The Deadly Water of Life

We’ve gotten pretty big for our britches—even more so than normal. Where so many people in Africa and Asia are coming to the Lord, it seems like people in Europe and North America have been shifting away from the fear, love, and trust of God, like some folks don’t think they need God anymore, that they can get along fine without him.

You may have heard the old joke about the scientist who told God that modern science had come so far that they no longer needed God. In fact, the scientist asserted, we can now create human life. With his faulty, self-focused, human reason, he assumed cloning was the same thing as creating. So, just to set the matter straight, God challenged him to a contest. They would see who could create the best human being.

The scientist thought this was great, and accepted God’s challenge. God said that he was going to do things just as he did back in the beginning when he made humankind from the dust of the earth.[1] He then stooped down and picked up a handful of dirt. The scientist followed suit and grabbed a handful of dirt too.

That’s when God stopped him, saying, “Oh, no, no, no. You have to create your own dirt.”

Let us pray… Amen

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

In the beginning of things, God created the heavens and the earth—the universe—out of nothing. He spoke matter into existence. It was void and dark and lifeless. But then God brought light out of the darkness, created the earth and sky and seas, the plants and trees, the fish and birds and beasts, the sun and moon and stars and planets, and finally, human beings. God created us, beings made in his likeness, upon whose hearts he would write his law, people who could know him and whom he could love.

Imagine: God did all of this body and soul, human making with a handful of dirt. In fact, the root of the Hebrew name “Adam,” adama, means earth. For those of you who liked “Battlestar Galactica,” now you know a little something more about Commander Adama who wanted so passionately to get back to…earth, to Adama. And for those of you who have ever heard those threatening words uttered at you—“your name is dirt”—well, there is some truth to that, since you’re related to Adam. But I digress.

God created us out of something just slightly more substantive than nothing: dirt. Now, one thing you might take away with this knowledge is that God can do a lot with a little. In fact, he can do a great deal with nothing at all. And that’s good information to have, if you think nothing is going right and that it isn’t likely to be going well anytime soon—if ever.

When you think your life is little more than chaos and cacophony, it’s a good time to remember that God’s creating voice is heard above the commotion. He is still in the business of speaking something from nothing, of bringing light from darkness, and creating order out of the chaos. His voice is still heard above the waters.

In light of God’s voice being heard over the waters, consider that when John the Baptist said there was one coming who is mightier than himself, he said it before the backdrop of baptismal waters. John baptized in water, but Jesus, the coming one, would baptize in the Holy Spirit, as Mark’s Gospel reads, or if you’re looking at Matthew, in the Holy Spirit and fire.[2] One mightier, is right! We are not baptized in mere water but in God himself. How could that not be a conflagration, a holy fire that purges the human in the fire that is God?

And that is exactly what happens in Christian baptism. We are baptized in a watery, fiery, godly, and very, very certain death. Nothing purges the physical more absolutely than death. In baptism, the sinner is absolutely destroyed. That’s what Paul is talking about in today’s second lesson. Don’t you realize that when you were baptized into Christ Jesus that you were baptized into his death?[3] The apostle says elsewhere that you are dead[4] and goes on to explain that, though you are dead, your life is hidden with Christ in God.[5] That word for “hidden” has the same kind of protective concealing, or hiding place, that we see in the story of Moses.

When he was a baby, facing certain death at the pharaoh’s hand, Moses, for his own protection, was concealed in a basket made of bulrushes and hidden among reeds in the river. That’s what happens to us in baptism; our lives are hidden from the devil, from eternal death and damnation. In baptism, we were placed among the bulrushes and left for dead but God plucks us from the river to live forevermore.

The way this happens is that Christ’s work on the cross and in and from the grave is now applied to us through God’s baptism of us. It is not the water that does this, nor the amount. It is not our faith that does it either. Let’s be clear; it is Christ who has done it. Because we are baptized in God, we are baptized into his death on the cross. Yet, just as surely as Moses was plucked from the river, and as Jesus was raised from the grave, we too are resurrected. For now, that means we are raised up to walk in a new, recreated life. Eventually, it means that we will be resurrected to eternal life, a life freed from the flesh, sin, and death.

In baptism, God has already freed us from death by hiding our lives in himself. But we are also set free from sin. Sin no longer has a stranglehold on us. Now, that doesn’t mean you won’t sin anymore. You will sin so long as you have those physical bodies. But because faith believes the watery promise of God, you are now dead to sin, sinner. Yes, you will sin; that’s why I just called you “sinner.” But, sinner, you are set freed from bondage to your sin. Your sins are not the final answer; Christ is.

In him, there is forgiveness for the one who believes sin is sin and needs forgiven, for the one who repents, confessing and asking the Father’s forgiveness. The one who believes these things, trusts Christ Jesus to be the final word, the Word who has and can and will create order from chaos, freedom from sin-debt, life out of death. The one who believes these things trusts in Christ’s cross to be the recreating force in your life. Those words, “It is finished,”[6] are the final word. After all, what can you add to something that is finished?

Trust him; believe his Word. He has promised and is faithful to do it. I will say it again: Your sins are not the final answer; Christ is. You are set free from sin, sinners.

This is what we confess: a communion of sinners whom Christ has made saints, the forgiveness of that communion’s sins, the resurrection of the body—your body and the body of Christ, and everlasting life for you within that communion of sinner-saints. We believe in the God of creation, the same God who accomplishes our recreation through his grace alone. He neither requires nor will accept any help from us in his recreating effort. He simply speaks your new creation into existence—just as he spoke matter into existence in the beginning. He still uses a simple word to create,[7] to recreate—and that word is “Jesus.”

Because he died, carrying our sin in himself, his death becomes our death in baptism. Baptism nails our old man, the sinner, to the cross of Jesus. That we are crucified with Christ means that God murdered our old nature in baptism.[8] Richard Lenski, a Lutheran pastor and commentator from the turn of the previous century, wrote in his New Testament commentaries that God is the agent of that homicide, and the law and gospel are his means.

The point I am making is that God is ruthless. In order for the new person to be recreated, the old one has to go—go so completely and finally that baptism may be considered nothing less than manslaughter. This is the fact of what happens in baptism. Now, you must embrace that fact with faith. Do you believe that old sinner is dead? Then you must also trust in God that, though you sin, your sin is not counted toward your condemnation. Your old nature was already condemned, and it died Christ’s death in baptism.

Faith will certainly continue to struggle against sin because you are a sinner. It will struggle in you to not sin; yes, it must. But the real struggle is when you do sin. Hear it! Faith’s real struggle occurs when you sin. For it is then that faith must believe—not believe in the sinner’s efforts but trust in God’s grace recreating through Christ’s redeeming work for and in sinners.

Remember as often as you sin that you were baptized in the deadly water of Christ’s own death so that you may live with him in the resurrection to eternal life.

Amen

[1] Genesis 2:7

[2] Matthew 3:11

[3] The Revised Standard Version (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1971), Ro 6:3.

[4] Colossians 3:3

[5] Ibid.

[6] John 19:30

[7] John 1:1-2

[8] R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern, 1936), 400.