Rescue from Death

By Roy Coats

It was a typical hot and humid afternoon in the inner city of Baltimore. Groups of kids, freed from the confines of summer school, were playing in the streets. The adults loitered on the stoops. It was too hot to go inside since the row houses are like brick ovens that late in the day. It was a typical day.

Three shots rang out. Unmistakable. Gun shots. The crowds of kids and adults quickly ran from the sound. But a small girl, no older than five, did not move. She crumpled to the ground in the middle of the street and lay motionless with blood streaming from her temple, forming a halo around her head. Her doll lay shattered next to her.

Two women rushed and knelt down beside her. They started the lament, the lament that goes back to Eve weeping for Abel, to St. Mary at the foot of the cross. The crowd, running back up the street, encircled them. Yet, instead of crying out, many just gawked at death. For too many onlookers, this was still a typical day in Baltimore.

Holy Baptism is meant for dying people. This does not mean that one should wait until someone is taking their last breath to baptize. It means that we baptize everyone we can, for everyone is in the grips of death and under the curse of death. This is true of the small, newborn infant and of the grandfather diagnosed with cancer. Death is an ever-present reality, and Baptism is Christ’s answer to death. In Holy Baptism, He gives dying people life, an eternal life, one that death cannot overcome.

The youth group and I were just exiting the back door of St. Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church where I was serving as a vicar. We had just finished cleaning up after the summer kid’s club, and I was about to drive them home. We heard those three shots ring out a block and a half away. We ducked back into the church. I looked out the window and watched a crowd of people running down the street in a panic. I went out to see what had happened, leaving the youth in the safety of the church. I saw the crowd in a circle, and in the middle were the two women wailing uncontrollably. Between them lay the little girl, blood trickling from her temple. Only faint breathing indicated that she was still alive. I asked the women what had happened, but they were in complete, continuous, and uncontrollable hysterics, wailing and crying out, as this young girl, only five years old, was dying before us.

I started to pray. As I did, I realized that she was dying and she should be baptized. I did not know where to find the water, yet I did not need to look far for next to where I knelt, in the middle of the street, was a bottle of water, unopened. I asked the women if the girl had been baptized. They eventually communicated that they did not know. I asked what her name was; they mumbled a name that I could barely make out. I told them and the surrounding crowd that there was going to be a Baptism. I began with the sign of the cross and said the Apostles’ Creed. Then, opening the water bottle, I poured the water into my hand. There Christ baptized that small girl in the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and I watched as her baptismal water mixed with her blood. There, in the middle of that street in the inner city of Baltimore, death was swallowed up in the victory of Christ.

“What benefit does Baptism give?” Luther asks us in the Small Catechism. We respond ,“It works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.” 1 Holy Baptism rescues from death. We baptize because there is death in the world. If you encounter someone near death, be bold to speak about the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Furthermore, if there is an emergency and no pastor is available, be bold to be the hands of Christ and rescue that person from eternal death. If there is any doubt about the nearness of death or whether the person is baptized, be bold and baptize. And take comfort in knowing that the Baptism that you administer is as much Christ’s Baptism as if it were St. Peter or St. Paul or your pastor administering it.

Mr. Roy Coats is a fourth year student at Concordia Theological Seminary and was a vicar at Martini Lutheran Church, St.Thomas Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Mission Society in Baltimore, Maryland. Reach him at coatsra@ctsfw.edu.

1. Taken from Luther's Small Catechism with Explanation, copyright © 1986, 1991 Concordia Publishing House.