Our Participation in the Baptism of Christ

01/10/10
Our Participation in the Baptism of Christ
Hudson UMC

Today is the Sunday where the church celebrates the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is tremendously fitting that we commemorate that event with both a baptism and a confirmation. In one day, at nearly the same moment, we get an opportunity to see the act of God at its beginning and how it comes to fruition. We get to see both the child marked by God’s grace and a youth who has stepped into a more full personal participation in that grace. It is truly a day to celebrate. It is also a day to spend a bit of time thinking about what baptism really means.

Unfortunately, we in the mainline church have too often managed to foster some really bad baptismal theology. There are some denominations and traditions that see baptism as nothing more than a symbol that should come only after a person has reached an age of maturity and can make a personal and public declaration of faith. Wesley and the Methodists have not tended to fall into that trap, but we often slide the other way. Sometimes, we think about baptism as being so important that it absolutely has to be done for every child or else there might be some terrible consequences. This has come to us from a particular strain of Roman Catholic thought that is no longer even practiced by them. When we allow this kind of fear for the worst to overtake us, we begin to think about the need to “get the kid done,” almost as if it is part of a checklist that we need to do or else we are bad parents.

Another destructive practice we’ve gotten ourselves into is to baptize our infants when we have not thought about what baptism means, not only for the baby being baptized but for us who are sponsoring the child. If you noticed, there are some vows that the parents are asked to take. “Will you nurture this child in Christ’s holy church, that by your teaching and example they may be guided to accept God’s grace for themselves, to profess their faith openly, and to lead a Christian life?” This is a serious question. Have you ever given thought as to what it means? It means that you will actively teach your children the faith; it means that you will strive every day to make your example line up with the faith you profess; it means that you yourself will be professing your faith openly and living a truly Christian life day in and day out.” I was not baptized until I was sixteen years old. The reason is because, when was a child, my parents knew they would not fulfill this oath and so they decided not to have my brother and I baptized.

However, the parents of a baptized child are not the only ones who make promises before God and before the body of Christ. The entire congregation promises to proclaim the good news, to live according to the example of Christ, to surround those who are baptized with a community of love and forgiveness and to pray for them. Now, these are things that we ought to do as Christians in general, but they take on a new weight when we remember that we have promised to uphold our children and the adults who are joining the body of Christ. Every time we as a community fail to love, fail to live according to the example of Christ, fail to forgive one another, we are not only sinning against God, but we are breaking our most solemn promises to the next generation of Christians. It is a heavy load to bear.

And yet, we need to remember that in the Methodist tradition, we believe that baptism is not finally about us. The source of baptism is not something that we thought up, but something that was instituted by God Himself. The purpose of baptism is not to make us good people on our own, but for us to die to ourselves and live for God. Paul writes in Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into 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. 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.” And finally, we do not even become partakers of the promise because of what we have done, but because of what God has done.

In fact, baptism has never been about what we do but what God does. The story of Jesus being baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist shows this very well. We read, “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” You see, John realized that he was far from perfect and needed to be cleansed and made new by the power of Christ. He knew that Jesus was more powerful, the one that was coming after him who was greater than him. And yet, despite the fact that John could make all kinds of theological arguments for why he should not baptize Jesus, what does Jesus say in response? “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Jesus did not listen to the protests of unworthiness. He basically said, “You might think that you are not worthy. In fact, you aren’t, but that isn’t the point. The point is that this is something greater than you and you are involved in it in spite of your unworthiness.”

What we need to do is look at what Jesus was doing, because at first glance, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. What was the purpose of John’s baptism? The New Testament makes it clear that John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now, the New Testament also teaches us that Jesus did not commit any sins. So, what was happening in His baptism? Was He confessing His own sins to be forgiven of them? Of course not, He had no sins. So, whose sins did He confess before going down into the water? The answer is, ours.

We talk all the time about Jesus dying for our sins and making atonement for us, but we do not always talk about the fact that He has actually confessed our sins on our behalf and in our place. Think about what this means. It means that Jesus has identified Himself with us and our sin completely, that He has not allowed our sin to stop Him from entering into our brokenness. When Jesus confessed sins before being baptized, He was confessing your sins and mine and He confessed them long before we ever committed them.

Brothers and sisters, it is a very good thing that Jesus took our sins upon His own lips and confessed them for us because we do not always do a good job of confessing them on our own, do we? If someone points out our sin to us, we get defensive and deny that we have a problem. If God exposes our sin in the light of His word, we often will stay away from those parts of the Bible or the people who talk about things like that. Every once in a while, we will get on our knees and pour out our hearts to God, but even then, all too often, we either hold back and don’t let God take all our burdens from us or else we chain our sins to ourselves so that, though we left them on the altar, they follow us as we walk away because we are not yet prepared to really let them go.

And yet, though we are weak, though we have problems, even with our repentance, God does not hold that against us, but beckons us to die with Him and rise with Him, that we might forsake our lives and be utterly joined to the life of Christ so that we might have the eternal life of Christ in us. Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Paul is pointing out that he is completely implicated in the work that Christ is doing in his life but that, at the end of the day, it is not really he who is doing it. Through the power of God the Holy Spirit, Paul is being united to God the Father through God the Son. Often, we will think about the Christian life as trying to live like Jesus as if the life of Christ is over here and our Christian lives are over there. In reality, the Christian life is Christ living His life through us. And yet, because we are not factored out of the equation, when Christ lives His life in and through us, we become more who we are and more who we are meant to be than ever before.

The point is that, just like Paul could say, “I live, yet not I, but Christ in me,” so we can say, “I repent, yet not I, but Christ in me.” When we really let go of our sins, when we really give them up to God, when we really live the redeemed life, it is not because we somehow got really good at confession, but because Christ has confessed for us, in us and through us. We can also say, “I pray, yet not I, but Christ prays in me,” because we have all been in the place where we have felt our prayers to be woefully inadequate, not only unworthy for the ears of God, but even for the ears of other people. And yet, what do we read? We hear Paul’s words of encouragement. “Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also prays for us.” The Holy Spirit takes our weak and feeble prayers and unites them to the perfect prayer of Christ, so that even our broken words are heard by God.

We might even say, “I believe, yet not I, but Christ in me.” I would doubt there is even one person in this church, including me, who would say that their faith is as strong as it should be. We all know that our faith is weak. Someone tells us just to believe and have faith and we say, “Thanks,” but there is a nagging doubt because we know that, if everything depends on our faith, we are in trouble because we all know how weak our faith can be. And yet, we can trust that Christ has taken even our weak faith and transformed it into something that is worthy of God. When we say that Christ has paid it all, we mean that Christ has paid even for our weakness of faith, comes into it, under girds it and sanctifies it. Our God has done everything and we have the incredible privilege of participating in it.

So what does all this have to tell us about baptism? Everything. When we gather together to baptize a baby, we are not just celebrating infancy, we are not just gathering to dedicate a baby to the church or to God. We are gathering together to celebrate anew what God has done for us on our behalf and in our place. We are remembering and rejoicing that God has taken all of our weakness and sin and overcome it from the inside out. We baptize a baby because we trust that Christ has already marked them and set them apart from the kingdom and promise to participate in that process. We baptize with hope and joy because we know that God has already done the work, has already paid the price, has already taken the sins of the child being baptized, confessed them and nailed them to the cross. The only thing left to do is to nurture the child so that they will live a life consistent with what God has done for them, and God helps us, even in that.

It is exciting to have both a baptism and a confirmation on the same day because we can see the fruits of baptism. Today we celebrate the fact that one young man has realized what his baptism really means and is stepping forward to claim that reality as his own. He has grasped, at least in part, what God has done for him, in him, and through him, and is dedicating his life to letting the Holy Spirit take that objective reality and making his life increasingly in line with the life of Christ. It is a joy to behold. He has gone through some classes, he has learned a bit more about the Christian faith, about the history of the church, about the Bible, but in the end, we are not celebrating what he has done, but what Christ has done. We rejoice because Christ’s work has changed yet one more life.

All of this, all the things that we are celebrating today, indeed, everything we celebrate as the people of God, is all based on the fact that, despite the fact that God is infinitely greater than us, despite the fact that it is utterly unthinkable that God would enter into our humanity, this is precisely what God has done. If you can imagine how much of your power, your life, and your freedom you would give up if you were to enter into the life of a cockroach, scurrying on the floor, you might begin to get the tiniest glimpse of the sacrifice that God made for us by becoming a human being. Paul puts it this way. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”

By becoming a human being, God has made Himself poor and He has done so for no other reason than so He could make us rich. This has nothing to do with finances, but everything to do with our participation in the very life of God. The great theologian of the early church, Athanasius, once said that “God became human, so that humans could become God.” Now what he meant by that is that God took on our human nature and lived a human life, so that all of humanity would be implicated in the mighty redemption of God. Because of this, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, human beings, like you and me, can come to partake of the very life of God, we can become united to Christ. It is this astonishing fact that we celebrate in baptism, that we reaffirm in confirmation, and we, when we are at our best, celebrate every single day of our lives. So, as we have joined to celebrate the incredible power of God at work in the lives of these two individuals, let us also join in the celebration because the love and power we celebrate in their lives is active in ours, too. Let us pray.

AMEN