Oops!

January 9, 2011

In the Christian Year, today celebrates the Baptism of Jesus. Thinking of baptism, I recall an “oops!” story in the history of Fernwood Baptist Church of Spartanburg, SC, where I was pastor for twenty-two years.  When I became pastor, we worshipped in what is now the William L. Ball, Jr. Chapel, a beautiful worship space. The stained glass windows are magnificent works of art designed and fabricated by the Willet Stained Glass Studio.  These windows depict the “I Am” sayings of Jesus, and the “I am the beloved son” panel, presenting the baptism of Jesus, provided the “oops!”

Dr. Billy Ball, whom we called as our Pastor Emeritus when he and his wife Bessie returned as members in 1985, told me the story one Sunday after worship.  It may have been the Sunday when I preached on the baptism window during a sermon series I called “Sermons in Stained Glass.”

Billy pointed to John the Baptist standing next to Jesus as they were gathered by the Jordon River. “Randy, look at that area of stained glass just above Jesus’ head.  Do you notice anything odd?”

In fact, I did.  There were a couple of the sections of lead between the small panels that were slightly different in color.  Also, the hues in a few of the panels were barely, yet noticeably, different.  “Tell me about that, Billy,” I said.

“I’ll never forget that afternoon after the windows had been installed.  I was in here admiring them when I saw that John the Baptist was holding a shell full of water and was pouring the water over the head of Jesus.” Billy continued, “How in the world I missed that in all the discussions about these windows, I’ll never know.  But I was horrified.  We couldn’t have baptism by effusion in a baptism-by-immersion church!”

“So how’d you fix it, Billy?” I asked.  “Obviously it’s fixed, because John is not sprinkling Jesus.”

“Well,” Billy continued, “I called Willet Studios, explained the problem, and told them to get back here and fix this window. After much protesting, the fabricator came, removed the panel, and went to work ‘erasing’ the sprinkling.  You notice that he removed the shell spilling water over Jesus’ head and brought John’s hand down behind Jesus’ shoulder as if he were leading him into the Jordon for a ‘proper’ baptism. That’s why those couple lead sections and a few of the panels look different.”

“You’d have been in real trouble with some of the local, vocal Baptists in town had you not fixed that one, Dr. Ball.”  He readily agreed.

  

I thought of that story as I was looking at the baptism panel of faceted glass in the sanctuary during worship this morning.  I remembered telling Jane Collins, the artist who designed the windows, the big “oops!” regarding the chapel window.  “Jane, you have to make it overtly obvious that Jesus is being baptized by immersion.  Lots of water, okay? It’s our tradition, you know.”  Jane, a former Sister of Mercy in the Catholic Church, did just that.  The faceted glass baptism panel has Jesus and John waist-high in water with a few fish swimming around their legs, for good measure.

All this concern about baptism by immersion seems somewhat ironic now.  Fernwood Church welcomes into full membership those who were baptized by any mode, not requiring them to be fully immersed.   It’s the inner condition and not the outward expression that matters.  So, on this day when we celebrate the baptism of Jesus, I think he’s most likely happy with Fernwood’s understanding of baptism.  John the Baptizer’s probably okay with it, as well.