Infant baptism & the hierarchy of needs
Have you noticed how many different kinds of websites show up if you do a search for “first steps?” So many things we undertake seem to count as first steps. This morning, as we celebrate infant baptism, Gretta Vosper discusses Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. With an infant in our midst, we are reminded of those most basic needs – the physiological requirements for food and water. How quickly we in the West move our children along, giving them a sense of security, helping them find places to fulfill their need for belonging, trying to ensure that they develop a strong sense of self-esteem. Most within a church community such as ours try to give our children the freedom to move towards self-actualization. Yet Gretta reminds us that in much of the world, people still struggle with the most basic of needs. What is our obligation? It’s one thing to achieve personal fulfillment, but don’t we have a responsibility to reach out to those for whom such a goal isn’t even a possibility?
Who’s Communion For?
In her continuing reflections on the Song of Faith, Gretta comes to the part that deals with church. Because, today, we celebrate communion, this provides an opportunity to think about ritual within the church. Gretta opens by placing churches onto a spectrum. Just remember: the poles of the spectrum refer more to conceptual constructs than to real churches. At one extreme is the experience of God through “experience and belief and the proclamation of that possibility.” At the other extreme are those who also seek the experience of God, but do so through rituals which are dispensed by prescribed representatives. West Hill sits somewhere in the middle, based not so much on what we profess as on what we do. One of the things we continue to do – communion – comes to us from rather murky origins and only really emerges as a symbolic ritual quite some time after Jesus. Gretta considers the view of John Dominic Crossan, who emphasizes the importance of the meal in early Christian communities. This was not a tiny wafer or a pinch of bread with a dribble of wine. This was hearty meal in the context of a world that regularly went without. Maybe these communities were not trying to engage in symbolic ritual, but were trying to bring about a radical transformation of their lives by meeting real and immediate needs. Instead, we now treat communion as a “remembrance,” but maybe our “communion” requires more than a symbolic acknowledgement of the people next to us in the pews. Gretta concludes by looking at our “communion” as global.