We Make Our Beginning? Say What?

A reader recently sent me a note worthy of considering. He wondered whether we have addressed the matter of opening the Divine Service with the words, “Remembering our Baptism, we make our beginning in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He said, “It irritates me to no end, and I long for the day when it can be exposed for the aberrant practice it is.  “We make our beginning” is wrong in so many ways. I look forward to your response.”

So here’s my response. I’ve heard this too, though more commonly without the “remembering our Baptism” part. I suspect that whoever dreamt up the “remembering our Baptism” part was trying to make it better somehow, by making the connection between the Divine Name and Baptism clearer. But it only muddies the waters, in my opinion. Heavens, if you did remember your Baptism, you’d have all the more reason to leave the matter untouched. People tinkering with the liturgy are always bound to fall into dreadful errors. Instead, as I know I have put it before, Leave It Alone. You’ll Break It.

The words of the invocation are most certainly connected to Baptism, which is precisely why the activity of the Divine Service is nothing we begin. How could we? The Divine monergism at work in the Sacrament of Baptism is the point at which we were given the holy triune Name of God and brought into the church of Jesus Christ. No one plays an active role at all in coming to faith, as every Lutheran certainly should know. Grace alone is a most familiar watchword to us all. Anyone who doubts this or disagrees is at best a semi-Pelagian of some kind, belonging to any host of denominations marred by the grotesque falsehood that we cooperated with the Holy Spirit in the matter of becoming Christian. At worst, such a person is an arch-heretic bent on replacing the grace of God altogether.

It’s more likely that neither of these is the case in our midst, but that the reason this “We make our beginning” blather became popular is that it seemed awkward that the first words we say are a subordinate clause, an incomplete sentence. So in a sloppy and thoughtless fashion typical of poorly trained pastors who forgot the importance of taking pains, a “correction” was made. They haven’t heard that they should leave it alone. Now look what they did. They broke it.

The awkwardness of opening that way, if it be called that, ought to be an implicit reminder in itself of Baptism. For we surely all know the first words of that sentence. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them . . . Or rather, if we consider the first time any of us actually heard any of the words, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the sentence begins with I baptize you.

What the invocation is meant to provide, then, is a very intentional repetition of the last part of those blessed words: (I baptize you) in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It means that the Divine Service is for the baptized to enter into. It is as though that clause is being repeated over and over throughout life as an echo of the last part of that sentence, of the wonderful Name of God that first opened our ears and hearts in Baptism. Of course there would be no point in repeating the entire sentence, since we are baptized only once. But since we are baptized, that wonderful Name, ever since, is meant to be in our ears, in our minds, and on our lips.

But all of this is lost when sloppy, ill-equipped, thoughtless, mindless men rush into the china shop and clumsily destroy priceless things.

Irritated? Yeah, you could say that. And how.