Wombs and Tombs (Pt. 1)
Coming Out, Baptism, and Resurrection
During my undergraduate studies as a Religious Studies major, I had the opportunity of taking a course on the biblical themes in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings series of movies (at the time, only the first trilogy and the first installment of The Hobbit had been released). Over a handful of evenings scattered throughout the semester, a group of us would meet in a basement classroom in which a projector was set up, spending hours at a time watching the extended editions of the movies while the professor provided running interpretive commentary on the symbols and visual and auditory themes (he had a disconcerting habit of yelling out “meanwhile, in hell!” and chuckling ominously with each scene set in Mordor). The only assignments were a few short reflections on a particular biblical theme that stood out to us (such as Gollum/Smeagol as a representation of the struggle between flesh and spirit, or Frodo as a kind of Suffering Servant).
One of the visual themes the professor frequently pointed out was that of scenes of darkness followed by scenes filled with light, which often came in the form of tunnels (for instance, think of the scene from The Fellowship of the Ring, in which the fellowship travels through a tunnel in the Misty Mountains and is confronted by a Balrog, which Gandalf the Grey fights off; he disappears—“Fly, you fools!”—only to reappear later as Gandalf the White). The professor described this visual theme with the phrase “wombs and tombs,” pointing out how it accomplishes a transformation of a character through either a symbolic resurrection or rebirth—either way, the character who enters the tunnel is not exactly the same one who later emerges from it.
The Church draws both of these themes—resurrection and the “tomb,” rebirth and the “womb”—together in her multi-faceted reflection on baptism, and each is expressed succinctly and directly in a biblical passage.
In Romans 6, the apostle Paul uses the theme of death and resurrection to describe the significance of baptism:
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:1-11 NRSVUE)
Followers of Christ are united with him through baptism, and through it we experience his death, burial, and resurrection. Our former way of life, our “old self” characterized by sin and death, has been crucified with Christ. Through our baptism, we are freed from the power of sin and death, and one glorious day in the future we will be free even from their presence. The ritual of baptism represents death and burial (in being plunged beneath the water) and resurrection (in being raised again from it).
Elsewhere I have written on the way resurrection can be examined alongside coming out of the closet (particularly in the story of the raising of Lazarus), and how the defeat of “big death” in the former means the “little death” of our closets may also be defeated. The connection between coming out and baptism is merely an extension of that observation. As I noted, one of the sources for the phrase, “coming out of the closet,” is the “skeleton in the closet,” a shameful secret one is willing to keep at all costs—which suggests coming out is both a revelation and a reversal of death.
The correspondences between coming out and baptism (understood as a representation of resurrection) are striking. Through coming out, a former way of life dies and new life emerges from it. Through coming out, the power of the closet is defeated—and one glorious day in the future, we will be free even from its presence. The threshold of the closet is like the surface of water in the baptismal pool—having been once stowed away or submerged (“buried into death”), we emerge to, as the apostle Paul writes, “walk in newness of life.”
But resurrection is not the only way to conceive of baptism, and not the only illuminating metaphor to consider alongside coming out of the closet.