Baptized with Christ (Romans 6:1-11)

On these Sundays between Easter and Pentecost, we are engaged in a sort of Pastor’s Class, which is a class designed for those who are thinking about joining the church.  Traditionally – or at least back in my day – this was done on weekdays after school, at least for youth who were planning on being baptized.  I remember learning about the church and how it works, and getting things like stickers and rulers when I successfully memorized all the books of the Bible in order.

Well, times have changed, and so has the class.  All of you, simply by being present, have been enrolled in the class.  Just remember that class is not finished until you discuss the questions during fellowship time. 

And for those of you who are not yet members of Bixby Knolls Christian Church and would like to find out more, please let me know.  I’d love to talk to you about that.

Last week, we talked about the confession of faith.  The week before that, our topic was communion. 

We’ve also talked about how we in the Disciples of Christ embrace diversity, about how we are called to participate in God’s mission for the world, and how we anticipate God’s coming reign or kingdom.

Today’s topic is baptism.

For much of my life, I have tried to understand my own baptism.  What does it mean to be baptized?

I couldn’t quite figure it out.

And this bothered me, in part because I knew that pastors are supposed to have things like this figured out, so that they can help other people figure them out.

I think the problem was that I tried to find an answer that I could grab on to. I was very good in school, grabbing on to answers.  I could store facts in my brain, and at test time, I could take all the information I had acquired and do quite well.

Understanding baptism should work the same way, I thought.

But it doesn’t.

I’m beginning to learn that baptism isn’t about grabbing on to answers. It isn’t about grabbing on to anything. 

And I’m beginning to learn that baptism isn’t about acquiring information.  It isn’t about acquiring anything.

Baptism isn’t about grabbing on to anything or acquiring anything.  It’s about letting go.

I just read an amazing book by Daniel Robert Anderson.  The title of the book is Losing Your Faith, Finding Your Soul: The Passage To New Life When Old Beliefs Die.  It is a book that I think I am just now – at age 43 – almost ready for.  Perhaps I’ll be more ready in another five years, and I’ll read it again.  And five years after that.

Because it’s really a book about faith for people have realized that life isn’t about grabbing on to things, acquiring things.  It’s a book about faith for people who have learned that life is really all about letting go. 

And for most people, learning to let go is something that doesn’t even start until one enters the second half of life’s journey.

In certain areas of my life, I did have a head start in learning to let go.  Like all of you, I grew up in a world that taught me that it’s all about how much you have.  You go to school to get good grades.  You get good grades to get in to a good college.  You graduate from a good college so you can get a good job.  You get a good job so you can earn a lot of money and have a nice house and go on a vacation every couple of years.

And while I was growing up, I worked some jobs so that I could start acquiring things right away.  One of my first teenage purchases was a stereo system for my bedroom, and of course the vinyl records to play on it, the first two being Boston and Julian Lennon. 

And in the summers, one of the things I did to earn money in between school years was work at a Boy Scout Camp in the Sierras.  There, I spent many weeks in a tent cabin with a wooden floor and canvas roof.  Everything I had for those weeks fit in a large duffel bag.  If I was able to secure a milk crate from the camp kitchen and attach it to the wall next to my cot so that I’d have a little shelf, I felt like I was living in luxury.

And I loved it!  Camp was amazing.  It was a great way to earn some money.  I loved the pine trees and the view across the lake and watching the clouds, wondering if they would develop into thunderstorms, and teaching younger scouts about nature and astronomy and environmental science while sitting on picnic tables beneath towering red fir trees…

What was I talking about?  Oh, learning to let go.  Well, it wasn’t until some years later, when I looked back on the time I spent in the mountains, that I realized that they were among the happiest times of my life.  And yet, they were the times I had the fewest possessions.  I didn’t have my stereo with me.   I just had my sleeping bag, a few changes of clothes, and not much else.

And I thought, maybe there is more to life than grabbing on to things, acquiring things.

I still have not mastered this important teaching.  Some things I still hold on to too tightly. Some things I’m not ready to let go of.

My body, for example.  I enjoy exercising and staying healthy.  And yes, there is just a little bit of vanity in that.  But at the same time, I know that I will, one day, have to let go of all the things that my healthy body now allows me to do.  Things like sight, hearing, and smell will begin to fade, and in fact that process has already begun.  And while I know some 70 and 80 year olds who ride their bikes much more than I do – and while I hope to be as active as them when I’m 70 or 80 – there will come a day when none of us are riding bikes anymore.  I’m not ready for that yet.  I’m not ready to let go.

But here’s something else that I’ve learned:  although I may not be ready to let go of things before the time comes, I’m becoming increasingly confident that, when the time comes, I will be ready.

To take the most extreme case:  I’m not ready to die.  The truth is that death scares me.  As a pastor, I probably shouldn’t say that, but it’s true.

I’m not ready to let go.

But I do believe that, when the time comes, I will be ready.  And when I say that, I mean that I actually see that happening.  The more I learn to let go, the more I know that I will be able to let go. 

This is the type of stuff Daniel Robert Anderson talks about in his book.  And that’s why I say that I am just now – at age 43 – almost ready to read it.  Because I’m just now at that point in life where my faith and my whole outlook on life is able to start thinking about letting go in a whole new way.

And because of my experience at scout camp, I know that letting go can be liberating.  It can be exhilarating.  It can be life-giving.

Even letting go of one’s life can be life-giving.

This is the life and the faith that I can see out there on the horizon for me.  I’m not there yet.  I think I’ve got a long way to go, and God willing a long time to get there.  And even though letting go of some things – like this body that, right now, can still do so much – is hard, I am looking forward to the journey I can see ahead of me, a journey in which I find freedom by letting go.

For those of you who are older than I am… I don’t know, I hope this makes sense.

For those of you who are younger than I am, perhaps your only thought right now is:  What the heck does all this have to do with baptism?

OK. Let’s talk about baptism.

First of all, our principle of identity.  For you young people, this is something to grab on to.  Remember, each sermon in this series is based on one or more of the Disciples of Christ principles of identity.  Today’s principle states:

We practice the baptism of believers, which emphasizes that God's grace demands a response of faith and discipleship, while also recognizing the baptism performed in other churches.

“We practice the baptism of believers…” This means that we wait to baptize someone until they are old enough to decide for themselves.  In other words, they are old enough to respond to the question I talked about last week: “Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the Living God, and do you proclaim him Lord and Savior of the World.”

We believe that waiting to baptize people until they are old enough to make that decision for themselves more closely follows the Biblical practice.  Jesus, after all, was baptized as an adult.  He was dedicated and anointed as a small child, but baptism came later.

However, the Bible does describe situations in which whole families were baptized together.  Did that include children too young to make that decision for themselves?  It’s not clear.  What is clear is that, even in scripture, there are different ways of practicing baptism.

For this reason, we do recognize the baptisms performed in other churches.  If you have been baptized elsewhere, even as an infant, we will never ask you to be re-baptized.  In fact, I would discourage it.  In baptism, God’s Spirit is active, and far be it from me to declare that what the Spirit has done on a previous occasion is invalid. 

What’s more important than how one is baptized is the meaning of baptism.  I already said that this is something that I’m still learning today, and that’s true of just about everything concerning faith:  Learning and understanding are life-long processes. 

But some things I can say.  The Apostle Paul says that all of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death.

Think about that for a second:  we are baptized into death.  What does that mean?

It means that baptism is an act of letting go.

And what are we letting go of?

We’re letting go of the life we thought was ours.

We’re letting go of what the world says will make us happy.  We’re releasing our grasp of things like money and security and “settling down.” 

We are giving over control of our life to God.

“Not my will, but God’s will be done.  I surrender my life to you, Lord.  What do I know about what makes me happy?  What do I know about what gives life meaning?  I chase after all the wrong things.  I think all these things will make me happy, but they only add stress and worry.  Only following you, Lord, and allowing you to direct my life, will bring me any purpose and any lasting satisfaction in life.”

The apostle Paul – the one who wrote that we have been baptized into Christ’s death – was once a person who tried to structure the world to fit his own ideas and his own desires.  But then he met Jesus – literally – in a blinding light.

Methodist bishop William Willimon says that after that, Paul didn’t know whether to call that moment a moment of dying or a moment of birth.  In a way, it felt like both.  Most certainly, it involved Paul letting go of the world as he understood it, the world as it existed within his own mind.  It involved dying to that world, and allowing God to lead him into a whole new world, and a whole new way of understanding.

I’m a person who likes to be in control of all situations.  But when I was baptized, I was lowered into the water by a minister in whom I placed my trust.  He lowered me into the water, where, for just a moment, I could not breathe.  For that one moment, I gave up trying to save my life, and literally placed it in his hands.

It was all over in an instant, but ever since that day, I’ve been learning to do the same thing with God.  I haven’t learned it all.  But every day, I learn a little more about what it means to give up trying to save my life, to let go, and to place my life in God’s hands.

"Dead to Sin, Alive to God" (Romans 6)

The internet is a powerful tool, but of course, one must be careful when surfing the web.  Do a search on google – especially an image search – and you might run into all kinds of objectionable and dangerous stuff, stuff you might not have been looking for, stuff that you really didn’t want to see.  It can be quite dangerous, surfing the internet.

The other day I did a google search using the phrase “Romans 6,” part of which was just read for us.  You would not believe what came up.  Fully half of the images that came up focused on a phrase that appears near the end of the chapter, not even a full verse, just six words long:  “the wages of sin is death.”  And there were pictures of flames and bodies, bodies being consumed by flames, and captions of death and damnation.

Dangerous stuff, indeed.

Well, I followed a few of those links to their webpages.  It is sometimes hard to avert one’s gaze from objectionable content.  And I read all about sinful humanity, and how death and damnation are what await, but that Jesus Christ took our place by dying so that we don’t have to.

Jesus saved us by taking our place; by suffering the punishment that we deserve.

This is what the theologians call substitutionary atonement.  Jesus was our substitute.  He died in our place.

Substitutionary atonement is all over the internet.  A search for “Romans 6” will yield many examples of substitutionary atonement.  However, substitutionary atonement is neither mentioned nor described in Romans 6.  In fact, substitutionary atonement isn’t mentioned or described anywhere in the New Testament.  The idea first appeared over 1,000 years later, in the writings of an archbishop named Anselm.

Substitutionary atonement – the idea that Christ died in our place, that Christ died, so that we don’t have to die – is a very different idea from what appears in Romans 6.

In Romans 6, it says that all of us were baptized into Christ’s death, that we have been buried with him by baptism into death, that we have, in fact, died with Christ.

According to this, Christ didn’t die in our place.  According to this, we have been united with Christ in death; we have been crucified with Christ.

Paul says the same thing in the book of Galatians:  “I have been crucified with Christ.”  He doesn’t say “Christ was crucified instead of me.”  He says “I have been crucified with Christ.”

This is what theologians call “participatory atonement.”  It means that Jesus doesn’t save us from the death he suffered; instead, it means that we are brought in to participate with Christ in Christ’s death.  We are crucified with Christ.

Back in Romans, Paul mentions that this dying happens by baptism.  “We have been buried with him by baptism into death.”  Because of our baptism, we are crucified with Christ.

I can understand why people prefer to think that Christ died in their place, so that they don’t have to.  It’s not exactly a great way to get people to join the church, to say, “come, get baptized … into death!”

So let’s talk about that a little.

Do you remember your own baptism?  Martin Luther said it was important to remember one’s baptism, which is kind of strange since he himself was baptized as an infant; so whether or not you remember your baptism, it’s important to “remember” your baptism.

Two weeks ago, we had seven young people get baptized here at BKCC.  If you were here and you saw that, maybe that helped you remember.  What was it like, your baptism?  Maybe the water was cold.  (It sure was two weeks ago!)  Maybe you were nervous.  Maybe you were baptized outside, in a creek or the ocean.

Ginger, by the way, was baptized in an irrigation canal near the Mexico border.  I love hearing her tell that story.

Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River.  John, the scripture says, “proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  John, it seems, didn’t quite understand why Jesus came to him to be baptized; I think many of us share John’s confusion.  Why would the one person who is without sin need to undergo a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins?” 

Matthew’s gospel quotes John as saying, “I should be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?”  The gospel of Luke, meanwhile, rushes through Jesus’ baptism, and John’s gospel is so embarrassed by the whole thing that it leaves out the baptism story completely. 

And why did John baptize in the Jordan?  Why did he make people go all the way out into the desert?  Why not just use the pools, aqueducts, or streams closer to the city? 

Because baptism was a reenactment of the Exodus story, when the whole nation of Israel left Egypt, wandered through the desert, and then passed through the Jordan River, becoming a whole new people.  There, in the Jordan River, their old life in Egypt and their old ways of living were finally laid to rest.  There, they died to their old selves and received a new life.

Our baptism brings us into this story, just as Jesus’ baptism did for him.  Our baptism unites us in Christ’s death, which I think took place at his baptism at least as much as it did at his crucifixion.  It was at his baptism that Jesus really gave up his life.  It was there in the Jordan River that he gave up his own personal, selfish desires.  It was there that he gave up any thought of living for himself. 

He gave up his life.  He gave it up for God.

From that moment on, he would be living a life that was not his own.  His life, the life he had, was in Nazareth, where he made a living as a carpenter.  But that man – the carpenter, living a quiet life in Nazareth – that man died when he stepped into the Jordan River.

The man who emerged out of the water was now fully committed to doing God’s work.  He no longer had his own agenda.  Only God’s agenda mattered now.  God would direct his life; God would lead him completely.

The apostle Paul understood this.  Paul referred to himself as a servant of Christ; and Christ, obviously, lived his life in service to God.  In the first century, a servant is one who has placed himself under the control of another.  One could almost say that a first century servant was under the ownership of another.  A first-century servant no longer had his own life.  This was an agreement made between a servant and his master, which usually was a way of paying off a debt that could not otherwise be repaid.  And so, at least until the debt was repaid, the servant’s life belonged to his master.

When he was baptized, Jesus gave up his own life to God; but, in return, he found a new life: a new life in God.  And, according to Paul, if we have been crucified with Christ, united in his death, then we are also united with Christ in newness of life.  “If we have died with Christ, we will also live with him.”

See, being crucified with Christ is only half the story.

Best of all, nothing can destroy this new kind of life.  Not even a crucifixion.  The Romans thought that they were killing Jesus, son of Joseph, a carpenter from the town of Nazareth.  Well, that man that they thought they were crucifying was, in a very real sense, already dead.

This new being, living a new life in God … well, no weapon formed can prosper over new life in God.  The Roman swords, clubs, whips, and even their cross had no power over the Godlife Jesus was now living.

And that’s the life that we share with Christ.

We do suffer with Christ.  Those whips and floggings really do hurt.  The pain and suffering are real.  The blood is real.

But none of that can destroy us.  For we share a life with Christ that not even the cross can destroy.

Now, sometimes – a lot of the time, actually – it seems that there is a struggle between the old life and the new life.  We don’t want to give up that old life completely.  How much more peaceful it is to spend our days quietly, at home in Nazareth, making our tables and chairs and sleeping in our own bed in our own little house.

The apostle Paul knows that this new life in Christ is infinitely better than the old life he has given up, and yet he can’t help longing for that old life, just like the Israelites in the desert on their way to the promised land couldn’t help but long for their old life in Egypt.  Paul missed his old life, and sometimes tried to get that old self, that person named Saul, to rise from the dead.

In the 7^th chapter of Romans, he says:  “I don’t understand it.  For I do not do what I want, but instead do the very thing I hate.  I delight in the law of  God, but find that I am captive to the law of sin.”

I don’t know about you, but I know too well what Paul is talking about.  My new life in Christ is the best thing ever, and yet there are times when I want to stay in Nazareth, times when I want to go back to Egypt, times when I want to live my life. 

I want a nice home in a quiet neighborhood.  I want to be able to send my kids to college and my wife on that cruise she’s always wanted to go on.  I want a TV with a remote that isn’t broken.  I want to be able to take Ethan to see a show on Broadway and Tristan to see the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  (He loves cheese.)  I want to be able to afford an annual pass to Disneyland.

This is my life.  I have a hard time letting it go.  This is my agenda.  This is what I want.  I am so tempted to think of it all as perfect.  If I had all these things, then life would be perfect.

But in what I just said, there is nothing about love.  There is nothing in that vision about justice.  There is nothing there about compassion or hope or peace.

In fact, an overly zealous pursuit of the things I want can very easily get in the way of pursuing the things God wants. 

And if that happens – when that happens – it becomes sin.

I have been baptized into Christ Jesus.  I have repented of my old life, and confessed that I have at times placed more importance on what I want than on what God wants.  Unlike Jesus, I cannot fully cast off my old life on my own.  The temptation is just too strong.  I am weak and imperfect.

But as Paul says in the 8^th chapter of Romans, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  Where we fail, the Spirit succeeds.  Therefore I can consider myself dead to sin and alive to God.  I can share in the new life where hope and justice and love and compassion reign, the new life that cannot be destroyed.

As Paul says:  “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” who makes all things possible.