Immersion.

I knocked on a door, the last one on the block where my family lived. A thirteen-year-old girl answered the door. Her style was a little alt, short shaggy hairstyle dyed purple and pink, graphic tee three sizes too big. She had a sleepy look about her. It was 5pm, the house was dark inside, shades pulled. I hadn’t woken her up—it seemed she’d paused a movie, and as I’d encounter Brittany regularly in the coming years, I learned that the sleepy eyes were simply a part of her countenance. I shared that we’d be hosting a cookout for neighbors in a couple days. She brightened a little, said she’d love to come, and that she’d bring her brother.

Starting new churches means getting to know your neighbors, and in urban Baltimore, that meant encountering kinds of difference we hadn't anticipated. Within months of landing, we knocked on the door of a family who couldn't have been more different from our own, and whom we came to love. The mom was Angela. Dramatic is a word she might have chosen herself, and she would have meant it as a compliment. She loved a party, as was evident by the rotation of liquor bottles she displayed proudly in her windows. She dressed colorfully and in a way that revealed more of her middle-aged body than some were comfortable seeing. Apparently, this attracted the attention of certain members of the opposite sex, in exactly the way she intended, as was evidenced through a string of live-in boyfriends. Angela also claimed to be a witch. Different, I told you.

With all this, Angela loved the fact that a church planter had moved onto her block. Maybe it was because her daughter, Brittany, who was largely lonely and isolated, found a real connection with the Belcher kids. Or maybe it was because Chance, Angela’s teenage son, came to our church every week, and came home with stories any mom would love to hear. 

Chance had experienced a hard seventeen years. He made it a point not to complain, which was quite natural given his quiet disposition. Every so often, though, something desperate would slip out related to life’s being hard or unfair. He wasn’t wrong.

He’d never known his father, and depending on who was telling it, the story changed—he’d walked out, or he’d died from an overdose, or something else entirely. There were many pieces, and Chance hadn’t been able to fit them together. He wasn’t sure it was possible, so he’d given up trying. What he knew was that his dad had never been part of his life, and that the men who had occupied that space in his mother’s house weren’t the kind of men who made good fathers. The absence hurt, but more in the way of quiet emptiness than pointed pain. 

In the city schools, Chance had received an education in survival as much as anything else. In classrooms where teachers were often overwhelmed, and where the kids weren’t always kind, least of all to someone like Chance, who was socially awkward, withdrawn, and not well-dressed or well-spoken. He was held back more than once, and Angela eventually pulled him out of the classroom and enrolled him in an online program that allowed him to stay at home. This didn’t help the ways Chance struggled socially. Further, he still struggled to keep up. He’d never learned how to sit still for long periods and do something hard. He didn’t know how now. 

Among the litany of hardships, perhaps the greatest one came in the form of a cancer diagnosis. By the time we met Chance at the cookout on our front sidewalk, though he couldn’t articulate all the details, he knew it was stage four, he hadn’t been given long to live, and it was “bad.” That was his best description. He described it once, in a matter-of-fact way, as fingers that were in his belly, choking his organs. Angela had decided he wouldn’t pursue conventional medical treatement. I rarely saw Chance and his mom side by side. When I did, she was expressive and dramatic, and he was quieter than usual, as if she absorbed whatever color he might have otherwise expressed. She trusted her holistic remedies, and her coven’s spells, more than any doctor. Chance was seventeen, and he said all this like he was telling someone else’s story. 

From the time we met him, Chance attended church essentially every week. Further, he was open to whatever kind of fellowship or discipleship we might offer. During that early season, given I had no office, I would often work at a local coffee shop. Chance regularly joined me. He preferred sitting in a beautiful, well-lit public space to being locked in his bedroom for days on end. Most days, I’d buy him coffee, ask if I could help with his work, and we’d make it a point to discuss the few verses from the gospel of Mark we’d committed, each day, to reading together.

Within a matter of weeks, after hearing the gospel each Sunday at our church gathering, Chance indicated that he’d been persuaded. From his mom, depending on her current whim, he’d heard about all kinds of ways to make it into heaven. But the message of our church was not only consistent, but convincing, and he was intent on surrendering his waning life to Jesus.

Our church believed baptism belongs to those who have personally confessed allegiance to Jesus, and who desire to publicly identify with Him in death and resurrection. The believer enters the waters willingly, buried beneath them as a sign that an old way of living has died, then raised as a declaration that a new life has begun. Before being baptized, Chance wanted to share with his mom, not so much that he needed her permission, though that was something he wanted, but even more, he wanted her to witness the occasion. Because we met in our house, our church didn’t have a baptistry, and we would coordinate with a local church to use theirs on occasion. Before scheduling, Chance wanted to see when his mom might be available. When Angela gladly gave her permission, Chance was grateful. When Angela further committed to her and Brittany’s attending, Chance was overjoyed. I made a call to the local pastor, and we set the date for about a month out.

Over the next couple weeks, our rhythms remained essentially the same. Chance came to church, would hang out various times during the week, and seemed genuinely excited, despite severe challenges, about the direction of his life. Until one Sunday evening, Chance didn’t show up at church. The next day, he didn’t respond to my text about grabbing coffee, and I began to worry. I reached out to Angela. She didn’t respond. I knocked on their door. No answer. This went on for a few days, until I finally heard back.

When Angela’s number showed up on my phone, I answered, and she shared that Chance had experienced a turn in his health. He’d been in the hospital a few days, and now, he was in a hospice facility, where doctors were giving him days, maybe hours, to live. I immediately dropped what I was doing and drove to the facility. When I walked into Chance’s room, Brittany was sitting in a chair near the foot of his bed, drawing, and Angela was standing next to her baby boy, stroking his hair as he lay in the bed. Chance was no longer conscious. 

Chance was scheduled to be baptized in two days, and as I sat with his family, trying to offer whatever comfort or steadiness I could, the question of baptism kept returning to my mind. Baptism means literally to immerse. Whenever possible, our church baptized by lowering the believer fully beneath the water. In rare circumstances, however, pouring was permitted. I once baptized a young pregnant mother by pouring water over her head because pregnancy complications had prevented her from safely entering the water. If ever there was a special case, Chance qualified. Still, there was the issue of his not being conscious. He was alive and breathing, but not fully present with us.

As I wrestled through this tension, realizing that no training had come close to preparing me for this moment, here’s where I arrived. Chance had professed faith in Christ. He’d arranged for his family to witness his baptism, which otherwise would have happened weeks earlier. Because baptism is a testimony offered before witnesses, and because Chance wanted unquestionably to testify to his mom and sister, with no level of certainty, no precedent to lean on, and no clean category, I made a decision.

The 17-year-old in the bed was both an image of tragedy and a testimony of hope, and in the presence of God and witnesses, I poured water over Chance’s head. Buried with Jesus unto the likeness of His death, raised in the likeness of His glorious resurrection. In less than half an hour, Chance’s heart and lungs stopped beating and breathing. 

Days later, I officiated Chance’s funeral. I stood beside his grave and watched his body lowered into the earth. Another immersion. Another burial. And still, because of Jesus, not the end.