I
want to talk today about baptismal dying and rising—a subject we don’t talk
about here that often—in part I’m guessing because it sounds like one of those
church-y things that we leave to the seminary professors and church
theologians. But like most church-y things, Paul’s letters are not really for
ivory tower white-bearded dudes to form a systemic theology around. Rather,
they are for you—good news! Not just that Jesus came but also why that matters.
They bridge the history of our faith with the practices we share. This has the
power to change the way you live.
Dying and rising is not some theology.
It’s the way we live our lives as Christians. Each day, we don’t look in the
mirror and say, “Man, P. Frank, looking fine today. Better Christian than I was
yesterday! Working my way up the spiritual ladder! Sure glad I’m not the dirty,
rotten sinner I was before those college degrees. Glad those student loans
bought me salvation!”
No!
Dying and rising means waking up in
the mirror, looking at yourself, and saying ( in the words of a seminary
professor of mine), “Male bovine fecal matter! I’m still the same dirty, rotten
sinner I was before all those student loans. Dang." And yet… if Jesus died on my
behalf—if my trust for meaning is not in these sorry black bags under my eyes,
then I can stop playing these stupid games. If Jesus died for me, then I will
die in him. And, strangely, I already have. I already died to sin. And I do
every day. But Jesus promises something better: You don’t just die, you rise!
And dying and rising is for all of
us!
Dying and rising is for the
alcoholic who understands they cannot fix this problem by their own willpower,
but who discovers on the other side of addiction that grace isn’t for the righteous but for them.
Sinners. And it’s not dependent on you fixing the situation, because—like with
so many things in life—you can’t fix it. Instead, the only thing that might
work is God fixing you, having realized you couldn’t do it yourself.
And dying and rising is for the
parent, whose children never listen, who feels overwhelmed by the burden of
teaching them good behavior, and who too often feels like a failure when we
can’t make our children into the people we want to be, because baptismal grace
commands us to measure ourselves not by our successes but by our failures, and
love is the only prerequisite of living a life with God. So, you can’t fail
your children if you love them—even if they’re little devils; even if they seem
to reject the God who you want them to know by love. Love your children and
they will kill you minute by minute, not being able to mold them as you feel
you should; not being able to keep them completely safe. Our children are
vulnerable—our children make us vulnerable—which is why when we baptize we
don’t shy away from it. Children don’t deserve to die, and yet, they do. In
baptism, we name it, because we are people of the resurrection.
And dying and rising is for grown
children, whose parents are dying, or in the foggy labyrinth of dementia, or
who have abused them and for whom there is no reconciliation, because that
death of a parent—or a parental ideal—is a reminder that while we use parental
language for God, God’s relationship to us is not completely like ours. And so,
when we love our parents and miss them, or when we want nothing more than to
get away from our parents or the ghosts of our past, we have a God who doesn’t
command us to fix relationships but who promises us that the death of
relationships is just another reminder that we are not as alive as we imagined.
And, yet, we will rise—not by fixing what is wrong, but by dying to the need to
be right.
And dying and rising is for the
depressed or anxious, who have been told they just need to cheer up or try
harder, because your baptismal promise does not say, “Cheer up! Pick yourself
up! Fix yourself!” Instead, it says, “I know the burden you carry and it’s too
much; it will kill you—it has killed you. You can’t do it. You can’t fix it.”
God doesn’t tell you to fix it; God says it is fixed on the cross. The burdens
you carry are shed in baptism, and if you feel them still, then simply know
this: God is with you, because Jesus, who endured the cross, finds his home in
all places that are darkest. It is in the dark where the spark of resurrection
shines brightest.
And dying and rising is for the
aging—for the person who can no longer do things they once could. And whether you
are 83 or 38, dying and rising is a daily reminder that we are not judged in
comparison with our past; we are not called to do everything we once did; and
we are not saved by virtue of being a better person than we once were. Rather,
each day when we look in the mirror, we see the dead person inside of us in
need of the redemption—of both our bodies and our souls—and we know we need a promise
that defeats even time, a promise only resurrection can give.
And dying and rising is for those
oppressed by systems. For those who are judged because of things outside of
their control. For those who are undervalued because of things that God values
but human beings do not. Because every system that elevates one over another
trades in sin, causing death even as it purports to give life. We proclaim
death and resurrection because God’s economy is one that does not worry about
enough, because it takes nothing to make everything.
Dying and rising is for all of this,
because the rules we live by down here are not the rules of the kingdom of God.
Instead of the most popular, the most wealthy, the strongest, and the most
powerful, God values the left out, the poor, the weakest, and the oppressed.
Why? Because God can’t do things with dead people claiming to be alive. So, the
reason we talk about death when we talk about baptism is because dead people
who know they are dead? Yeah, God will use them all the day long.
So, we preach it. We proclaim it in baptism, and that baptism
doesn’t sugarcoat it; it doesn’t make it try to sound more palatable. It
doesn’t say, “It will get better.” It simply says “You are dead.” And we need
that so desperately because for the rest of our lives we are bombarded with messages
about how OK it is going to be. Baptism calls that the lie that it is.
The honest truth is this: You are stone-cold
dead to making yourself better, unable to make yourself righteous. You can’t do
it. It’s not like algebra, which is hard. It’s like trying to do algebra if
you’re dead, which is impossible. But, then again, we give death too much
credit. Baptism is about reclaiming the power of the resurrection—that dead
things don’t stay dead.
God is for dead people. It’s the
reason why the best Christians are often the addicts, or those who have faced
the specter of depression or anxiety, or those who have lost somebody near and
dear, or those who have walked the path of chronic illness, and all those who
have looked death in the eye and realized it is only by grace that any of us
make it through.
It is grace that allows us to live;
it is grace that brings our loved ones through safely; it is grace in which we
breathe and it is grace by which we stand before God.
That’s dying and rising—dying to a
world that says you are alive, that you are sufficient, that you are great—but
you know differently. God promises us something different. You are not great;
you are not even alive. And that’s not OK. It’s simply an invitation to ask,
“What then?” And the answer will blow you away. Death… meet new life.
Amen.
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