 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
January 9, 2005
Dying to Live
Matthew 3:13-17
Of all the events in the life of any congregation, baptisms rank right up there as everyone's favorite. What's not to love? Proud parents, and pretty babies, and often a curious older sibling, trying to peek into the font. All of us wait to see what the child will do: will she sleep through the whole thing? Will he sputter when the water touches his head? Will she cry a little or a lot or not at all? It is an occasion of family, as relatives come from far and near, and as the congregation promises to be the family of faith for the child and the parents. I suspect for most of us, the idea of baptism produces warm fuzzies.
And yet I wonder sometimes if we are really listening to all the words that we say on this occasion. Even as parents bring forth children full of life and promise and hope, we talk about death.
During the liturgy we pray over the waters of baptism with these words: We thank you for this gift of baptism; for in this water we are buried with Christ in his death, and from this water we are raised to share in His resurrection.
We thank you, for …we are buried with Christ in his death. We're much more familiar with some of the other meanings of baptism, such as being claimed by God as God's beloved child, or the way it unites us with Christ and with all of God's people, in every time and place.
Our baptism makes us part of the body of Christ, but being part of Christ also means being part of his death.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of the baptism she witnessed of three-year-old Ellen. Ellen's parents wanted her to be baptized by immersion in a congregation where that was an unusual request, so the priest had acquired a 36-gallon garbage can for the occasion, and decorated it with ivy.
Taylor writes, "It was very pretty if you did not look at it too hard, but it fooled no one, least of all Ellen. When she came into the [dark] church [that night] and saw it sitting there at the back of the center aisle, she stiffened. But she was a brave little girl whose parents had rehearsed her well, so she did everything she was supposed to do right up until the priest leaned down to pick her up.
"' Don't do it!' she screamed then, planting her feet against the garbage can so that the water slopped everywhere. "Don't do it!"
That's all Taylor remembers. But the image of a three-year-old girl yelling and resisting baptism is honest. Because that girl's instincts were right on—baptism is about dying. She knew what that water was about—at least in part.
Ordinarily, we may think of water as being about life—how we all need water to live, as do plants, and crops, and animals. Water sustains all of life.
And then the word tsunami entered our every day conversations. We have seen all too clearly in the past two weeks that water can be treacherous. Over 150,000 lives were taken away by these huge waves. Water—beautiful, restoring, replenishing water—can kill.
The connection with water as life-giver and life-taker is perhaps much more obvious in baptism by immersion. The way we sprinkle people's heads, it's easy for us to forget. In immersion, you go under the water, cut off from breath. But you are also brought back up again out of the water, back to air and breath, as a symbol of rising again with Christ to newness of life.
The Apostle Paul wrote about this to the church in Rome:, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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." (Romans 6:3-4)
Paul is not writing here that all believers should die like Jesus did, nailed to a cross. Although it is worth remembering—as Allen Fisher will remind us in a few moments—that a good many Christians in the world do, indeed, die for the sake of Christ.
Paul is writing about believers dying to sin: dying—not so much at the moment of baptism but the rest of our days as we live out what our baptism means—dying to the things that separate us from God, and from others.
Dying to the selfishness that poisons family life, community life, work life.
Dying to the false gods of material wealth, the pursuit of power, and success at any price.
Dying to bitterness that drains all the joy and possibility from life.
Dying to the idea that we can do it all and have it all and be it all if we just try a little harder.
In a few minutes, we will mark this Baptism of the Lord Sunday with a Service of Reaffirmation of Baptism, as we have done for many years.
The past three years I have preached on this Sunday, and my sermons on those days could essentially be boiled down to one theme: that just as on the day Jesus was baptized God claimed him as God's own beloved son, so God claims us at our baptism.
This year, I add another dimension to that reality: God loves us exactly as we are, and God loves us too much to let us stay that way.
So I bid you: come and die. Die, so that you might live more fully in the newness of life offered in Christ Jesus.
Remember your baptism©the death and the life it offers—and be thankful. Amen.
| Return to Sermon List |
First Presbyterian
Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org
Copyright © 2003-2007 First Presbyterian Church of Cedar Rapids. All rights reserved.