Sixth Sunday After Pentecost Year A 2008

06 Pentecost A 08
June 22, 2008

Romans 6:1b-11
Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore 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. 5 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. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.


A Death Like His

I saw the movie Nanking last night. This is the film we’ll be showing next Friday at our first Thoughtful Christian Movie Night. It’s about the invasion of the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937. It was a nightmarish and awful event, one of the most violent and hellish in the 20th century. In the film, a number of Westerners decide not to accept the opportunity for evacuation and instead to stay and help. Most of them were missionaries. One said, “this is an opportunity for service of the highest order.”

Most of them said goodbye to their families. All of them risked their lives.

A pastor told the story to his congregation about Millard Fuller, a powerful businessman and millionaire who had an intense conversion experience and dedicated his life to Christ. He gave up his lucrative business and devote his considerable fortune to founding Habitat for Humanity. In doing so he gave up his lavish lifestyle. After the sermon, one of the pastor’s congregation came up and asked, “How old were his children when he did this?” His point was the Fuller had no right to deprive his children for the sake of his own spiritual life.

Among people recovering from addiction in the twelve step fellowships there is a saying. “Whatever you put before recovery, you will therefore probably lose.”

So often people come to the fellowship and say, “My family is my top priority.” The sponsor will immediately tell the person, “Recovery needs to be your top priority, otherwise you’ll probably lose your family.”

Many, many addicts end up dead or alone or in institutions because they decided to stay home from meetings to be with their families or to work some extra hours. Without the spiritual medicine the meetings provide the addict, he ends up drifting inexorably back toward the problem. The addict finds this mystifying. “Doesn’t God want me to be with my family? Doesn’t God want me to be a success in my job? Aren’t you people telling me if I do God’s will I won’t use or drink?”

The great wisdom here is that it is not the doing of sinful things that is the primary reason people sin. People sin most often because they think the matter so important that God’s rules can be suspended. When it is a matter of some exalted value, like family, personal fulfillment, patriotism or financial security, people think, “well, surely God didn’t mean this situation.”

God said, “Don’t murder other people,” but he surely didn’t mean for us to apply that to a self-defense situation. God said, “Don’t commit adultery,” but surely he didn’t mean when one’s marriage is really, really miserable. God said, “you shall have no other Gods,” but surely he didn’t mean we should put him first in everything. God said, “you shall not steal,” but surely he didn’t mean I couldn’t take a little from the expense account, particularly since I’m underpaid.

I read portions of a study of religious-based warfare and insurrection, and found it very interesting that the deeper causes of such conflict were thought to be found much more in the bonds of family than in religious beliefs. The way people got into the fight was when a beloved uncle or aunt was killed. This fuels the battle much more strongly than do religious differences. Religious differences are brought in to legitimize simple vengeance.

Some of you may have seen the television documentary some years ago about the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Ireland. One of the things the interviewers asked was, “what are the religious issues that separate you from each other.” Those being interviewed had no answer. “They’re protestants, we’re catholics. That’s all I need to know.” Deeper questioning revealed many memories of beloved relatives murdered by the opposition.

Putting one’s family above all other things is one of the great values of human society. And yet, this great value becomes the fuel for great societal evil.

Going back to Nanking, remember the quote, “service of the highest order”? The man who said that, and who became a hero in the story, was a card-carrying Nazi. It is possible for good people, for good reasons, to be drawn into great evil.

It is most often for the sake of something good that we stoop to the despicable. This is precisely why sin is so insidious. No one rises in the morning and says, "Today I will make the world a worse place than it was yesterday." Rather, people say, "Today I will do the best I can to live to the highest possible standards." And then, off they go to commit great evil.

How, to paraphrase Paul, can we be saved from this insidious sin?

Paul says “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

He’s talking about baptism. Now, I don’t want anyone to miss this. Baptism is the most important thing that has ever happened to you. I sometimes think we don’t talk enough about how important and singular and magnificent this thing called baptism is. Maybe it’s because Disciples got so caught up with how people should be baptized they forgot to talk about what baptism is.

What do you think baptism is? The washing away of sins? Yes. The promise of salvation? Yes. The initiation into the church? Certainly.

Paul says here that in baptism we are united with Jesus in a death like his.

Jesus was executed because he was more loyal to God than he was to his nation, more loyal to God to the popular religious leaders of his day, and more loyal to God even than he was to his own family. He regarded God as his only king, and therefore snubbed the emperor of Rome and King Herod of Israel. He regarded the scriptures as his only religious teacher, and so he snubbed the most respected and powerful religious experts in his time. Jesus welcomed as his followers people rejected by his religious community, and so really irked the religious leaders who depended on the divisions to keep themselves in power. He regarded his family as those who did the will of God and not his earthly mother or father or siblings, and so he snubbed the ancient convention of family unity. For all of these snubs, for the simple fact that Jesus lived his life toward a higher and better power, the powers of the world conspired together not only to snuff him out but to do so in the most horrific way they could think of.

This is the death of baptism. It is being removed from the power of the world’s conventional authorities and willingly accepting the punishment that comes with it, in order to be faithful to a greater and better authority, the authority of the living God.

To be baptized is to be killed. I’m putting it that way to provoke you, but it is pretty accurate. It is to be changed on such a fundamental level that the person you were ceases to exist.

Now we have said this for a few Sundays now. God’s righteousness is not like ours, God’s faithfulness is not like ours, God’s justice is not like ours. Christ opens the way for those things of God to be given to us. We are not born with them and the world cannot give them to us.
Baptism if the symbol of the process by which God transforms us.

A new person is born to take the old person’s place. Now even though the rite of baptism happens only once, the process unfolds throughout your life. By practicing the way of life Jesus modeled for us, by praying, examining ourselves honestly, worshipping frequently, giving generously and serving willingly, we grow into the fullness of our baptism. We die to sin and rise to Christ.

When I was a kid, I remember my mother would buy me jeans that were two sizes too big. I hated that. Did your mother do that to you? The idea was that you could roll up the pant leg and tighten in the belt to make them fit. First you’d have to roll them two or three times to keep them off your shoes. Of course, inevitably as you ran around all day, they’d come loose and you’d look like a goober walking around with your pants dragging behind you. So off you’d go and eat like a pig and play like there was no tomorrow and sleep the sleep of the dead in between. And then the day would come when you’d only have to roll them up only once instead of twice. And then you’d forget about it and eat and play and sleep and pretty soon, you wouldn’t have to roll them up at all. A little longer and your ankles would be showing and oops, here comes another pair two sizes too big!

Baptism is like that. It’s as if God put a big beautiful robe over your head that was three times bigger than you were. At first, you stumble around barely able to see, barely able to accomplish anything. But as you eat and drink of the grace of God and play in the garden of his love, you grow.

And as you grow, the robe fits better and better. It gets in your way less and less. Eventually it fits you just fine, and you are able to do everything in it.

This is what baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus is like. It is like that robe. The robe is everything it is supposed to be, all given at once. But our response is not like that. Very, very rarely do people immediately transform. Instead, they practice the way of Christ, serving him and obeying him as a student serves and obeys his master.

And eventually, they come to share in the death like his, the crucifixion to all the things the world thinks are most important, and because of this, they are assured they will be raised into a resurrection like his, to transcend death and bless the world forever.

Amen.