Following is a revision of a mystagogical sermon on baptism,
written during my second year of seminary
to reflect on baptism and the cross
during the season of Lent.
Reading: Romans 6:3-11
I remember the day I thought I might drown.
I was seven.
I was at the lake that I’d been visiting with my family
every summer for as long as I could remember.
I knew this water – we had been friends.
Its playful waves had lapped around my ankles
while my gritty fingers shaped cakes of sand and clay
on the edge of the dock.
I had floated on its surface while the clear water held me up
and caught sunbeams in its ripples,
bouncing them all over the place
until the whole world seemed to shine…
But not this day.
This day there were waves and there was sun…
but I couldn’t see or feel them…
not from under the heavy numb darkness…
where I struggled and flailed
to pull my body up to the surface
so I could breathe –
but the water had swallowed me whole...
But suddenly,
just as the last ounce of fight was about to go out of me,
my father’s arms broke down into that dark cold place…
grabbed my shoulders hard…
halted my arms from their scrambling striking…
and he pulled me up through the surface
and into the sunlit air…
and once I was in his arms my whole body,
no longer shackled in the dark,
began to burn
with the exhaustion of my fighting…
and all I could do was gasp for breath.
I remember the day I thought I might drown.
But I don’t remember the day I actually did.
Do you?
It is too easy to forget that we have died already,
in this culture whose main goal
often seems to be denying death entirely.
We are taught to put it out of our minds
or to pretend we have control over it.
We buy products that promise perpetual youth,
and hide death away in sterile places
safely separated from our day to day living –
separated, that is, until death draws near…
ready to swallow us or the ones we love,
and we can’t pretend it isn’t there anymore.
It is also easy to forget death on days like this…
when we sit at the brink of spring
and life is ready to burst into bud,
poking its nose up out of the dirt all over the place.
Yet today, we are also poised to enter Jerusalem with Jesus.
As he journeys toward his passion in the weeks to come –
betrayal, cross, and tomb stand before him...
Death yawns at Golgotha…
ready to swallow up Christ and us…
Whether we wish to deny it or not, death is close now…
closer than when we were reminded a few weeks ago
that we are dust and will return to dust.
We are journeying through this wilderness time,
reflecting on how we have run away from life with God.
Like fickle Israel in the wilderness brought out of slavery
and headed towards the abundant land of God’s promise,
we have plenty of time to think
about where we have come from,
how we have wandered
and where we are headed.
So, as our dusty, weary-of-wandering bodies
trudge up towards Jerusalem,
we recall the words of Paul,
who tells us that being baptized into Christ Jesus
means being baptized into his death.
So, this cross towards which we walk is not just Jesus’ death.
It is ours.
In baptism, we share in the death
that Jesus Christ is about to die.
Without sharing in this death,
in this drowning,
we could not come to new life.
It is not until we are submitted to death
that we can be carried through it,
so our life may be transformed.
It is not until the water has swallowed us,
not until we truly die,
that God can make us truly to live.
Just as Moses’ mother surrendered him to the Nile –
the sound of the flowing water in his infant ears
on the other side of his thin pitch-sealed papyrus boat;
just as Noah and his family
and all the animals were tossed in the ark –
watching the whole earth be consumed,
listening to the boards creaking
and praying they would hold;
just as Jonah was thrown into the sea –
drifting down in suspended darkness
to be swallowed up by the great fish;
just as the disciples panicked
while water washed into their boat on the sea –
wondering whether Jesus would wake up and save them;
just as Paul was thrown into the sea
as his ship splintered on the reef –
searching for a piece of wreckage to cling to…
God’s power comes to us in drowning…
in a watery death…
and only in being carried through it
can we come to a future transformed.
So I’ll say again –
I remember the day I thought I might drown…
but I don’t remember the day I actually did.
Do you?
Do you remember the font where water touched your forehead,
or was poured over you,
or which you were thrust under?
Were you old enough to remember
and begin to understand what happened that day,
or do you have to rely on photographic evidence
of a small bald person in a frilly white dress
that you have been assured is you?
Do you remember drowning in the water that day,
and taking that first gasping breath
after you had died and been raised into new life by God?
The water that I first loved
and then feared as a seven year old child
proved to me that water can be both death and life…
and so it is fitting that God uses this sign
to bring us into the body of Christ –
through drowning and rebirth.
Water is truly an amazing force.
It has the power to carve canyons
and hold up water bugs skating on its surface.
It can wash away whole hillsides
and quench our thirst.
But this sign of water, as powerful as it is,
is still not enough on its own
to convey the extravagant grace
and shocking power of God in Christ.
In the early days of spring in the Midwest – my homeland –
we begin to see all around us what water can do –
how the melting trickling rivulets
that run over and into the soil
surround the seeds that have been hiding there.
But, it is not just the water that wakes the seeds.
The sun lingers longer now…and warmer.
As the water flows around the seeds,
the sunlight wakes them up…
In this way, God’s power comes to us
through the waters of Baptism,
with the added power of God’s Son.
Death by water is only death.
Death by water with the presence of Christ
brings life out of death.
And we know that for the new life of the spring earth
to be brought forth by water and sun,
the seeds that bear it must die.
So, even as we look for new life in Christ,
we see that we are like the grains of wheat
that must fall to the earth
and die to bring forth the harvest.
We die as water and the Son bring new life in us.
Moses died to the security of a childhood with his family
in order to bring a people out of slavery.
Noah died to a safe and simple life of quiet righteousness
in order to be the steward of everything
that lived on the face of the earth.
Jonah died to disobedience and denial of God
in order to bear God’s call to repentance
beyond Israel’s borders.
The disciples died (again and again) to doubt and fear
in order to discover (again and again) the power of Christ
and the coming kingdom.
Paul and his captors died to their prideful plans
and illusion of control
in order that God’s power might be revealed.
We die too,
as ones apart from God
with no hope of returning by our own power…
until we drown in the waters of baptism
and are lifted out by God’s hands
to the promised future,
in order to live the life God has dreamed for us.
So, hear the promise of baptism, the promise of life in God...
As we go up to Jerusalem now,
know that you journey within God’s promise…
Death comes to Jesus on the cross…and to us...
but the tomb cannot hold Christ…
nor will it hold us.
You have died.
You have drowned.
You have been raised.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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