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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
The text for this morning comes from the Gospel and the Epistle lessons, especially these words from Romans 6.
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
You may be seated. Lutherans, I would say, have been well schooled in what baptism is all about. As good Lutherans, we should all know what baptism is and what it does. We know that baptism is not our own act, but it’s God’s. We know that just as we cannot decide to be born from our mothers, likewise being born again by water and the Spirit in baptism is not our choice either. We know that baptism is not just water, but water combined with the Word of God. We know that baptism saves. We know that in baptism we are given a new name, the name of Christian, and that we are made God’s children and brothers and sisters of Christ and of one another.
But our lessons today, I think, give us an even richer understanding of what baptism is and what it does. In them, we learn that in baptism we are united with, or linked to, or intertwined, if you will, with the life of Christ in a most profound way.
I want you to first think about kind of how strange it is that Jesus had to be baptized at all. John’s ministry was a ministry of repentance. He’s in the preaching of repentance. His baptism is one of repentance. People came to John confessing their sins and asking him what they needed to do to be saved, and then were baptized by him. Even in our own baptism, we learn that it’s a washing, a forgiveness of sins, a renewal, a regeneration. So why would Jesus need baptism? He was without sin.
But you see, Jesus didn’t need to be baptized for his own sake. We needed Jesus to be baptized. In that act, Jesus was numbering himself among us. He was counting himself as one of us, as one of us sinners. In the incarnation, God became man, and this man, Jesus, now submits himself to be baptized by John, this human being who says he’s not even worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals. Jesus is uniting himself to us.
Jesus was baptized, so we’re baptized. At Jesus’ baptism, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were revealed to all, and in our own baptism we are baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has given us to begin our new lives as Christians. At Jesus’ baptism, the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” And at your baptism, the Father declares, “You are my beloved child. With you I am well pleased.” And thus we see how our own lives begin to become intertwined with Christ’s at our baptism.
This unity Paul discusses in our Epistle lesson today begins at our baptism, but it certainly doesn’t end there. Our lives begin to become reflections of Jesus’ own life. You may be thinking to yourself, “Boy, my life really doesn’t look anything like Jesus. What are you talking about?” Our lives, at least by outward appearances, look vastly different from Christ’s. But upon closer inspection, you begin to see how intertwined we are with the divine.
For example, what happened to Jesus after his baptism? The next event recorded in the Gospels is that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by Satan. And doesn’t that just describe our entire lives post-baptism? We’re constantly bombarded by temptations, and they trouble us because we know better. Satan is trying to draw us away from God to follow lies. Those things that we realize as temptations in the wilderness, the world looks at those same things and says, “Oh, those are oases in the desert.”
Satan sought to convince Jesus to act against the will of his Father. He does the same to you and to me. And just as the devil is Christ’s sworn enemy, he’s yours and mine as well. Like a lion, he seeks to devour us by drawing us away from God and away from the promises of our baptism. That’s why Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day.”
And as if it’s not enough to be enemies of Satan, we’ve become enemies of this world as well. Do you remember Jesus’ words to his disciples in the Gospel of John? Jesus says this, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” Friendship with God brings enmity with the world. The world, the rulers, the authorities of Jesus’ day hated him and sought to kill him, and even so, all but one of Jesus’ disciples were martyred for confessing the faith. And that happens to Christians all over the world today.
For us, perhaps the persecution and hatred are more subtle, or perhaps it’s just restrained from fear of the law, but it is present nevertheless. The world hates what we have to say about sin, and the world hates what we claim is the solution for sin, namely our crucified and risen Savior. And they hate that we say that through baptism we can become God’s children.
Paul writes, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We have been united with him in a death like his, a death like Jesus. How is it that we die like Christ? It’s unlikely that we’ll be martyred or die by crucifixion, but Jesus’ death is sin destroying. He united himself with sinful humanity at his baptism, and he became sin for us, and his death becomes our own death to sin. Jesus killed the power of sin for the cross, and in your baptism that power of sin was vanquished in your life as well. So the spiritual death that you and I were supposed to endure, Christ took instead. And in its place, baptism. Not a violent act for you and I. Jesus took all the wrath and violence of God upon himself.
This is why when we baptize, we mark the baptized with the sign of the cross upon the forehead and upon the heart. And this death to sin continues throughout our lives. As Luther writes, “Baptism indicates that the old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” Did you notice how Paul introduced this whole section in Romans chapter 6? He says this: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?”
And so we go on living our lives in light of our baptisms. God is working more and more to conform our will to that of His and of His Father’s. We are daily to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. For one who has died, as you have in your baptism, has been set free from sin. Oh, those sins cling, those vices, those petty sins, even those addictions, they cling and hold on to us, but rest assured, brothers and sisters, we have been freed from the power of those sins.
One author writes this; he says, “The Christian life is a life of continually being dead to sin and alive to God and Christ and the Holy Spirit. Baptism is truly a walking with Christ whereby the death of Christ is always made manifest in the life of the Christian.” But it’s not just death; it’s not just Christ’s death that we’re united to.
Paul goes on to tell us that in that same baptism you were also raised from the dead, that we too might walk in the newness of life. “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” You and I have eternal life now in the waters of baptism. And though we will each die physically, unless Christ returns first, our resurrection from the dead on the last day is a certainty.
I don’t know if you’ve been to a funeral at this church or other churches do similar things, but you may have seen the connection between the funeral service and the baptismal rite. At the funeral, the casket is often covered with a pall, a white piece of fabric, as a reminder of the white robes we typically wear in baptism. St. Paul tells us that in baptism we have been clothed with Christ. At a baptism, the Christ candle will be lit, as at a funeral. At a baptism, we recite the words of the Apostles’ Creed, the same creed used at the funeral. That’s because in death the promises made in our baptisms come to their full fulfillment. The promise that is made that we will be in the presence of Christ forever as his children, we will enjoy fully when we die.
And in death we will await the resurrection of the dead on the last day. Our bodies will become like Christ’s risen and glorious body, never to die again. We can be certain that the resurrection is ours because we are united with Christ’s death and united with his resurrection.
And so it is that we are intertwined with Christ. In baptism, his sin-destroying death becomes our own, all that we face in this life Christ has faced before us, and even as he came through death into eternal life, so too shall we.
Thanks be to God that in our baptisms our lives have been united with Christ’s now and for eternity. In the name of Jesus, amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.