Baptized : Remembering Who You Are

Baptized: Remembering Who You Are, Pt 1 You Are A New Creation John 3:1-5, Titus 3:3-7 INTRODUCTION The famous reformer Martin Luther had a favorite way of encouraging his congregants whenever they felt overtaken by sin in their life. He would tell them to "remember your baptism." Specifically, he said, "For this reason no one should be terrified if he feel evil lust or love, nor should he despair even if he fall, but he should remember his baptism, and comfort himself joyfully with it, since God has there bound Himself to slay his sin for him, and not to count it a cause for condemnation, if only he does not consent to sin or remain in sin."1 When I first stumbled across Luther's encouragement to remember your baptism some years ago, I was fascinated. Could it be true that baptism meant more to my faith, my growth, my spirituality with Christ than I had been led to believe? Could baptism's relevance for my life with God extend past the few moments it took me to dry off? After entertaining questions like this for some time, it finally occurred to me that I had lost connection with a profound truth about baptism that the ancient church had clung to as a prized conviction of its faith. What if baptism is more than just a legal ordinance that has to be perfectly obeyed-and perfectly understood-- in every particular before it can be valid, as it's historically been taught in our tradition? What if baptism is more than just a line in the sand between heaven and hell, as it's also been frequently taught in our tradition? What if baptism is more about God than it is about us? What if there's an untapped spiritual power in remembering our baptisms regularly? What if in remembering our baptisms, we're reminded of who we really are? I'm calling this new series "Baptized: Remembering Who You Are" because I want us to look at what it really means not only to be baptized, but to live the baptized life. I want us to learn to remember our baptism to recognize the holy power in it. I want us to learn how our baptisms were made to remind us who we are. So, if I-like Luther-tell you to remember your baptism, what would you think about? What would that memory tell you, if anything? Who does your baptism say you are? TO SEE THE KINGDOM, YOU MUST BECOME A NEW CREATION Let's start with the Gospel of John. In John 3, a learned and highly ranked Jewish teacher named Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night to ask about who He is and what He's all about. Jesus responds by telling him that if he wants to see the Kingdom of God-if that's what he's really after, really seeking in all his studies, all of his questions-- he has to be born again. He has to undergo a rebirth, become something totally new than what he was. Unsurprisingly, this baffles Nicodemus. He replies incredulously with something about the impossibility of climbing back into his mother's womb as an old man, but Jesus isn't deterred by it. He clarifies, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." But things don't immediately clear up for Nicodemus. He responds, "How these things be?", and then Jesus is the one who's left incredulous: "Are you the teacher of Israel," He asks, "and yet you do not understand these things?" Jesus just explained that to enter, see, experience, become a citizen of God's Kingdom-the very thing all the Jews were yearning for at that time-Nicodemus would have to undergo a new birth similar to the birth that brought him into this world, but also radically different. Like the water of his mother's womb, Nicodemus would have to pass through birthing waters again. Only instead of the flesh that both conceived and gave birth to the infant Nicodemus, the initiative and power for his new birth would come from above-from God's own Spirit. And, instead of the birth of the flesh that started Nicodemus on the path to growing old, this birth of the Spirit would make Nicodemus brand new. It would bathe him, cleanse him, make him something different than he was before. It would make him a new creation. Now, although the word "baptism" isn't directly used here, it was the unanimous view of the early church that Jesus was here using baptismal language. Theodore of Mopsuestia, a bishop in the 4th century, is representative when he said of John 3:5, "He [Jesus] said water because the action takes place in water, Spirit because the Spirit exercises his power through the water."2 He goes on to draw out the birthing imagery, saying that water is the "womb" and the Holy Spirit the "effective agent" of the new birth. Th apostle Paul actually uses similar imagery in his letter to a young colleague named Titus. In our second text of the day, Paul tells Titus that God "saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:5-7). Don't miss what Paul is saying here. When he had to explain how God saved us in His mercy, the analogy he reached for was the process of human birth. That word "regeneration" is a rare word in the NT but it essentially means "rebirth,"3; to be brought into new life. Groups that existed during Paul's lifetime used the word to refer to a kind of reincarnation where people returned to earth after their deaths to take on various forms. Some used it to refer to the rebirth of a new world after a great fire.4 Paul's point in using the word is that God saves us by His grace through a washing of rebirth, a washing in which the Holy Spirit renews us and our lives begin all over again. We see these same connections in the earliest sermons of the church that we have on record. When the apostle Peter preaches Jesus as the crucified and resurrected Lord for the very first time, we see this same convergence of water, newness, and the Holy Spirit. Peter told a convicted crowd on the first Pentecost after Jesus's death, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2.38). Again, here's a call to new birth-new creation. And again, here's baptism as the womb of this new birth--the place where the Holy Spirit and the newness of God's life (i.e., forgiveness of sins) converge on lost sinners. Clearly, there's a pattern here: born of water and Spirit; a washing of regeneration and renewal of the Spirit; baptism, forgiveness, and the Spirit. The consistent witness of Jesus, Paul, Peter, and the early church is that we come out of the baptismal waters as new creatures, newly born into God's Kingdom and family. So, that's what we remember about ourselves when we remember our baptism. We remember that we are God's new creation, birthed out of water and Spirit into something different than we were before. FROM WATER COMES NEW CREATION But the convergence of these ideas is not coincidental. In fact, what if I told you that these patterns of water and renewal-water and new creation-- are embedded into how God tells the story of the whole world? You only have to read the first few pages of Genesis to begin to see it. There we read, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters" (Gen 1.1-2). Here, our first introduction to God in the Bible shows His Spirit hovering over the formless, chaotic waters. But then new creation begins to happen. God re-arranges the waters, drawing waters to the sky to establish an expanse that separates the waters above from the waters below (Gen 1.6-8). He then draws dry land out from the lower waters while gathering the other waters into their appointed seas (Gen 1.9-10). It's the waters that He first populates with living creatures (Gen 1.20). Every zone of creation has a unique form of water. In the beginning, then, God brought new life-new creation--out of water. If that were it, however, we wouldn't really have a pattern. It might be interesting, but it wouldn't be conclusive of anything. But go a little further into Genesis and the imagery re-emerges, only in the midst of tragedy. God's human creation has grown so wicked and detestable that He decides to wipe the slate clean and start over. He'll only spare one family, who has seemed to keep their hearts and lives open to Him. So, in Genesis 6, we read about the famous Flood of Noah. But if you read the account carefully, you'll notice something. When the flood came, the waters that God had separated in the original creation are reversing their boundaries and causing massive destruction. The waters spring up from below and crash in from the sky. It's essentially creation in reverse. It's God judging the earth with water. But, of course, Noah and family are saved. And when the waters finally recede, creation gets a second chance. So again, water is the birthing ground for new, cleansed creation. But we also learn this: God can use water both for judgment and salvation. He judged the evil world with water, but he saved His people through the water. It's no surprise, then, that the NT authors looked back on this story and saw an image of baptism in it. Peter the apostle says about Noah and family that "eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him" (1 Pet 3.20-22). Peter saw the judgment and death of the flood and the new life on the other side of that for Noah and his family, and he immediately thought of baptism-baptism as re-enacting both a judgment on our old person and a bringing into new life. And so, on and on it goes in the biblical story. The church looks back at key episodes in the OT, and events involving water start leaping out and connections start to surface involving salvation and judgment, old creation and new creation. Paul the apostle looked at the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea when they were fleeing Egypt's army and he calls it a "baptism" in 1 Corinthians 10. Others in the early church zeroed in on Joshua and the crossing of the Jordan River into Israel, Elijah's soaked sacrifice on Mt Carmel, the cleansing of the Syrian commander Naaman after dipping in the Jordan seven times, and they saw judgment and salvation, new creation coming out of old creation.5 For the historic church, these have always been stories of freedom, healing, and new beginnings directly connected to God's initiative to bring new creation out from formless, watery depths. For them, as it should be for us, baptism becomes the entrance to a new world, a new life, a new beginning. FROM DRAGON TO BOY In C.S. Lewis's book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace is a young boy full of arrogance, laziness, and self-centeredness. No one likes him and he's annoying to everyone. In the book, Eustace accidentally accompanies his cousins on a voyage aboard the ship Dawn Treader. When the ship comes ashore after a brutal storm, Eustace slips off by himself to avoid a hard day's work. He stumbles into a cave full of treasure, and he instantly wants it all for himself. Unknown to him, however, was that this was a dragon's lair. And, he had no idea that a curse existed that said that if you fell asleep on top of a dragon's treasure, lusting after its treasure, then you, too, would turn into a dragon-a reflection of your own dragonish thoughts and cravings. Eustace does exactly that, and he wakes up a dragon. At first, he thinks it would be great to be the largest, most ferocious creature around. But he soon realizes that being a dragon cuts himself off from all his friends and all the gentle, enriching experiences of humanity. Soon, an "appalling loneliness" comes over him and he begins to recognize in himself the monster that his cousins and crew of the Dawn Treader had tolerated for the entire voyage. That night, Aslan the lion comes to him and leads him to a large well with marble steps leading down into it. Eustace thought it would be soothing to swim in, as he was in increasing pain from having grown into this dragon body. But Aslan tells him that he has to undress before he can get in. Eustace tries to peel off his own dragon skin, but he's unsuccessful. The deeper he tears into his dragon scales, the deeper he realizes those scales go. Finally, Aslan says, "You will have to let me undress you." Aslan proceeds to tear off Eustace's scales with his claws. In telling the story later, Eustace tells his cousin, "The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt." When Aslan was finished, Eustace said, "Then he caught hold of me - I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on - and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again." I find this to be one of the most moving scenes in all Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia: a dragon who realizes that living in dragonish ways is alienating, lonely, and empty-an inability to change himself even when he tries, his only hope the deep cuts of the mighty lion, and a toss into a well of fresh water where he becomes not only himself again, but a new and better version of himself. That's what new birth is, and that's where baptism takes us. New birth requires the death of the old, "dragonish" self-the self-centeredness, the self-serving decision-making, the lusts of life, and everything else that offends God, separates from others, and deprives us of a full and healthy humanity. Sinners need more than a radical reform. We need a death, followed by a resurrection into something new and alive. Listen to Martin Luther again on this: "...baptism signifies that the old man and the sinful birth of flesh and blood are to be wholly drowned by the grace of God... Therefore sins are drowned in baptism, and in place of sin, righteousness comes forth."6 REMEMBER YOUR BAPTISM: YOU ARE A NEW CREATION In a line that is very easily a baptismal text, Paul writes to the Corinthian Christians, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Cor 5.17). How, then, do we begin to live out the baptized life as a new creation where the old has passed away? Let me respond first by saying that if you haven't been baptized but you're serious about following Jesus, baptism must be your next step. New creation isn't complete without the birth of water and Spirit, without the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Spirit. Baptism has to be on your horizon if you want to follow Jesus but you've not yet submitted to it. But for those of us who have been washed in the washing of rebirth, it remains for us to remember our baptism and to live as baptized new creations-to live as if we've passed through the floodwaters of death into something new and different. So... * For baptized children and teens, it might mean remembering, "I'm baptized. Do baptized new creations react to what their parents say like this?" * For the young and the beautiful, it might mean remembering, "I'm baptized. Do baptized new creations dress like this?" * For spouses, it might mean remembering, "I'm baptized. Do baptized new creations love and serve and argue and disagree like this?" * For parents, it might mean remembering, "I'm baptized. Do baptized new creations raise their kids like this?" * For church members, it might mean remembering, "I'm baptized. Do baptized new creations treat my church, fellow Christians, elders, ministers, finances, and time like this?" Every day we wake up, our baptism is calling us to remember who we are-new creations who have been reborn in Christ Jesus by the Spirit of God. Not the same old people making the same old decisions for the same old reasons. Even though you will still be wrong and still do wrong, your baptism says you are new and alive in a different way. Ulrich Zwingli, a contemporary of Martin Luther, once compared baptism to the cowl or uniform that a new monk receives.7 It's the same cowl and uniform that an old monk wears, but obviously they're not the same kind of monk. That young, new monk has to grow into that cowl and uniform-what it really means, what it really says about them. Baptism, then, is the uniform we must grow into as the Spirit of Christ inside us takes us into deeper and deeper levels of devotion to God-as we steadily mature in Christ until one day we realize that we've become all that our baptism has said we are. So, Burnt Hickory, remember who you are. Remember that you are a new creation. Remember your baptism. CONCLUSION Prayer: Father in Heaven, we ask that your mighty Spirit stir within us, that we may more fully engage our baptism, that we may accept the costs of new life with you, that we may move beyond our old ways and into the new way of our baptized lives. In Jesus's name, Amen. Invitation Slide 1"A Treatise on the Holy Sacrament of Baptism 1519," in Works of Martin Luther with Introductions and Notes, vol. I (Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1915), 62. 2 Joel C. Elowsky, ed., John 1-10, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 111. 3 BDAG, 752; LN 41.53; LSJ, 1291. 4 Barclay, Timothy, Titus, Philemon, 295. 5 Leithart, Baptism: A Guide to Life from Death, 14, 19-21, Kindle Ed, very helpful here. 6 "A Treatise on the Holy Sacrament of Baptism 1519," 56-57. 7 Willimon, Remember Who You Are, 92. --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ 2