Baptismal meditation

Isaiah 11:9: The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

I finished Sunday School earlier today, where I gave an overview of the last chapters of Revelation. On Tuesday, my final graduate and undergraduate classes will both be on Revelation. Last week, I taught my last literature class on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well .

All the stars and portents are aligned, and it can only mean one thing: My work here has ended.

Numerology confirms this conclusion.

By my calculations, this is the seventieth baptism I’ve performed as pastor at Trinity. I may have miscalculated, but I want it to be seventy so I’m not doing a recount.

Seventy is the number of the nations. Noah’s sons have seventy descendants, seventy palm trees are fed by twelve springs at the oasis of Elim, seventy bulls are offered for the nations at the Feast of Booths, Jesus sends seventy disciples to proclaim the kingdom.

In the Great Commission, Jesus sends His apostles out to cover the seventy nations with fresh water, and the mission of each particular church is to inundate its immediate territory with the waters of baptism and the teachings of Jesus.

Everyone baptized into Christ is baptized into that mission. Baptism is a gift, but it is also a call and an ordination. Jesus drenches us with water, and then sends us out to water the earth.

Eleanor will never perform a baptism. Still, Jesus has commissioned her to cover some small part of earth with the knowledge of the Lord. Remind her that by baptism she not only bears God’s name, but has been sealed with the number of the Risen Lord, the number seventy.