Life: A Two-Part Series on Baptism
Sycamore Creek Church
Romans 6:1-11
June 20, 2010
Tom Arthur
Peace, Friends!
What comes to mind when you think of water? What does water mean in our culture and our lives? We drink water. We need water during and after we’ve exercised. We use water to bathe in. We wash our hands. We take showers. Wash our cars. We enjoy water. We swim in it. We play in. We canoe, kayak, sail, boat.
I was in Durham, North Carolina during one of the worst droughts in recent history. At one point the entire Durham area had 20-some days of drinkable water left. The restrictions put in place where pretty impressive. You could get a ticket for watering your lawn or washing your car. People were thinking of all kinds of ways to save water. We instituted one water-saving technique that we continue to use today. We put a bucket of water under the spigot of the bathtub to catch the water while we’re waiting for it to warm up. Then we use the water in the bucket to flush the toilet. Water was and is precious. Water is life.
But have you ever thought about how water also symbolizes death? Yes, water also is death. If you stay under water too long you will die. One of the most harrowing stories about water as death is found in The Perfect Storm. This book by Sebastian Junger was made into a movie which stared George Clooney. Clooney plays a fisherman who is out in his fishing boat when the perfect confluence of meteorological events conspire to sink his boat by a huge rogue wave. Clooney and his fellow fisherman die in the water. Water can also mean death. So before we jump to water as life, let’s take a moment and reflect upon water as death.
The apostle Paul has this understanding of water as both death and life when he talks about baptism in his letter to the Romans.
Romans 6:1-11 (NLT)
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.
This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!
Water is death.
We see it in our cultural symbols and events. The Perfect Storm. The Asian Tsunami. Hurricane Katrina. All of these show us that water can also be dangerous to our lives.
There are many stories throughout the entire Bible that speak to this same understanding of water. One of the best known ones is the story of the flood. God responds to the violence and injustice in the world by sending a massive flood. While Noah and his family are saved by their faith and action of building an ark, the rest of the world dies under the waters of forty days and nights of rain. Water is death.
In the passage we just read, Paul tells us that “we died and were buried with Christ by baptism” (Romans 6:4, NLT). When we are baptized, we participate in Jesus’ death. We are buried in the tomb with Jesus. When we go under the water it’s as if someone held us under too long, and we died to all the sin in our life. We now seek to avoid sin and evil.
Peter, one of Jesus’ key followers, preaches a sermon that is recorded in the book of Acts. Speaking to a crowd he says, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven” (Acts 2:38, NRSV). In this sense the death that takes place in baptism is a kind of cleansing. We understand this intuitively because we use water to wash the stains and dirt from our bodies. Baptism washes the stain and dirt of sin from our souls.
Sin is, of course, the problem that we are up against here. Sin is broken and disordered love. We love the wrong things too much and love the right things too little. G.K. Chesterton once said that sin is the only Christian belief that can be verifiably proved. We all have this sense about ourselves. That we don’t measure up to our own standards, let alone God’s standards.
The solution to this problem is that in Jesus Christ, God has worked to save us and forgive us of that broken and disordered love. God worked and continues to work even before we did anything. This love is a gift of God. It’s not something that we have earned or worked for (Eph 2:8). Our response of faith itself is even made possible by God’s love. We respond in love only because God has first loved us (1 John 4:19).
When we are baptized, we enter into this story of dying to sin. We go under the water and sin reigns in our life. We come up out of the water and we have died to sin along with Jesus’ death and sin may remain, but it does not reign. Water is death. Death to sin.
Water is also new life. Recently I have helped to begin a community garden in my neighborhood. One Saturday in May about 20 of us, adults and children, gathered to build two raised bed gardens, fill them with dirt, plant seedlings and seeds in the soil, and then water them. Without the water, the seeds would not sprout to form the seedlings of new life.
Water is new life.
Water as new life shows up many times in the Bible, and one of the best known stories is that of creation. At the beginning of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, we read that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters (Genesis 1:2). It’s as if the Spirit of God is hovering over the water and contemplating and imagining what new life can be born from this water, like new life which is born from the water of the womb.
The water of baptism is new life. Paul says, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives” (Romans 6:4). New life! If we died with Christ when we went under the water, then we are also resurrected with Christ when we come up out of the water. We die to sin. We raise with Christ. Our sin has been washed away, and, Whoa! New life!
Paul explains this a bit further in his second letter to the Corinthians. He says, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Whenever you read Paul you need to know something about Paul’s “code language.” It’s not that he’s trying to be sneaky. Rather, this is just language that he used with the churches that he planted that they would have understood, but that we sometimes miss because we weren’t in on the original DNA conversations. So when Paul says, “in Christ”, he means baptism. Because baptism is the way that someone dies to sin and is born anew in Christ. So in baptism we are made into new creations. The old ways of sin have passed away, and the new life of Christ is born in us. New life! Water is life.
Water is death. Water is life. And water is growth.
Consider the admonition to drink eight glasses of water a day. This cultural wisdom persists even though it may not be medically true, but it gets at something that all of us know. We can’t continue living and growing without water. Our bodies are made up of 60% water! Every single organ and system in our body is dependent upon water. If you are lost in the woods your most immediate need is water. You can survive for days without food, even shelter, but you can not survive long without water. For each of us to grow we need water.
Many stories in the Bible speak to this aspect of water. One is the story of the Israelites crossing over the Jordan River into the Promised Land. They have as a people and community been wandering through the desert for forty years, and finally here they are on the edge of the Promised Land ready to grow into the promise that God has given them. But one obstacle lies in the way: the Jordan River. How do you get hundreds of thousands of people across a river like that? Consider trying to get the population of Lansing across the Grand River without any bridges or boats. Getting across that river is a moment of growth, a moment of faith. God tells Joshua to send the priests first with the ark of the covenant, the container that holds the Ten Commandments, and to step into the water. God tells them that the water will stop flowing and the Israelites will be able to cross through the waters of the Jordan on dry ground, but they have to step in the water first. Water is growth.
The water of baptism is growth. Paul says, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.” The glorious power of the Father. What is Paul talking about here? I think he’s talking about the Holy Spirit, that is God’s presence with us, God’s power at work in our lives. Jesus was raised from the dead by this glorious power of the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit in baptism continues to be present with us helping us step in the water and cross the Jordan into the Promised Land that God has for us as individuals and as a community of the church. It is the Holy Spirit that helps us grow moment by moment and day by day.
The book of Matthew ends with a strong nod to this understanding of baptism. In Matthew Jesus tells his disciples to “go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19, NLT). When the Christian church baptizes, we baptize in the Trinitarian name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God the Father, creator of heaven and earth. Jesus Christ, his only Son who lived, died, and raised to save us from our sin. The Holy Spirit, giver of life.
The Spirit helps us grow in two ways. First, the Spirit draws us into the life of God. The Spirit invites us into the love that God the Father shares with God the Son through the Holy Spirit. We share in the innermost love that God shares with God’s self! The Spirit draws us into community with God. The Spirit also draws us into community with one another.
Water is death. Water is life. Water is growth. And water is also community.
What do the cities of Jackson, Lansing, Ionia, Grand Rapids, and Grand Haven all have in common besides being in the state of Michigan? They are all located on the Grand River. Whenever you find a city, town, or village, you will almost always find a river, creek, or lake. Community is built around and upon water. You cannot have community without some kind of water. People congregate around water. Water is community.
This understanding of water is present in many stories in the Bible although sometimes it is a little more hidden. Consider the story of Jesus calming the storm as the disciples fear for their lives in a boat that is both threatened and buoyed by the water. Or the story of Jesus walking on water as the disciples see him while standing in a boat buoyed by the water. The image of a community in a boat upon the water reminds us that we gather as a community in water that both threatens to kill us (death to sin) and give us life (water to drink and food to eat).
The water of baptism is community. Community is a little hidden at first in this passage from Romans, but if we look closely we will see it. Notice the pronouns in verse four, the verse we’ve been working with throughout this entire message: “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” (Romans 6:4, NLT). WE! Not me or I. But WE. Let’s read the whole passage again in what I call the “we-we” version: “1 we…us…2 we…we…3 y’all…we…we… 4 we…we…5 we…we… 6 Our…our…We… 7 we…we… 8 we…we…we… 9 We… 10 y’all…yourselves” (Romans 6:1-11, “we-we” version). Paul is talking about a community here. Not just individuals. In baptism we are baptized into a community. Here’s the really amazing thing. One verse earlier Paul says, “Have you forgotten that when we became Christians and were baptized to become one with Christ Jesus…” (Romans 6:3, NLT). We, the community, became one in Christ in our baptism. By virtue of your baptism, you were incorporated into the body of Christ, the church, and you were made one with y’all. Baptism is the incorporation into the body of Christ, the church. Baptism is community.
In short, baptism involves dying to sin, newness of life, union with Christ, receiving the Holy Spirit, and incorporation into Christ’s Church.
Water is death.
Water is life.
Water is growth.
Water is community.
Baptism is water.
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