Easter


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I can recall witnessing the baptism of a young man while I was on staff at Camp Maranatha in Southern California. The young man had put his trust in Jesus for salvation that very night following an hours-long conversation with his youth pastor, a man named Jack Williamson. I don’t recall the exact time, but it was after midnight when they came knocking on my door to ask if I’d open the camp’s pool so they could baptize him. I was not the only one who had been awakened for the baptism. Several young men who had been praying for this young man and who had invited him to come with them to camp had run through the grounds pounding on cabin doors and calling all the campers out of their sleeping bags and bunk beds. I sat on a deck chair and watched as they all filed in and stood in reverential silence along the edges of the pool. Most of them looked sleepy and were wearing their pajamas. Jack Williamson went down into the pool first, and without any introductory remarks he began singing “Father, I Adore You,” and over a hundred young people joined him. It was beautiful. As the last notes of the song died away, the young man joined Jack down in the water. After the appropriate questions were asked and answered, Jack baptized him in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and as the young man came back up out of the water Jack proclaimed, “Buried with Christ in baptism, raised to walk in newness of life.”

I had witnessed lots of baptisms before that, many in that very pool, and up to that point nothing too surprising had happened, but that baptism concluded in a way that I had never seen before or since. All of the assembled young people ringing the pool, shouted out in unison, “See ya!,” and then jumped into the water with the young man. There was a big, group hug, as well as tears and laughter. Afterwards, Jack told me that they had yelled “see ya!” because who the young man had been, was washed away in the waters of baptism. I liked that.

The next day a lot of wet pajamas were hung out to dry throughout the campground.

It is altogether appropriate to celebrate Easter with baptisms because baptisms beautifully reflect the meaning and the hope of the resurrection. “Buried with Christ in baptism, raised to walk in newness of life!”