A new day--What baptism means to me

Romans 6:1-11

Baptism is daily dying and rising.

I don’t remember the first time I heard that but I guarantee that I, like maybe some of you, was surprised to think of baptism in that way. I thought of baptism as something that happened a long time ago. It’s something in the past; something to remember or, more likely, to have others remind us of. It is a passive past action. But that’s absolutely not true. It’s not passive, it’s not past; it’s active and present reality. It doesn’t just save us for some future but drowns us daily. Baptism is something that lives with us. If you have been baptized and do absolutely nothing with it then you aren’t so much a human being as a human in waiting, or if you’re treating baptism as insurance to allow you to do whatever you please, as if baptism is the one and only key to salvation, then Paul has some strong words.

He says, “You … must confess yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” You must confess you are dead to sin and alive to God…

Here’s a completely non-comprehensive list of what that means:

It means that you must be dead to hate and bigotry and any way you may try to lift yourself over another person. Rather, you must be alive to humility and seeing others as equally beautiful children of God.

It means you must be dead to narcissism. You can’t believe you are the center of universe because this God who brought you through the waters of baptism demands you see yourself not as creator but as creation. To be alive to God is to admit that I am not God, which is done daily through every action we take and every word we speak that points not to myself and how great I am but to God and how great God is.

To be dead to sin and alive to God means we stop counting the score, we stop judging whether others have done enough to please God, and instead we live out of the joy of abundance and practice gracious giving, not overly concerned about what others are doing but instead giving of ourselves more fully and loving more strongly—even if somebody might take advantage of us. We know that ultimately there is nothing we can lose that matters.

We are to be dead to sin by calling a thing what it is. Evil is evil. Good is good. And when we don’t know which is which we are to turn to God with the same humility that it takes to admit that I am not God. We are not to say “anything goes” but instead to sit in patience and prayer to discern God’s will for us.

To be dead to sin is to not trust my old self to determine right and wrong or when I am justified or not. It is not trust my own sense of what makes me righteous. It is not to trust my desire to take good things by force. It is especially not to trust that I can save the world, or that the world would be a better place if only I had more power. Instead, to be alive in God is to trust that God will take me, in all that I am and all that I am not, and make me righteous apart from what I can take and what I would accomplish if given the chance. To be alive in God is to put aside all quests for personal power; it is to give up my power for the sake of others.

There are countless examples of these things in our life.

If you feel prejudice against people because of their race, that is being dead to sin. If someone questions your honor and you feel a need to fight them for it, that is being dead to sin. If you are judging others on any scale of righteousness, that is being dead to sin. But if you see others, especially those quite different from you, as children of God, created in the image of the divine that does not look only like you or me, then you are alive to God. If you see hatred and respond with love, then you are alive to God. If you take what others intend for destruction and you rebuild, then you are alive to God.

This happens dramatically on occasion but far more often it is subtle movement within our hearts. It is seeing somebody who is down and out for the first time. I can’t believe how often I hear from people, “I was driving by the church while the food pantry was open and I saw a bunch of cars out front and I didn’t recognize any of those people!” That’s a hint. Why don’t you know them? Why don’t you recognize them? What is it that separates you and them? You can’t be friends with everybody, you can’t know everyone’s needs or respond to them, and I’m not even saying go and seek those people out. They might not be receptive to it. It’s more important that you ask the question, “Why don’t I know them?” What in my life has kept me from knowing the most vulnerable? What in my life has separated me from the needy? What practices of insulation am I keeping from those that make me feel uncomfortable? Those are tough, holy questions.

            Other people in our community have their material needs covered. You won’t see them at the food pantry or driving a loud beaten-down car, but they are equally in need of a hand, a reminder of whose they are; they need to be shown what it means to be alive in God. And I’m not talking here only about people who seem to be in a low point in their faith. The reality is that people who are sad, lonely, depressed, who face a health problem or addiction, or who have a family or relationships that is strained, are often too beaten down to remember who it is that they are. At its heart that’s what baptism is. It’s a reminder of who we are and whose we are and it is a daily dying and rising to live a new life, and we need that reminder. We need to remember it every day and it isn’t easy—not always.

            This is why God gives us another day and another. There’s that verse that was the theme verse for Grace’s 125^th celebration a few years back, “Your mercies are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness.” It’s all new. It’s a new day. That’s what baptism is. A new day. No strings attached. None at all. It is freedom to act without any burden of what has gone before, and we need that. Every day we need that. The amazing thing is, though God, we have it already. It’s ours.