Baptize: Dying and Rising with Christ

 “Baptize: Dying and Rising with Christ” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on January 30, 2022. You can hear/watch this sermon here, starting at 19:35.

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Romans 6:3-11

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been 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 too might walk in newness of life.

5 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. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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As a young child, one of the very first prayers I remember reciting is the traditional version of “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.”

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I die before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Amen.

Who remembers this prayer?

This week I thought of this prayer and without thinking much about it, I said these words as I was getting into my bed.

But let me set the scene. Above my bed, almost acting as a headboard, I have displayed three nature landscapes. The left picture features snowy mountains. The right picture features a forest of trees. But the center is a vast body of water.

And so I said those words of that prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If I die before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

As I said those words, I rested my head on my pillow and then I looked up. I’m directly beneath this portrait of water, as if I’m submerged beneath its depths, “If I die before I wake…” and I remembered my baptism.

Now, like many of you, I was baptized as a young infant, younger than three months. So when I say, I remembered my baptism, or when we call on each other to remember our baptism, we are not intending to recall the event or moment it happened, but rather, remembering our baptism means we are claiming the promise made to us in our baptism. Remembering our baptism means honoring the name of the Triune God inscribed on our hearts. It means rejoicing in the new life given to us as beloved children of God. Remembering our baptism means sharing that life and joy with others, so they too may know just how loved they are in the eyes of their Creator.

This week, as I laid in bed beneath this body of water, metaphorically submerged in its depths, reciting a prayer about sleep and death, I remembered how loved I am. And although all the details may seem odd, it also just makes sense.

Baptism, like the water it contains, holds these details in a mysterious paradox. Submerging and rising, death and new life.

The last couple of weeks we’ve seen water as life-giving. We must drink it. All of creation consumes it to grow. We use it to wash and clean. Throughout history, people and civilizations have sought out bodies of water to settle nearby. Water itself has served has boundaries and barriers. Water sometimes stands between where we are and where we want to go, so crossing the waters is an act of freedom, especially when crossing that water leads to a well-deserved vacation.

But as much as water is essential for life, health, growth, and enjoyment of humankind, water is also capable of great damage, destruction, and even death. The same water that we seek out can also be a tool of great devastation. Think of tsunamis or hurricanes, flooding or blizzards. Water can bring both life and death, which presents us with the very paradox found in Christian baptism. What does it mean to both die and rise with Christ in baptism?

To understand this, we must go back to the beginning of the Gospels.

Two and three Sundays ago, we read Mark 1:1-11, the story of Jesus being baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist. Jesus’ baptism truly marks the beginning of Jesus’ ministry according the Gospels. And moments before Jesus ascends into heaven after his death and resurrection, he tells his disciples to go out and baptize others. But Jesus doesn’t ever baptize anyone between his own baptism and ascension, or at least it’s not mentioned in scripture. What makes Jesus’ practice of baptism even more unusual, if baptism is a sign of repentance and a washing away of sin, why did Jesus, who was without sin, need to be baptized?

Understanding why Jesus was baptized and why he tells his followers to do the same to others will help us understand what it means to die with Christ in our baptisms.

When Jesus was baptized, the voice of God reaches out from the heavens claiming Jesus as God’s Beloved Son. The Holy Spirit descends and marks Jesus in this claim from God. Jesus’ baptism is the Triune God working separately and as one, the true definition of the Trinity. It’s a moment of diversity and unity, revelation and mystery, gathering and sending, giving and receiving, dying and rising – all captured in love.

Jesus was baptized so that we might share in his baptism when we are baptized. In the same way, Jesus shared our life when the Word became Flesh and God lived among us as the Incarnate Son. That’s who our God is. A Savior who wanted to share the human experience with us so that we might share the holy heavenly experience with him.

Because when we are baptized, we share in the moment that Jesus experienced in his baptism. The spiritual blessings of Christ’s baptism spill over into our lives in our baptisms. The same Holy Spirit descends and marks us. The same voice from Heaven reaches out and claims us as beloved. The same moment of diversity and unity, revelation and mystery, gathering and sending, giving and receiving, dying and rising – all captured in love – happens to us in our baptism because it happened to Christ in his.

So if we share in Jesus’ baptism and Jesus’ life, it also makes sense we share in his death.

And although Jesus’ death was terrifying and cruel, sharing in his death is another gift given to and for us. Sharing in Christ’s death means sharing in his crucifixion. That crucifixion directly hangs the oppressive powers of sin and death in our own lives. Sharing in Christ’s crucifixion means the very power of death that tries to claim us is uprooted and cut off.

Although we will die one day, it is not to death but to life.

To share in Christ’s death means the story of Easter, his resurrection, is also shared with us. We share in the liberating, life-giving power of God that takes root and grows within us every day as the resurrection is happening right here, right now.

In baptism, dying and rising with Christ is a sign and symbol, but it is more than just a metaphor. Baptism, death, and resurrection were actual events Jesus experienced as part of his humanity. These are moments we too have experienced and will experience: our own baptisms, our own death, and our own promise to new life. And while we haven’t experienced our own death and resurrection yet, we live out the pattern of dying and rising with Christ in our baptisms as we fulfill our calling of Christian discipleship. Every moment of letting go of old burdens or destructive habits as we embrace Christ’s new way of truth and life, when we turn away from violence or hate and instead turn to peace and love, when we confess our sins and receive the promise of forgiveness and grace, and when we reject and resist social evils by breaking down dividing walls and instead build up beloved community in Jesus’ name – that’s the practice of death and resurrection in our own lives every day.

Dying and rising in baptism may seem like a holy mysterious paradox too difficult to grasp, but that’s the Savior we follow. We share in Jesus’s baptism, life, death, and resurrection. We share in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a leader who calls forth wisdom from foolishness, strength from weakness, abundance from scarcity, and new life from death. This is a God rooted in paradox, but it’s a paradox for our sake.

So today we remember our baptism. We submerge ourselves beneath the baptismal waters to share in the death of Christ. And with a breath of fresh air, we rise to new life, marked by the Holy Spirit and claimed as beloved. This is the Gospel. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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