By Jill Crainshaw, September 29, 2025
Do not cast me away in the time of old age;
forsake me not when my strength fails. Psalm 71:17-18Such as are planted in the house of the Lord
shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall still bear fruit in old age;
they shall be vigorous and in full leaf;
That they may show that the Lord is true;
he is my rock,
and there is no unrighteousness in him. Psalm 92:14-15
Grandma longed to be baptized by immersion. She wanted me to perform the ritual on a Sunday morning in her church. “Just like Jesus and John the Baptist,” she said. She was 71. I was 29.
On the Thursday before her baptism, she had her hair “fixed,” just like she had for every week for at least my 29 years of life. She arrived at the church, hair sprayed into submission, ready to plunge into the waters of God’s love.
And she did it. I did too.
It was messy. As I lowered her into baptismal pool, she trembled and breathed in. Her hair gave in to the water. So did her body and spirit. And as I spoke the promises of baptism, she splashed up out of the pool, kicking and laughing and crying. We both cried, as John the Baptist and Jesus looked upon us from the baptismal painting on the wall above the pool.
Some family members expressed uncertainty about my grandma’s immersion baptism. They worried about her age. They wondered whether I was strong enough to lower her down and lift her up. They were even concerned about her post-baptism hair.
Perhaps these concerns present themselves with many baptisms. Unique to my grandmother’s baptism was her age. She was the oldest church member ever to be immersed.
The memory lingers for me all these years later. The memory lingered for my grandmother too. The ritual, for her, was less about any redemptive qualities associated with baptism and more about experiencing what Jesus had experienced. After that Sunday, she was still Grandma—and she had a new story to share of what it meant for her at age 72 to “be like Jesus.”
Rituals Remember the Body and Bodies
I don’t share this memory to spark debates about baptism. This memory returned to me this summer while I prepared to teach a ministry course on aging, spirituality, and health. Some questions emerged from this memory to center the course:
- What if rituals — large and small — carry us when memory falters, bodies weaken, or health declines?
- What if they are the pathways that remind us who and whose we are?
Aging bodies may tremble, weaken, and change. Some people celebrate elderhood as a kind of second coming of age. They delight in freedoms as they retire from jobs or take up new hobbies. They relish time spent with grandchildren. They offer the wisdom of their years with generosity of spirit. Others lament the losses of aging—loss of physical abilities, deaths of friends and loved ones, diminishing capacities. Aging encompasses a range of physical realities and emotions, and we encounter—and become—people all along the arc.
Communities of faith have the unique opportunity to value all elders’ experiences. How can they do this? By embracing and imagining sacred rituals that honor elders as vessels of God’s grace.
This is the wisdom of our worship practices. Sacraments aren’t limited by human capacity. In fact, they expand beyond human imagination when they are adapted to minds and bodies that don’t match cultural ideals of youth, productivity, and independence.
Liturgies at the Margins
Cultural narratives work to shape how we view “successful aging.” They herald anti-aging products. Many of our health practices are designed for younger patients and not effectively translated into diagnoses and treatments that lead to wellness for elders. We need more geriatricians and others who focus on the health needs of aging persons. We need more resources for caregiving—professional, communal, and familial.
But faith communities can offer another vision. They can practice inclusion and celebrate elderhood through liturgy itself.
Sacred Remebering in Aging and Memory Loss
Sacred Rituals Remember the Body and Bodies. Sacraments like baptism and the Lord’s Supper meet us in the fullness of our human weakness and strength. These sacred practices are not performances. They are God’s grace embodied—in all bodies.
Liturgies at the Margins Draw Everyone Inward. Communities expand their sacred circle when they adapt liturgies for people whose bodies or minds don’t align with cultural ideals. For example, we can celebrate communion with softened bread and small cups of juice so those with swallowing or mobility challenges can participate fully, or craft shorter, simpler prayers that invite those with memory loss into the circle of grace.
Sacred Remembering Embraces Memory Losses. Even when memory falters, sacred rituals carry fragments of faith and identity. God remembers us fully.
Accessible communities proclaim interdependence in the face of marketing strategies that link successful aging and independence. Clergy who anoint trembling hands with oil offer communal care as an antidote to the profit-linked promises of many anti-aging creams. Sacred rituals resist isolation and loneliness by proclaiming that flourishing in God’s grace is belonging.
Belonging Beyond Successful Aging
Grandma’s sacred bath was about joy—joy of being in a community of grace, love, and care. Later in her life, when her nursing home caregivers bathed her, I pray her body and spirit remembered that moment of holy bathing—not because she had to be baptized by immersion but because she longed for that particular experience of God’s story.
In a world that fears and resists frailty, sacred rituals teach us to embrace it as holy. Sacred rituals carry us when memory weakens, when strength fails, when hair comes undone in the waters of life. Sacred rituals remind that we are beloved, still bearing fruit, still living out our baptismal identities in the image of God.
What rituals carry you? What liturgical pathways might your community open to honor all bodies, all ages, all seasons of life? Please let us know in the comments below.
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