"To be baptized, therefore, is to enter the river, the "glad river" Will Campbell calls it, through which all the saints have trod. It is to belong to a people. We are a people of liberation, not bondage, captivated by a gospel which is often too radical for us. This liberating gospel compels us into the world, confronting issues of race and gender, worship and spirituality, witness and mission, sin and salvation--scary stuff. Instead of distracting ourselves by turning inward on each other ,often ignoring the hurt rampant around us, let us rise up together to carry out Jesus' own mission, wonderfully articulated by the Isaiah text: "to open eyes that are blind; to bring captives out of prison."
.....So let us continue to return to the river with others who begin the journey. We are always going back there, rediscovering the implications and complications of God's grace. We need patience and humility together, since we will never establish a baptismal policy on which all of us can readily agree. But like the child in Flannery O'Conner's story, we can know that we count, after all, at the river. Perhaps that will have to be good news enough, until that day when all God's people shall gather at the river "that flows by the throne of God."
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