[Click here for a copy of the Announcement (MS Word format)]

I worked on the announcement for months before Jacob was born in September.  After a scary incident early in the pregnancy and a diagnosis that Julie had a dangerous complication, she was hospitalized in July and remained there for 77 days.  Thankfully, everything turned out fine.

Julie and Jacob

Jacob was born without incident and came home after only a week in the NICU.  But during those many weeks of worry and prayer, we were amazed at how God provided for us through our family, friends, and church.  Meanwhile, I directed some of my anxiety into planning Jacob’s baptism announcement.  It gave me a chance to meditate on God’s love and faithfulness to me in Christ and through baptism, and also helped me to find joy in daydreaming about Jacob’s arrival by thinking about this joyful future event, full of promise and hope.

I adapted the text from Catherine Winkworth’s 19th Century translation of Benjamin Schmolck’s 1704 hymn “Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier,” as reprinted with alterations in my great-grandmother’s copy of the Evangelical Lutheran Hymn-Book (1914) and also in the Lutheran Service Book (2006).  The cover photo by Nicholas Thompson, Ph.D., Lecturer in Church History at the University of Auckland, is of the left panel of the triptych by Lucas Cranach the Elder that was installed in 1547 above the Reformation Altar in the City Church of St. Mary in Wittenberg, Germany, and depicts Philipp Melanchthon baptizing an infant.

Many of the verses are lifted directly from the pages of Scripture or allude to biblical stories.  I love the reference to Naaman (see also Matt. 3:13).   After adapting the hymn for the first five stanzas, I added the sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas on my own.  In the last line of the sixth stanza, the sudden shift to iambic meter ending in primus paeon underscores the doctrine of sola fide.  Also, in the first four lines of the seventh stanza the rhythm is likewise inverted from trochees to dactyls and iambs to emphasize the paradoxical nature of our baptismal vocation — namely new life through daily death, a new reality that is not yet seen, etc.  It slows down the pace and creates an uneasy sense of anticipation.  The nature of baptism as a proclaimed yet unseen reality (the gospel) is predicated of the challenging sacramental vocation itself: to live in hope of things not yet seen but already heard in the gospel (cf. Rom. 6-8; Luther: “every Christian has enough in Baptism to learn and to practice all his life”).  Then, the trochaic rhythm is restored in the fifth line as the contemplation of the “not yet” aspect of baptismal life shifts to confident recollection of the “already” — with participial phrases — and of the redemptive purpose of suffering and death in this life.  Meanwhile, the seventh stanza subtly shifts perspective from focus on Jacob (“him”) to the congregation (“we”) since the Holy Spirit in baptism not only gives us gifts personally but also signifies more generally realities for all believers who are present (“Raised that we might walk in newness,” cf. Rom. 6:4).  The seventh stanza reflects some of the wording of the Fourth question on Baptism in Luther’s Small Catechism.

The cover image also seemed fitting, especially after reading Bonnie Noble’s discussion of it and the rest of the Wittenberg altarpiece in Lucas Cranach the Elder: Art and Devotion of the German Reformation 97-137 (2009).   After setting the historical, theological, and artistic context for the painting, Noble writes (118-19):

Based on “right” understanding of scripture, Baptism in the Wittenberg Altarpiece choreographs the arrival of the infant into the community.  In the painting, Melanchthon, who composed the Augsburg Confession and whose beliefs around 1547 were still generally supportive of Luther’s, is prominent and central.

Formally, the composition reaches out to the viewers, summoning them to present their infants to be baptized.  The beckoning eye of a woman on the left entreats the viewer to step into the group and close the circle.  The general familiarity of the figures holds the viewer’s attention and invites the believer into the community of familiar-seeming people.  The man holding the opened Bible presents a text assuring that scripture itself sanctions what we behold.  The text declares, “Whoever believes and is baptized, he will be blessed; but whoever does not believe, he will be damned.”

Moving from left to right, Baptism is the first panel the beholder “reads” en route to the Lord’s Supper and Confession.  Visually and theologically, the Baptism panel initiates salvation by faith alone, an idea pertinent to the youngest members of the community.