This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Wednesday, March 3, 2010. Midweek services from Ash Wednesday through Maundy Thursday will explore the theme, “Living as Christians.”
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Readings
Exodus 14:10–30
Psalm 42
Romans 6:1–4
John 13:3–9
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Prayer
You call us to return to you, Lord God, and to leave behind all things that keep us from giving ourselves fully to serve you. Reach out to us with your Word, so that we may turn to face you and to give you glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Message
This is our third stop together
on our journey through Lent.
We have heard how the forces of evil
turn us away from God and His love.
We have learned how He calls us
to practice justice by loving others
because they are His creations and worthy of that love.
And tonight, we have readings
that tell us about the power of water.
When Moses, picked by God,
led Israel out of bondage in Egypt,
he parted the waters of the Red Sea,
by the power of God,
and the people crossed into freedom.
For them, water was the way to life.
But for the Egyptians in the army of Pharaoh,
that same water proved deadly
and the sea became their grave.
For David, the Psalmist,
water is less violent,
but still a force that sustains him in his relations with God,
but at the same time, marks his estrangement as well.
Few images are more gentle and peaceful than this one:
“As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.” (Psalm 41:1, NRSV)
We are like deer, thirsty for the cool waters of a stream.
And God is that long satisfying drink that slakes our thirst.
But on the other hand,
the waters can bear the judgment of God as well:
“Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows have gone over me.” (Psalm 42:7, NRSV)
And so, when the Church had adopted
Israel’s ancient practice of Baptism,
a ritual washing for repentance,
and inherited its beloved Scriptures,
it’s no surprise that St. Paul would write
about the washing of Baptism.
He recalls for us our plunging into the waters
and our dripping wet emergence as acts of God
that both judge and redeem us:
“Do you not know that all of us
who have been baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death?
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,
we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3–4, NRSV)
The waters of Baptism
blanket us with a shroud in our dying to sin,
but then become a receiving blanket
in which we writhe and cry as newborn babies,
dripping with the water of rebirth and renewal.
The power of Baptism comes in the plunge.
It comes when the Word and the water together
work our Father’s will in us
to wash us to death in Christ,
so that we may live by the Spirit.
We can’t be just a little baptized.
We can’t just dip our toes
into the shallow end of the font.
Baptism is not about being a little damp with water
and overhearing a few phrases of the Word.
Baptism is all about dunking, plunging,
sinking to the bottom, in over our heads,
and then coming up for air and life
and hearing the Word in full voice:
We are children of God,
named in His name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
As always, we can count on St. Peter
to lead the way for us
both in his misunderstanding of God
and in his headlong rush to follow our Lord in obedience.
So when Jesus, knowing that death stood waiting for Him,
tied the towel around His waist
and knelt at His disciples’ feet to wash them of dirt,
cleansing them for the next steps in their discipleship,
Peter objected:
“You will never wash my feet.” (John 13:8a, NRSV)
But Jesus tells him, the disciples around Peter,
and also you and me who hear this Gospel,
that we cannot be His unless He washes us.
We cannot be our Lord’s disciples
without the cleansing power of a good bath.
It is the water, with the Word Himself,
that kills the sinful selves crouching in us,
so that we may emerge reborn and redeemed.
As Martin Luther teaches us in his Small Catechism:
“How can water do such great things?
It is not water that does these things,
but God’s Word with the water and our trust in this Word.
Water by itself is only water,
but with the Word of God
it is a life-giving water
which by grace gives the new birth
through the Holy Spirit.” (SC, IV.3)
And so, Peter dives in, recklessly and wholeheartedly:
“Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.” (John 13:9, NRSV)
Peter leads us by example,
showing us how to live as Christians through Baptism.
We need not fear the deep end,
but instead we may dive into the Water and the Word,
trusting that Jesus Christ will draw us out
to walk with Him in newness of life,
just as God led Israel through the waters
to the far shore of the Red Sea. Amen.