Newness of Life
Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
January 10, 2016
Let us pray: May the
words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in
your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Today we commemorate the
baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, and I will soon invite you to participate
in a ritual renewal of baptismal vows. On this day it is particularly
appropriate for us to consider baptism, what it is, what it isn’t, why we do
it. Baptism is, of course, one of the foundations of the Christian faith. It is
one of only two rituals that we consider to be sacraments, to be rituals that
bring and reveal God’s grace. In most mainline traditions baptism is considered
mostly to be the sacrament through which a person becomes a part of the
Christian community. Yet as I have considered baptism this past week in
preparation for today’s service I have been thinking about the way that baptism
has often been seen as more than that. It has been seen to have greater, deeper
significance than that; and it is some of that greater, deeper significance that
I want to talk about this morning.
To do that let’s turn to
Saint Paul. He taught that baptism has a much more profound meaning than merely
being the sacrament through which a person becomes part of the Christian
community. It meant that for him too of course, but for him baptism symbolized
something far more profound. We see its meaning for Paul in the passage we
heard from Romans. In that passage Paul presents baptism as nothing less than a
dying to an old way of being and a rising into a new way of being. When we are
baptized, he says, we are baptized into Christ’s death “in order that just as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may live
a new life.” For Paul, when we rise from the waters of baptism, we have become new
people, reborn people, people who have died to the ways of the world and risen
into the ways of Christ, the ways of God. For Paul, baptism is a transformation
of our very nature as human beings. That certainly is a much more profound
understanding of baptism that our rather tepid “it is the sacrament by which a
person becomes part of the Christian community.”
Now Paul assumes a
couple of things about baptism that aren’t always true for us. He assumes adult
baptism not infant baptism That is, he assumes that baptism happens when a
person of an age to make her own decisions decides to become Christian. He also
assumes baptism by immersion, which is something we Congregationalists don’t
usually do. Still, I think Paul’s understanding of baptism is worth considering.
Let me suggest that try thinking of baptism as a symbolic dying to an old way
of life and a rising to a new way of life.
Of course, we can’t see
that happening when we baptize infants, and most of us were probably baptized
as infants. So let me suggest that we see the ritual of renewal of baptismal
vows that we’re about to do as that symbolic dying and rising with Christ. As
we renewal the commitments of baptism, let’s think about how we can rise into
new life with Christ. What would that mean? How would be have to be transformed
in order to live a new life in Christ? What would we have to do? What would we
have to stop doing? Would the ways we relate to the people in our lives change?
Would the ways we spend our money change, or the ways we spend our time? Would
how we treat God’s world change, or the ways in which we view our common life
together as a church, a community, a nation?
I actually think the
answers to all of those questions is yes. If we really lived a new life in
Christ all of those things would change, at least to some extent. I can’t tell
you how they would change in your life, and I don’t mean to suggest that we
aren’t already living Christian lives in many ways. I’m sure we are. Yet there
is always more. There is more we can do. There is more transformation we need
to become fully faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. There’s always more because
we never get all the way there. Only Jesus did that. Still, Jesus calls us
always on a journey of transformation. Jesus calls us always to deeper faith
and deeper commitment to the life he showed us. There’s always more to do.
So in a few minutes as
we participate in the ritual of renewal of baptismal vows, let’s think about
our baptisms mean in terms of us dying to an old way and rising to a new way.
The specifics of what that means will be different for each of us, and that’s
fine. We all live our own lives and walk on our own journeys. Yet we can all
rise higher than we have. We can always respond to Christ’s call better than we
have. I sure know I can, and I’m pretty sure you can too. So please take what
we’re about to do seriously. If we approach it in the proper spirit it can mean
a lot. May it be so. Amen.
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