This Week in Church: Leaving and the Knights of the Templar

Welcome to the series wherein I share my take-aways from church. The things that, I think, are beneficial to all of us to know or think about, whether or not we believe in any church-related things.

This week in church, we talked about leaving.

This has come up a lot lately. I think it's emerged in some way at least once a week for the past month. Is someone trying to tell me I should be leaving?

This week in church, we talked about the Knights of the Templar.

Here's something interesting: when the Knights of the Templar would get baptized, they would do it in their full armour, but they would hold their swords out of the water. (My attempt to confirm this via Google only confirmed that this is a thing people say, not that it's necessarily true. It's still an interesting thought experiment.)

The image is kind of striking: baptism by immersion is meant to symbolize your death to sin and resurrection in Christ. By keeping their swords outside the water, the knights are basically saying, "I will give all of me over to Jesus, except my sword. That's a sin I can't let go of."

So then, of course, this begs the question, if I were to be that honest with myself, what would I hold outside the water in my metaphorical baptism? What am I not willing to give up for God/love/my best self?

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