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! * *
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*“How Long Can You Tread Water?”*
/Romans 6:1-11/
Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
We continue today in our journey through Romans.
Today’s text is from Romans 6 and is part of a longer section where Paul describes how God has provided for our redemption and justification.
Sometimes it is hard to follow the whole argument Paul has laid out without reading several chapters and not a small section like we are looking at today.
So to help us get a better feel for what Paul is saying I would like to read this section again but in a different translation.
1 Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more kindness and forgiveness? 2 Of course not!
Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?
3 Or have you forgotten that when we became Christians and were baptized to become one with Christ Jesus, we died with him? 4 For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism.
And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.
5 Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised as he was.
6 Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives.
We are no longer slaves to sin. 7 For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin.
8 And since we died with Christ, we know we will also share his new life.
9 We are sure of this because Christ rose from the dead, and he will never die again.
Death no longer has any power over him.
10 He died once to defeat sin, and now he lives for the glory of God.
11 So you should consider yourselves dead to sin and able to live for the glory of God through Christ Jesus.[1]
The image of baptism is the one Paul is using here to show how God justifies us.
It is through our baptism that we have been made right with God.
As the image goes we have died to sin, been buried with Christ and have been raised to new life because of Christ’s resurrection.
And baptism is the image we will look at today.
Baptism is water and God’s Word used by the Lord to instill in us faith, a faith that clings to Christ as our Lord and Savior.
Baptism has also been called the entrance point into the kingdom of God.
Now don’t be mistaken, baptism doesn’t save us, only Christ does.
But it is through baptism, a means of grace, that the Holy Spirit comes to us and awakens our hearts and minds to new life in Christ.
Water; a powerful force in God’s creation.
Water has the power to make things grow, to sustain life.
We know that all too well by the lack of water we are experiencing right now in the West.
Without water things dry-up and we have experienced many fires from the dryness.
We pray for water to alleviate our fires and dryness.
A human can only live a few days without water.
Water is precious and important.
But water also has a destructive side.
Too much water and we have floods, erosion, and a drowning effect both for humans and creation.
The dangerous side of water is what I want to focus on for a moment.
Imagine you are all by yourself out in the middle of the ocean.
No visible land is in site and you are there without a boat or life preserver.
Not a pretty site.
Actually it is one of the most frightening things for me to imagine since I don’t swim.
What can you do in this situation?
You can tread water and wait for someone to pass by.
You can try to swim toward land, but what direction?
Or you can just give up.
In any of these scenarios you will eventually succumb to the elements and drown.
You may be a world-class athlete and can tread water for a long time, but there will always be a horrible end.
That is the image of us on our own in this sinful world.
We are tossed to and fro by the ills of this world.
And in our sinfulness we think we can tread water on our own.
The title of my sermon comes from a famous line by Bill Cosby in his “Noah” comedy sketch.
Bill Cosby retells the story of Noah in a non-biblical, humorous way but I think captures the essence of the story.
I first heard this sketch on an LP my Father had.
As Cosby is telling the story he portrays Noah as a man who doubts what God wants him to do.
First Noah isn’t sure it is the Lord talking to him and then is even more skeptical of the task the Lord asks him to do.
Noah wonders if it is Candid Camera at first and then puts up excuses like, “What will the neighbors think?” or “I am too old to be building an ark in the middle of a desert.”
Finally the Lord in frustration with Noah says, “How long can you tread water?” and we as an audience listening to Bill Cosby laugh at this line.
But there is a whole lot of truth in it.
When we doubt God and want to go it alone or reject His plan He says to us, “How long can you tread water?”
It is inevitable that we will succumb to sin without a life preserver, without Christ.
And that is where baptism comes in.
God gives us a life preserver, His Son.
We receive, by faith, Christ through the waters of baptism connected to God’s Word.
Alone we drown, with God we are preserved.
Now you may have been wondering why I haven’t used the word rescue?
While it is true that God rescues us from our sin and we can be confident in the victory we have in Christ, we are still here on earth and have to face our sinful daily life.
So the image of a life preserver is a good one.
We are not taken out of this world the minute we are baptized but we are given a way to survive.
With our “life vest” of Christ we can survive and not have to tread water on our own accord.
In water safety people are taught not to struggle but to relax and let the life preserver do its work.
That is a great symbol for our life in Christ as well.
Anytime we fight against God, think that we are ok and can go it alone we are in essence fighting against our life preserver.
It is as if we think we are ok in the water and take off our life vest.
Then the question comes up again, “how long can you tread water?”
But when we let Christ take over, when we are reminded of our connection with Christ through baptism we are able to survive the storms of life.
When the waves come, and they will, we can either attempt to go it our way, or we can rest in the life preserver of Christ and survive.
One day we will be rescued, we will see our rescue ship come and take us home, but let us not take off our life vest lest we perish before our final rescue.
The early church loved the idea of water as a symbol for the church as well.
In fact some of the early mosaics that depict the church show it as a ship sailing the seas of life.
In Christ we have a solid foundation, in Christ we can sail the dangerous seas of life and know He is guiding and protecting us until we reach the safe harbor of heaven.
It is a great analogy.
But there is also another great idea in baptism related to the water.
God knows that we need something concrete to give us hope.
Yes we have God’s Word and we can rest in those promises.
But we are human and doubt if we really are a part of God’s kingdom.
We think, “Am I saved?
Is this all true?”
But with baptism we can have absolute confidence in Christ.
If we doubt everything else about our faith we cannot doubt our baptism.
It was a definite event that happened on a definite day with many witnessing it.
Your parents brought some of you as an infant; some of you came later in life.
Either way we can say with confidence that water was applied to your head and the words, “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” were spoken.
And in that baptism, that we know as a fact has happened, God promised to work new life in you.
He forgives you and gives you new life in Christ.
We were buried with Christ in our baptism and raised to new life because Christ was raised from the dead never to die again.
Again, if you doubt everything else about your faith don’t doubt this – your baptism and the promise of God in it.
What wonderful assurance!
Luther wrote that the best thing you can hang by your bed is a cross and your baptismal certificate.
That way the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see at night is that Christ died for you and you are a redeemed child of God through you baptism.
We have confidence not in our ability to reason out faith (tread water) but in Christ and his work imparted to us through baptism (our life preserver).
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