The Promise Of Baptism
Sermon
The Presence In The Promise
First Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Cycle C
William F. Buckley, Jr., has earned the respect of some of his harshest critics with the publication of Nearer, My God. Many of his critics have been among the theologians who have had great difficulty with his rightist opinions. It is not that conservative viewpoints are not welcome, but Mr. Buckley has a penchant for delivering his thoughts in a cavalier style that betrays a snide manner of talking down to people. However, his book Nearer, My God is not offensive in its approach to Mr. Buckley's confession of faith. A baptized and confirmed Roman Catholic from his youth, the author reveals a studied approach to the faith that reveals his struggles with the great questions that can trouble us all. Obviously quite satisfied with the strength that he gains from his faith, Mr. Buckley has refrained from making a public display of religious language in the public debates he enjoys immensely.
When Buckley was asked by his publisher to write about his faith, his publisher suggested the title, "Why I am Still a Catholic." Buckley flinched at that, because that suggests there is something wrong with being a Catholic. Likewise, he balked at the title, "Why I am a Catholic." He wanted to express his faith as he understood it. While he does defend the authoritarian approach of the papacy, he also leaves room for critical observations of the practices of his denomination. When one reads the kind of personal confession we get from Mr. Buckley, we are reminded that all of us should be ready to give an autobiography of the faith that is in us. If we were to do so, there would be no better way than for us to begin where our spiritual journey began, namely, in holy baptism. On this First Sunday after the Epiphany of our Lord, we are helped to understand what happened on that important day in our lives, and why our faith should be so important to us.
The Baptism Of Israel
The Holy Gospel appointed for today records the Baptism of our Lord. We observe this day as the Baptism of our Lord. It is fitting that the selection from the Hebrew Scriptures as the First Lesson would treat the story of the Israelites as a ritualistic baptism, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you." The prophet who writes these words is the Second Isaiah. The First Isaiah had conducted his ministry prior to the exile of Judah into Babylon. A second prophet named Isaiah found his calling in assuring the Hebrew exiles that they would return to the land they once had called their own. Working against the blindness and indifference to what God had done for the Hebrews and what God could do again, the prophet does his utmost to rouse the people to an awareness of how God rules in history. The God who had created all and redeemed a special people could recreate them in fulfillment of the promises God had made.
The God of Creation is also the Lord of History. God could use Cyrus, the King of Persia, to bring about the fall of Babylon in the same way that God had caused the Hebrews to fall into the hands of the Babylonians. As a servant of God, Cyrus would permit God's people to return to their homeland in Palestine with protection and every effort to afford complete restoration of this people. As the exiles made their homeward way as they passed through the waters en route, they could think of their traversing those waters as a baptism. The waters that can be so troublesome, so threatening and overwhelming should behave under the rule of the Creator. Instead of drowning and destroying this people, the waters would not behave as the enemy, but, under God's control, the waters would be the assurance of their salvation. The waters, so prominent in God's creation, so necessary for the sustenance of life, so essential to the cleansing and purifying of life, would now perform their best function on behalf of the people. The waters would testify that God was present with them. God says, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you." The waters would not be ordinary waters, but they would be, by the presence of God, a washing of regeneration and renewal, as the Apostle Paul speaks about the waters of holy baptism. The waters would be the visible witness that God was redeeming and saving this people.
The Precondition For Baptism
The beauty of this prophetic text is that the prophet explains that God makes it clear that the precondition of the salvation God would prepare in the waters of baptism is what God has done to make the baptism a valid one. The prophet reports that the God who had created, formed, and redeemed this people is the one who says, "Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine." There are many within Christendom who make the validity of baptism totally dependent upon what the candidate for baptism believes or does. The candidate must make himself or herself worthy of the rite that admits one into the kingdom. In that event, baptism becomes a hoop through which the candidate must jump. Here the prophet recognizes that the waters through which Israel must pass become salvatory, because of what God has already done before the Children of Israel come to the waters. God had created them. God had also recreated them as God's people, that is, God had given them a special and unique call to be the people of God through whom God could reveal God to the world. This redemptive work of God is so unique and so sure that God can say that God has called them by name.
Saying that God was calling Israel by name means more than that their name was to distinguish them from other peoples or nations. In the ancient world a name did more than hang a tag on someone. The name was to represent the nature of the person designated. All of the references to the name of God are to convey the fact that God is totally trustworthy, true, faithful, reliable, just, and good. So it is that the prophet notes that when God says, "I have called you by name," God also says, "You are mine." For the people of God to be called by name means that they belong to God. They are ruled by God, and, as we shall hear, they are called by God's name. So we are not to think of baptism as a name-giving ceremony in the ordinary sense, but in the conviction that in baptism we are granted the very name of God, because we are God's.
Baptism Is Conditioning
In the case of Israel, the prophet wanted them to understand that in the baptism Israel would have in passing through the waters with the presence of God, God was conditioning them for whatever they had to face. The time of their exile in Babylon would soon be history. The Israelites had to know that the God who had sent them into exile to give them a wake-up call at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King, was also the God who would deliver them by the hand of Cyrus, the king of Persia. The experience of God's saving love and grace for them was conditioning them to be able to face whatever trauma would come along the way. The troubled waters would be the sign of their baptism into God's love and grace. So also they could pass through any fiery trials and accept them as a refining process for their betterment. Instead of being consumed by the fires, they could accept them as a maturing process for the children of God. The baptism into the Presence of God should prepare them for all of life.
Our Christian baptism is to do the same for us. When our Lord Jesus Christ was baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, he could well have thought of this beautiful passage from Isaiah. At his baptism God was preparing the beloved Son for the ministry which he was to begin which would be filled with troubled waters and fiery temptations and trials. When Jesus heard the words. "You are my Son, the Beloved," that echoed the word of God from Isaiah, "I have called you by name, you are mine." In the same way our baptism is to remind us that God has conditioned us for life through this act by which he has permitted the waters to be the sign of washing, cleansing, and renewing us for life in all its forms and conditions. We are prepared to face what we must, because we know that the divine resources of God are at our disposal. God is not only in our corner, but God acts on our behalf.
Baptism Is The Sign Of God's Action On Our Behalf
As the people of Israel would return from exile through the waters of baptism, they could be sure that God would control history for their sake. God says, "I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life." The prophet lists the nations that were conquered by the Persians so that Israel could be free. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sheba would be among them. God also promises that nations to the east or west, north or south would have to relinquish Israelites so that they could be returned to their home. We can only imagine how much the Hebrew people have had to rely on these promises as they have endured exile and persecution one after the other until the worst Holocaust of them all under the Nazis. Yet the Hebrew people endure, because of the promise of God.
As the Hebrew people benefitted from the promise of God in their baptism, so our baptism is a reminder for us that God is always working on our behalf to break the will and purpose of all those who would hinder God's best intentions for us. God gave the Son, the Beloved, in exchange for our lives. In baptism God exchanged our unrighteousness for the righteousness of Jesus Christ. In baptism God exchanged the faithfulness of Jesus for our unfaithfulness. Martin Luther stated over and over again that we should rely heavily on God's promise in Holy Baptism. We can wear our baptism daily. When we are attacked by trials and temptations, we can always throw it in the teeth of the devil that we are baptized. We are not immune to the trials and temptations, but we are assured of victory over them because of God's action on our behalf.
Baptism Wards Off Fear
Because baptism is an assurance for us that God is always acting on our behalf, our baptism is also reason for us to be confident and trusting. We do not have to fear. Baptism wards off fear. Twice the prophet mentions that we do not have to fear. "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you," God says. And again, "Do not fear, for I am with you." God's attitude toward us is all love. God acts on our behalf, God says, "Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you." We can be sure that God will not renege on all that is contained in the baptismal covenant of God's grace for us. What it takes is faith and trust that God is serious about the business of loving and caring for us.
In a collection of essays called Common Ground three rabbis comment on the Rainbow after the Flood, which God calls a covenant between God and God's creatures and the creation. It was to be a reminder that God would never again destroy the earth as God had done so extensively in the flood. The problem was posed that it is extremely baffling that God should need a reminder. What was even more baffling is that the reminder is somewhat dependent upon being seen by humans. Yet that is how it is. One rabbi noted that the rainbow is significant simply because it is God who created it. Beyond that it is for us that it is created. Consequently it is for us to believe it. So our baptism is a sign for us between God and us in the same way. We can appeal to it always as a reminder that God gave baptism as the sign, and we can trust it, because God stands behind it.
Baptism Is For The Future
The crowning feature of the baptism God has created for us is that it is designed for the future. The purpose of Isaiah's word for his people was to assure them that God would deliver them from the exile, but in so doing God was preparing and creating them for the future. They were to share in God's glory. They are the people, God says, "whom I created for my glory." That is the kind of promise God makes in holy baptism. In baptism God promises to raise us from the dead and allow us to enter glory with God. That is what happened to the Beloved Son, Jesus. As Jesus was baptized God gave assurance that God would be with Jesus. And God was. Jesus died on the cross, because people rejected and did not believe God's love, but God raised the Son from the dead. God will do the same for us. That is the baptismal promise. Paul puts it, "We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Romans 6:4-5). Paul's emphasis in this section was on the fact that in baptism we discover new life. Daily we live as the newborn children of God who are privileged to live in the Spirit of God.
In John Updike's novel Toward the End of Time, Ben Turnbull is the central character. The story is set in Eastern America in the second decade of the new millennium after a Sino-American nuclear war that had reduced the world's population fifty percent. A retired stock broker, at age 66, Ben finds himself tinkering with other worlds and other times. As a typical Updike character, he represents humanity's entrapment with the mystery of sex. He reminisces. He finds himself caught up in other worlds of other times. He struggles against his own mortality. The struggle with our inevitable mortality is what the novel teaches us. However, as we contemplate our baptism, our future is certain as we move "toward the end of time." By baptism our future is already guaranteed, because we trust that in baptism God has created us for divine glory. We can write our autobiography of faith, because we know the ending. We are destined for glory by baptism to share glory with our Lord Jesus Christ.
When Buckley was asked by his publisher to write about his faith, his publisher suggested the title, "Why I am Still a Catholic." Buckley flinched at that, because that suggests there is something wrong with being a Catholic. Likewise, he balked at the title, "Why I am a Catholic." He wanted to express his faith as he understood it. While he does defend the authoritarian approach of the papacy, he also leaves room for critical observations of the practices of his denomination. When one reads the kind of personal confession we get from Mr. Buckley, we are reminded that all of us should be ready to give an autobiography of the faith that is in us. If we were to do so, there would be no better way than for us to begin where our spiritual journey began, namely, in holy baptism. On this First Sunday after the Epiphany of our Lord, we are helped to understand what happened on that important day in our lives, and why our faith should be so important to us.
The Baptism Of Israel
The Holy Gospel appointed for today records the Baptism of our Lord. We observe this day as the Baptism of our Lord. It is fitting that the selection from the Hebrew Scriptures as the First Lesson would treat the story of the Israelites as a ritualistic baptism, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you." The prophet who writes these words is the Second Isaiah. The First Isaiah had conducted his ministry prior to the exile of Judah into Babylon. A second prophet named Isaiah found his calling in assuring the Hebrew exiles that they would return to the land they once had called their own. Working against the blindness and indifference to what God had done for the Hebrews and what God could do again, the prophet does his utmost to rouse the people to an awareness of how God rules in history. The God who had created all and redeemed a special people could recreate them in fulfillment of the promises God had made.
The God of Creation is also the Lord of History. God could use Cyrus, the King of Persia, to bring about the fall of Babylon in the same way that God had caused the Hebrews to fall into the hands of the Babylonians. As a servant of God, Cyrus would permit God's people to return to their homeland in Palestine with protection and every effort to afford complete restoration of this people. As the exiles made their homeward way as they passed through the waters en route, they could think of their traversing those waters as a baptism. The waters that can be so troublesome, so threatening and overwhelming should behave under the rule of the Creator. Instead of drowning and destroying this people, the waters would not behave as the enemy, but, under God's control, the waters would be the assurance of their salvation. The waters, so prominent in God's creation, so necessary for the sustenance of life, so essential to the cleansing and purifying of life, would now perform their best function on behalf of the people. The waters would testify that God was present with them. God says, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you." The waters would not be ordinary waters, but they would be, by the presence of God, a washing of regeneration and renewal, as the Apostle Paul speaks about the waters of holy baptism. The waters would be the visible witness that God was redeeming and saving this people.
The Precondition For Baptism
The beauty of this prophetic text is that the prophet explains that God makes it clear that the precondition of the salvation God would prepare in the waters of baptism is what God has done to make the baptism a valid one. The prophet reports that the God who had created, formed, and redeemed this people is the one who says, "Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine." There are many within Christendom who make the validity of baptism totally dependent upon what the candidate for baptism believes or does. The candidate must make himself or herself worthy of the rite that admits one into the kingdom. In that event, baptism becomes a hoop through which the candidate must jump. Here the prophet recognizes that the waters through which Israel must pass become salvatory, because of what God has already done before the Children of Israel come to the waters. God had created them. God had also recreated them as God's people, that is, God had given them a special and unique call to be the people of God through whom God could reveal God to the world. This redemptive work of God is so unique and so sure that God can say that God has called them by name.
Saying that God was calling Israel by name means more than that their name was to distinguish them from other peoples or nations. In the ancient world a name did more than hang a tag on someone. The name was to represent the nature of the person designated. All of the references to the name of God are to convey the fact that God is totally trustworthy, true, faithful, reliable, just, and good. So it is that the prophet notes that when God says, "I have called you by name," God also says, "You are mine." For the people of God to be called by name means that they belong to God. They are ruled by God, and, as we shall hear, they are called by God's name. So we are not to think of baptism as a name-giving ceremony in the ordinary sense, but in the conviction that in baptism we are granted the very name of God, because we are God's.
Baptism Is Conditioning
In the case of Israel, the prophet wanted them to understand that in the baptism Israel would have in passing through the waters with the presence of God, God was conditioning them for whatever they had to face. The time of their exile in Babylon would soon be history. The Israelites had to know that the God who had sent them into exile to give them a wake-up call at the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian King, was also the God who would deliver them by the hand of Cyrus, the king of Persia. The experience of God's saving love and grace for them was conditioning them to be able to face whatever trauma would come along the way. The troubled waters would be the sign of their baptism into God's love and grace. So also they could pass through any fiery trials and accept them as a refining process for their betterment. Instead of being consumed by the fires, they could accept them as a maturing process for the children of God. The baptism into the Presence of God should prepare them for all of life.
Our Christian baptism is to do the same for us. When our Lord Jesus Christ was baptized in the River Jordan by John the Baptist, he could well have thought of this beautiful passage from Isaiah. At his baptism God was preparing the beloved Son for the ministry which he was to begin which would be filled with troubled waters and fiery temptations and trials. When Jesus heard the words. "You are my Son, the Beloved," that echoed the word of God from Isaiah, "I have called you by name, you are mine." In the same way our baptism is to remind us that God has conditioned us for life through this act by which he has permitted the waters to be the sign of washing, cleansing, and renewing us for life in all its forms and conditions. We are prepared to face what we must, because we know that the divine resources of God are at our disposal. God is not only in our corner, but God acts on our behalf.
Baptism Is The Sign Of God's Action On Our Behalf
As the people of Israel would return from exile through the waters of baptism, they could be sure that God would control history for their sake. God says, "I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life." The prophet lists the nations that were conquered by the Persians so that Israel could be free. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sheba would be among them. God also promises that nations to the east or west, north or south would have to relinquish Israelites so that they could be returned to their home. We can only imagine how much the Hebrew people have had to rely on these promises as they have endured exile and persecution one after the other until the worst Holocaust of them all under the Nazis. Yet the Hebrew people endure, because of the promise of God.
As the Hebrew people benefitted from the promise of God in their baptism, so our baptism is a reminder for us that God is always working on our behalf to break the will and purpose of all those who would hinder God's best intentions for us. God gave the Son, the Beloved, in exchange for our lives. In baptism God exchanged our unrighteousness for the righteousness of Jesus Christ. In baptism God exchanged the faithfulness of Jesus for our unfaithfulness. Martin Luther stated over and over again that we should rely heavily on God's promise in Holy Baptism. We can wear our baptism daily. When we are attacked by trials and temptations, we can always throw it in the teeth of the devil that we are baptized. We are not immune to the trials and temptations, but we are assured of victory over them because of God's action on our behalf.
Baptism Wards Off Fear
Because baptism is an assurance for us that God is always acting on our behalf, our baptism is also reason for us to be confident and trusting. We do not have to fear. Baptism wards off fear. Twice the prophet mentions that we do not have to fear. "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you," God says. And again, "Do not fear, for I am with you." God's attitude toward us is all love. God acts on our behalf, God says, "Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you." We can be sure that God will not renege on all that is contained in the baptismal covenant of God's grace for us. What it takes is faith and trust that God is serious about the business of loving and caring for us.
In a collection of essays called Common Ground three rabbis comment on the Rainbow after the Flood, which God calls a covenant between God and God's creatures and the creation. It was to be a reminder that God would never again destroy the earth as God had done so extensively in the flood. The problem was posed that it is extremely baffling that God should need a reminder. What was even more baffling is that the reminder is somewhat dependent upon being seen by humans. Yet that is how it is. One rabbi noted that the rainbow is significant simply because it is God who created it. Beyond that it is for us that it is created. Consequently it is for us to believe it. So our baptism is a sign for us between God and us in the same way. We can appeal to it always as a reminder that God gave baptism as the sign, and we can trust it, because God stands behind it.
Baptism Is For The Future
The crowning feature of the baptism God has created for us is that it is designed for the future. The purpose of Isaiah's word for his people was to assure them that God would deliver them from the exile, but in so doing God was preparing and creating them for the future. They were to share in God's glory. They are the people, God says, "whom I created for my glory." That is the kind of promise God makes in holy baptism. In baptism God promises to raise us from the dead and allow us to enter glory with God. That is what happened to the Beloved Son, Jesus. As Jesus was baptized God gave assurance that God would be with Jesus. And God was. Jesus died on the cross, because people rejected and did not believe God's love, but God raised the Son from the dead. God will do the same for us. That is the baptismal promise. Paul puts it, "We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Romans 6:4-5). Paul's emphasis in this section was on the fact that in baptism we discover new life. Daily we live as the newborn children of God who are privileged to live in the Spirit of God.
In John Updike's novel Toward the End of Time, Ben Turnbull is the central character. The story is set in Eastern America in the second decade of the new millennium after a Sino-American nuclear war that had reduced the world's population fifty percent. A retired stock broker, at age 66, Ben finds himself tinkering with other worlds and other times. As a typical Updike character, he represents humanity's entrapment with the mystery of sex. He reminisces. He finds himself caught up in other worlds of other times. He struggles against his own mortality. The struggle with our inevitable mortality is what the novel teaches us. However, as we contemplate our baptism, our future is certain as we move "toward the end of time." By baptism our future is already guaranteed, because we trust that in baptism God has created us for divine glory. We can write our autobiography of faith, because we know the ending. We are destined for glory by baptism to share glory with our Lord Jesus Christ.
