As they looked around, Becky and Bill realized that other people were living in this supposedly abandoned house. Lisa introduced her new friends to the others and explained their situation. She showed them to a soiled mattress surrounded by clothes, pillows, blankets, and bags. “This is my space. You can stay here. Nobody will bother you. I’ll be back in a while.” And then she crawled out the window they had just crawled in.
Becky and Bill cautiously sat down on the mattress. They were exhausted, too tired to speak and lost in their own thoughts. Bill was reminiscing about days past, better days, and wondering if he would ever see them again. Why did the plant have to close? Why did they travel to New Jersey? Where was their family when they were most needed? And, why, Lord, did Becky have to get pregnant? Leaning his sore back against the dirty wall, Bill recalled the discussion, actually the argument they had about abortion so many months ago. Without the utterance of words, he wondered: “Did we make the right choice?” “Too late now,” he concluded.
Angry, frustrated, and scared, Bill’s thoughts turned to money. They didn’t have enough money for a hotel room, much less a hospital bed. “How will we handle this one?” he asked himself. Evading his own question, he thought, “At least we have a few more days before the baby is due.” Bill felt more alone than he had ever felt in his whole life. He just looked at Becky asleep on the mattress and sighed.
Meanwhile, Becky lay quietly on the stained mattress. She couldn’t sleep; she was too tired and too scared. Thinking to herself, lots of questions raced through her mind. “Where are we? Who are all these people in this house? Are we safe? Were we foolish to follow Lisa here?” She too remembered the argument in the early days of her pregnancy. “Were we stupid to have this baby?” Glancing over at Bill, she was thankful they were off the streets and relatively warm. “Fortunately, the baby isn’t due for a few days. We’ll figure things out.” Becky fell asleep.
Suddenly, in the middle of the night, Becky awoke to the breaking of her water—all over Lisa’s mattress. The contractions began coming fast and furious. Becky was frightened, and Bill didn’t know what to do. People in the house began to stir. Someone turned on a broken lamp and brought it over to their corner.
Shouldn’t they go to the hospital? This was the question on everybody’s mind. But nobody had enough money for a cab, and it was too late to walk. And if they called for an ambulance, they would risk losing their safe haven. “Could she have the baby here?” somebody asked.
Lisa had returned and was frantically running around trying to decide what to do. After all, they were her responsibility now. A middle-aged woman staying in the room upstairs came down. Her name was Pearl. Standing next to her was a sleepy young boy, about the age of five. Pearl looked at Becky and Bill and then at Lisa and declared with the wisdom and authority of age, “When I was growing up, babies were born at home. I guess she’ll have to do it here.” Taking charge, Pearl instructed Lisa to get some hot water and some towels. She told Bill to calm down and hold Becky’s hand.
The contractions started coming harder and faster. Becky was screaming and crying. Bill was shaking. A small group of people staying in the house began to form a circle around them. Lisa waved them away, back into the shadows.
After an hour and a half, Becky pushed hard, and a baby was born. Pearl took the baby, cut the umbilical cord with a kitchen knife, and placed the baby on Becky’s breast whispering, “Here’s your angel child. He’s a boy.”
As the group stood quietly around the mattress, each with his or her own thoughts, Pearl’s child crept up to Becky and her infant. He leaned over them, kissed the baby on the cheek, and whispered in his ear, “I hope you find a place to live.”
Becky gazed at Bill smiling with tears in his eyes. She then looked up at Pearl and her child, Lisa, and all the people standing in the sacred circle. Quietly she asked, “What shall we name this baby?” Lisa smiled and said, “How about Jesu? And on that cold, winter night, in an abandoned house, in a poor city neighborhood, a child was born, a son was given, and his name was Jesús.
Becky and Bill are fictional characters. And yet, I meet them almost every day in my ministry. They come to our churches for food, shelter, clothing, and money and sometimes for prayer and counsel.
Lisa, on the other hand, was a real person. In December 1991, Lisa and her companion, Ivan, were homeless. Actually, they were living in an abandoned storage trailer in the parking lot of a factory across the street from my church. They both had been on the streets for some time, in and out of the shelter and jail systems, and they had become my friends. I had been trying to convince them to get off the streets and into permanent housing. I feared they wouldn’t survive the winter months. Each time we talked about it, they laughed and told me not to worry.
On Christmas Eve, I asked Lisa if she would like to be the angel in my Christmas message. In her excited manner, she was delighted. In appreciation, I gave Lisa and Ivan money to have a shower, a meal, a new set of clothes, and a bed for the night in the hotel across the street from the church. I then invited them to attend Christmas Eve services and hear the story.
As I rose to the pulpit that night, I saw Lisa and Ivan sitting in a pew in the middle of the nave. Both of them were freshly showered and wearing relatively clean clothes. When I first mentioned Lisa’s name in the sermon, her eyes lit up, and by the end of the story, she was grinning from ear to ear.
The next day, Lisa and Ivan were arrested for trespassing. Because of bench warrants, they were locked up in the county jail and had a warm place to sleep for the next several months. Maybe God was watching out for them. Both Lisa and Ivan have since died and are now real angels in heaven. I know they still love each other.
A Baptism to Remember | CLEVELAND, OHIO, 2001
A Baptism
to Remember
Before performing a baptism, the minister approached the young father and said solemnly, “Baptism is a serious step. Are you prepared for it?” “I think so,” the man replied. “My wife has made appetizers, and we have a caterer coming to provide plenty of cookies and cakes for all of our guests.” “I don’t mean that,” the minister responded. “I mean, are you spiritually prepared?” “Oh, sure,” came the reply. “I’ve got a keg of beer and a case of wine.”
This stupid pulpit joke makes a serious point. Many of us get our priorities confused when it comes to baptism. We often get caught up in the christening parties and the outfits, and we lose the real meaning of the sacrament into which we’re entering. We fail to remember the power of this liminal and formative experience.
How many of us remember our baptism? Do we recollect when or where we were baptized? Can we recount who witnessed this sacred event? Do we remember the priest or the minister who performed the baptism? Do we even recall the water being poured over our head and the invisible sign of the cross being engraved upon our forehead? Most of us probably answer “no” to these questions. We don’t remember our baptisms. Many of us were too young to remember since we were baptized as infants or toddlers, long before our conscious memories took shape.
Isn’t it a shame that we don’t remember this rite of passage, that we can’t recollect the promises made or the love offered on that very special day. In fact, most of us can’t recall whether we laughed, cried, screamed, smiled, or slept through one of the most important events of our entire life.
Our baptisms are worth remembering, even by reconstruction. Although the act of baptism lasts only a few minutes, and the baptismal party is over in a few hours, the incredible, divine love made visible in our baptism lasts forever. The love that welcomes, bathes, cleanses, redeems, and saves us is also