Baptism and Exodus: The Eighteenth Sunday After Trinity (October 8, 2023)

I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: The Horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

It is fortuitous that on a monumental day where we have a baptism, on a day we read Exodus 14 about Israel crossing the Red Sea while their pursuers, Pharaoh and his army, are drowned in the sea. In 1 Corinthians 10: "Brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” What St. Paul recognizes in 1 Corinthians is expressed concisely by St. Augustine about 300 years later: “The Old [Testament] is in the New [Testament] Revealed, the New is in the Old Concealed.” So when we look at the story of Exodus today, we can learn a lot about the Sacrament of Baptism that [we will see]/[we saw] this morning.

Last week, we saw Moses make his initial presentation to Pharaoh, demanding that the people of Israel be freed. In between that reading and today’s reading, God sent the series of plagues on the Egyptians, culminating in the death of the firstborn. The plagues became too much for the Egyptians and so Pharaoh decided to release the people. But, once the Israelites got free, they were pursued by the Egyptians to prevent their liberation. In recent memory, I mentioned that I try to warn baptismal candidates that the devil will prevent them from reaching the font. But the Israelites were helped by God to get to the sea: God sent a pillar of cloud and fire to block the Egyptian army from reaching the people, allowing them to get to the sea. He does the same thing for us. In theological language, we call this prevenient grace; God’s grace drawing us to himself. Prevenient grace is the grace God gives us before conversion, before baptism. Prevenient grace is what gets us to the font because we couldn’t get there on their own. And of course, we should point out that the prevenient grace God sent the Israelites was an angel. Just a few weeks ago, we celebrated the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels and, in the Kalendar, the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels is celebrated a few days later. The tradition tells us that we receive a Guardian Angel at all the significant moments of our lives: at birth, baptism, confirmation, marriage, ordination, etc. But the point is that angels are instrumental means of prevenient grace which ultimately highlight the trustworthiness of the God who acts for us.

Once Israel reaches the waters and God parts them, he makes a way for them to be liberated. This liberation is twofold: (1) it involves the purging of hostile forces; and (2) it involves passing through to freedom. Baptism purges the hostile forces because it remits our sins and transfers us out of Adam’s line into the line of Christ. When we’re baptized, we’re taken out of the dominion of Satan and made a part of the family of God, pledging to fight manfully against the Devil, the flesh, and the world. Baptism, then, brings us freedom because in it we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit who leads us and guides us into truth and holiness and it makes us adopted children in the family of God. And so just like Israel was saved when they passed through the sea, we are saved when we pass through the waters of Baptism.

If you read the rest of the Pentateuch, you see that the Exodus becomes the birth of Israel as a nation. They were a people in Egypt but once they emerge from the birth canal of the sea, God transforms them into a nation by giving them the Law. So in their national memory, the Exodus was a super significant moment, integral to their identity. Because of their passage through the sea, Israel could identify themselves as a people chosen by God. Baptism does something very similar to us. It is where a Christian is born again. As modern people, we tend to think of our identity as a collection of disparate adjectives that describe our race, class, sex, sexual orientation, job, and a whole host of other facets of who we are. But “Christian” is not another adjective to add to that list, it is the organizing principle of your life. You’re not a spouse who happens to be a Christian, you’re a Christian spouse. Passing through those waters means God doesn’t leave us as he found us; it means everything about you is impacted by baptism. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Every baptism is an opportunity for us to take our spiritual temperature. The person who is baptized makes their pledge. As we hear them make those affirmations, we can as, ourselves the same questions:

Do I renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same, and the sinful desires of the flesh so that I will not follow, nor be led by them?

Do I believe in Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God?

Do I accept him, and desire to follow him as my Savior and Lord?

Do I believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith?

Do I obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments?

Attending a wedding can be good for your marriage: you see a couple pledge their lives to each other and it takes you back to your marriage and it fills you with a renewed vigor in your own relationship. The same thing about attending an ordination as a priest: seeing Fr. David get ordained was good for me because it reminded me of my calling. We can all benefit from seeing a baptism, or at least knowing that it is happening in our parish, because it should fill us with a renewed vigor towards our own calling. Do you take seriously the vows you made at baptism? Where you do, that should be an encouragement; where you feel you haven’t, that’s an opportunity to make progress. God saved Israel through the water; God saved you through the water and so we can join with the song of Moses: I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: The Horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: He is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.