did she think it was necessary to let everyone know? It reminds me of the time in college when my mother and I were at a car lot looking at a used car for me. After some high pressure sales tactics the salesman looked at us and said, “I’m a Christian. I don’t lie.” We didn’t buy a car from him. Anyone who would use Christ to sell a car was not someone we wanted to deal with. And make no mistake, Casey Anthony is trying to sell herself to a public who vilifies her.

Her next question is whether being baptized is all she has to do to “ensure her salvation”? According to the Book of Discipline, baptism is “God’s gift of unmerited grace through the Holy Spirit. It is an incorporation into Christ which marks the entrance of each person into the church and its ministry (Romans 6:3, 4, 18)”(page 197). It also states that “Faith is the only response essential for salvation.” (page 47) So according to our Methodist beliefs it is not baptism which brings salvation but faith. But we are also a people of grace. We believe that there is no place we can go that God is not already present in prevenient grace. “God’s grace also awakens in us an earnest longing for deliverance from sin and death and moves us toward repentance and faith.” (page 46) My last question is about the pastor who will be baptizing her. Has he/she counseled with her. Is the pastor required to do it? Can a pastor refuse simply based on his/her belief about her guilt?

So many questions and so few answers. I believe in God’s grace and I believe in forgiveness of sins. But are there sins that can’t be forgiven? If she is guilty of murdering her child can God forgive that simply by the act of baptism? How do I know if she is sincerely wants a new beginning or simply wants to keep her name in the public eye? How do I know if she is worthy of forgiveness? The answer, of course, is that is doesn’t matter what I think. I cannot be her judge and I do not get to decide who is going to heaven. In Acts 10:15 a voice from heaven tells Peter, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” Has God or will God make her clean? Will she ensure her salvation with her baptism? Is she beginning a new life in Christ? I don’t know and I don’t need to know. This is God’s business and not mine. My job is to remain faithful in Christ and to live according to that faith in order to ensure my own salvation.

Everything else is out of my control. And so I pray for Casey Anthony that she may truly find her way to faith and to salvation. All of the rest is up to God.

And that’s Good News!

Cori Bell

A couple of weeks after Easter Sunday Bill will be presiding over a wedding in Washington D.C. This means that I will again be blessed with the opportunity to preach. One of the lessons of seminary is supposed to be that it is important for preachers to maintain a personal bible study that is unrelated to their preaching or classes that they teach. I confess to you that there are days when this confuses me. It seems to presume that when a pastor prepares to preach or teach, we hold the Word of God at a distance and only consider how it might apply to everyone else, as if we are somehow above it all. Yet when preparing to bring scripture to you, I often feel the Holy Spirit draw near.

Yesterday I was reading the scripture for this upcoming sermon and beginning some exegetical work while hymns played in the background. It is one of the Easter appearances...between Easter morning and the time when Jesus ascends to heaven. And it was one of those moments. I wondered what it would be like to be one of those disciples; to have walked with Jesus through his ministry on earth; to have been at that Last Supper; to have been waiting in the garden and seen him arrested; to have seen him as he appeared to the disciples....I wondered...and it seemed very near.

This sermon is over a month away so I don’t really know just yet how we will travel through it together. But the experience has made me think about how we are approaching Easter. We are moving through Lent and will soon enter Holy Week. I wonder how much our journeys have and will mirror the journey of the disciples.

As the disciples travelled with Jesus in his ministry, they were pretty clueless. Jesus repeatedly tried to prepare them for what was coming, while they either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. Was it just too far outside of their experience or expectations? Each Sunday Bill has asked us to consider meaning in our Lenten disciplines; yet how many of us have given up or taken on anything for the Season of Lent this year? Are we just “along for the ride” or are we seriously considering what it means to be a follower of Jesus? Are we listening and understanding as Jesus strives to prepare us? Or have we closed our hearts, minds and souls because it is just too much trouble to step outside of our comfort zone?

When the disciples come to Holy Week they will initially remain clueless. Then they will be shocked, overwhelmed and frightened by the events that will transpire. How will we move through those days? Will it be real to us? Will we react as the disciples did or will we have embraced the lessons that Jesus as offered to us? Perhaps we will be a part of the larger crowd and see no real significance in the events...just move through like these are any other days. Will we enter the Upper Room and wait in the garden? Or will we go about our regular business unaware? Will we journey to the cross and weep or turn our heads away so that our eyes do not see the pain that will be suffered on our behalf? Will we hear his cries or turn the radio up loud enough to drown out all unpleasantness around us? Will we sit the in quiet of Holy Saturday and try to absorb all that has happened, to absorb the sacrifice of our Lord.... or will we be too busy shopping for new clothes for Easter morning?

We can travel through Lent as clueless as the disciples and the crowd who have followed along for the ride, or we can prepare ourselves. We can travel through Holy Week as those who are overwhelmed and afraid like the disciples....or as unaware as much of the rest of the crowd, or we can bow before so great a love. If we remain in the crowd, we will never reach Easter morning. We can get there with the disciples only appreciating the significance when our Lord appears. Or we can listen to our Lord along the rest of the journey through Lent and into Holy Week and give adoring thanks in each step as we follow.

Easter will be here soon and be much too magnificent to be missed! See you in church.

Blessings,
Dana