Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 22, 2025
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ
Feast of Corpus Christi
Andi’s baptism (June 22, 1998 – 27 years ago today)
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Baptism, 1998
As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the deat of the Lord until he comes.
Friday afternoon. June 22, and we’re running late. The sky is heavy with rain clouds, but the sun shines through every few minutes. For several days the forecast has called for heavy rain and severe thunderstorms to roll through the area … and they have. Margaret and I are on our way to Clinton to pick up Andi from her first church camp at Little Galilee, and we’re in a hurry, because she is getting baptized in the pool at 6 pm.
We had a little advance notice, so her grandparents from Lincoln are on their way. In fact, they are there before us. Her brothers Chris and Marc are driving together from Urbana, and they missed a turn out in the Dewitt County country somewhere and drove several miles out of their way. We’re all driving too fast, and we’re all excited.
Andi’s letter home was a jewel, full of insights and intimacies about her feelings for camp and herself at camp. We can’t wait to see her. And Marc, who was baptized here in this pool just 11 months ago, is full of memories of his own.
The pool is surrounded by campers, parents, staff members. We get to go inside the fence and stand near the pool to take pictures. There’s Andi, tan and smiling and full of energy. She is one of ten kids being baptized at the end of this week of camp. Her family group leader bubbled with enthusiasm about her five days with Andi, and she’s really happy to be doing Andi’s baptism tonight.
I ask the leaders to let Andi be last, because Chris and Marc aren’t here yet. But five minutes later they pull into the parking lot, and now we’re all together. The clouds are piling up, heavy and black. The baptisms begin. The water is cold, and each one of the 12-year olds move tentatively down the ramp. Andi keeps her arms out of the water as long as possible, but she smiles all the way under.
Before the daystar, like the dew, I have begotten you.
Maybe she’s a bit embarrassed in front of all these people, but she looks beautiful and radiant. The baptism thing is a big deal. Her camp counselor spoke quietly to her and Andi nodded her head. She held her nose, and down in the water she went.
As I went down in the river to pray
Studyin’ about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good Lord, show me the way …
O sisters, let’s go down
Let’s go down, come on down
Up she comes, everyone claps their hands, she comes out of the pool and dries off.
The significance of this event often gets lost in the human hoopla surrounding it, but tonight the sky keeps that from happening. Lightning begins to appear, and it’s not very far away. Thunderclaps punctuate the ten baptisms. We have no control over any of this – we can only watch. Later Andi tells us she saw some clouds in the shape of a cross.
This week she has been immersed in water but also in the Bible, memorizing verses and lists of the 66 books and other lists besides. She’s only too happy to recite some of them to us later in the car, and at the Dairy Queen. She sees God everywhere.
As we leave the pool to get her suitcase and sleeping bag from the dorm, a beautiful rainbow settles into the eastern sky. It’s there for a long time. We didn’t get the heavy rains tonight, and our experience of Andi’s rebirth, all of us together, is filled with light and color.
Later she tells us, “I can’t remember what I was like before I went to camp.” We are happy – overjoyed, really – and it feels like God is too.
I am the living bread that came down from heaven, says the Lord; whoever eats this bread will live forever.
(Genesis 14, Psalm 110, 1 Corinthians 11, John 6, Luke 9)
(posted at davesandel.net)
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