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During my first year serving as pastor of Holladay UCC, I remember meeting with this couple who wanted to have their child baptized. They weren’t regulars at the church, but both sides of the family wanted this to happen, so there we were in my office, me with my crisp, barely used UCC Book of Worship and them, doing them doing their best to honor a family tradition. After the first question, “Will you encourage this child to renounce the powers of evil and to receive the freedom of new life in Christ?” I could see their eyes get bigger. After the second question, “Will you teach this child that she may be led to profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?” I could feel the discomfort in the room. By the third question, “Do you promise, by the grace of God, to be Christ’s disciples, to follow in the way of our Savior, to resist oppression and evil, to show love and justice, and to witness to the work and word of Jesus Christ as best as your able?” the weight of these words were unavoidable. Whatever picture they might have had in their minds of a sweet white dress and a celebratory cake, these words demanded a necessary wrestling with what this ancient ritual we call the sacrament of baptism was all about.

Tomorrow, we will gather together for the Annual Celebration of the Rocky Mountain Conference as people of faith who profess to follow the way of Jesus. We will do so just days after two Minnesota lawmakers were targeted, shot and one killed by a person professing to be Christian; when federal budget proposals would continue to shift resources from the poor to the wealthy; due process is being denied to immigrants; essential public health, social service, and foreign aid programs are being defunded; and some of the most basic tenants of the Christian faith are being distorted to fit a political agenda. And this is just a small fraction of what is happening right now in our world.

In the midst of all that we are experiencing, our baptismal vows are not lost on me.

To renounce the powers of evil.
To resist oppression.
To show love and do justice.
To follow the way of Jesus.

These are not symbolic gestures. These are commitments that form the very heart of our life together. They remind us that our faith is not just an individual endeavor but a public witness. That we are not simply attendees at a meeting, but the body of Christ—capable of moral clarity, of holy resistance, of proclaiming a better way not only in word, but in flesh and bone and action.

Whether you are able to be with us in person, virtually or in Spirit, it is my prayer that we come not just to do the business of the church, but to be the Church. To lend our collective imagination, courage, and hope to the urgency of this moment.  To be a refugia, a micro counterculture where life persists in the midst of crisis.

In this time of spiritual crisis, may we remember who we are and whose we are and find strength and courage in the waters of our baptism.

With resolve and hope,
Rev. Erin Gilmore
Transitional Conference Minister
Rocky Mountain Conference, UCC