Trinity 6 2019

Romans 6:3-11

July 28, 2019

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

This last Wednesday we held another funeral here, this one for Marvin Gilster. So far this year, that makes 5 of our brothers and sisters who have transferred from Zion to the heavenly congregation of saints. Each of these are sad for us, but not for the deceased.  They are in the never presence of Christ awaiting the resurrection of the dead and eternal life in the new creation. 

In our funerals, we often begin with a remembrance of baptism. The paschal candle is lit as a reminder that in baptism, Christ who is the light of the world has been received in faith.  The casket is front and center here in the church, head laid at the west in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the body facing the coming Christ. A while pall with a gigantic golden cross and the initials of Jesus, IHS, upon it.  The pall symbolizing that the blessed dead are clothed in the robe of Christ’s righteousness even now.  The words from our Epistle for this morning, from Romans 6, are read.

It’s a powerful image, but even more powerful words about a powerful sacrament. Draws us back to Easter, to the victory we have through Jesus Christ.  When God baptizes He unites a person with the death and the resurrection of Jesus.  This is where baptism gets its power to save us.  It’s not in the water, as if the water was holy in and of itself.  It’s not in the pastor who pours the water over our heads, as if he has some special pastor power to make baptism work.  It’s not in those who are being baptized, as if baptism does what it does because of something we do.  We don’t baptize ourselves.   God baptizes.  God is the One doing the work.  If baptism were merely our work it could not provide us with the forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit.  But baptism is God’s work.  It is a wonderful work that has its power in is the death and resurrection of Jesus.  You are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection.  Sins are forgiven and death cannot rule.  God has delivered new life to live.

This is how St. Paul can say that we who are baptized into His death are also baptized into His life.  When God calls a person to faith, He bids them to come and die.  In order to live, you must die.  “A do-it-yourself approach to the Christian life is doomed from `the start.  Reform a sinner and you get a reformed sinner.  Discipline a sinner and you get a disciplined sinner.  Educate a sinner and you get an educated sinner.  In every case, you still have the same sinner you started out with.  No, the Old Adam will not be tamed or reformed or disciplined or educated. He can only be killed.  And this is just what God does; in Holy Baptism we are put to death and buried. But since it is the death and burial of Jesus, it makes all the difference in the world.  His death and burial brings with it resurrection and new life.  By Holy Baptism the Triune God crucifies our Old Adam, buries our sin, raises us as a new creation, and clothes us in Jesus Christ—thus giving us a whole new life to live.  This is the authentic formula for Christian living.”[1]

Baptism is a deadly thing.  Baptism kills.  At your baptism, God’s applies Christ’s death to you so that you receive the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice.  Baptism connects you with Christ’s work.  Jesus was intent on dying our death.  And die He did. Suffering and hanging on a cross.  It was a borrowed death.  It was our death.  But it brought life.  Thus your Baptism into Christ is your grave, a watery grave.  But it is also the womb where new birth from above happens, where Christians are born again in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Holy Baptism, then, is both your tomb of death and your womb of life. Baptism kills you in order that through Jesus you might be raised back to life. 

Because it is a work of God, baptism gives.  It doesn’t lend, rent, or sell.  You cannot buy forgiveness.  You can’t earn forgiveness.  If God is going to forgive you, it will have to be on His terms.  He required the obedience and death of His only begotten Son.  That’s where forgiveness comes from.  Jesus died for your sins.  Jesus rose from the dead for your justification.  That’s where your new life comes from.  So St. Paul writes, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” This is your reality, your identity.  Who is a person is, is not defined by gender, job, or judgments, but by your baptismal identity – dead to sin, set free from sin, dead with Christ, made alive to God in Christ. 

Through your baptism, you have already escaped death.  Instead of the death which sin has brought on you, eternal life has begun in you. The new life begun in your baptism is one of constant struggle against sin in which we continue to rely on the atoning work of Christ and the indwelling spirit to be led as children of God. All that is His by His nature as the Son of God becomes yours by His grace. Faith receives what Christ accomplished on the cross, Baptism delivers it to you.

In your baptism, God has united you to the death and resurrection of Jesus.  You are united with Christ.  This is called the mystical union.  It is closer than the union of a man and a woman, a mother and her child, or any brotherly or sisterly love known to mankind.  It is a union with God Himself, a communion with brothers and sisters in Christ as we are brought into the one, holy Christian and apostolic church.  One is made part of God’s body, part of God’s church, by baptism into its Head, who is Jesus.  The church is the Communion of Saints, the fellowship of God’s holy people.  They are made holy by the washing of Holy Baptism where the Holy Spirit washes her clean in the blood of the Lamb. 

Every day you can return to this blessed washing where God sealed His forgiveness of sins and filled you with the Holy Spirit.  When we get up in the morning, claim the promise of your baptism.  By daily contrition and repentance, the old sinful man should be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.