Learning to Die

Lenten Vespers, Week Four

A Reading from the Small Catechism of the Rev Dr Martin Luther:

What is Baptism?

Baptism is not just plain water, but it is the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s word … It works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare …

The word of God in and with the water does these things, along with the faith which trusts this word of God in the water. For without God’s word the water is plain water and no Baptism. But with the word of God it is a Baptism, that is, a life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit …

It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“If you die before you die, you won’t die when you die.” Such is the inscription upon the gateway of one of the 20 monasteries found on Mt Athos in Greece. This epigram is a basic confession of the spiritual life. It has to do with dying to pride, dying to ego, that we might rise again, nobler, higher, no longer who we were before, but with the Spirit and the Life and the Breath of Christ within us.

Dying and rising. Death and Resurrection. Confession and Absolution. This is the heart of Christianity—and thus the heart of Christian Baptism.

So far this Lent we have spoken on God’s Law, the Trinity, and the practice of prayer. We turn now to the Holy Sacraments, the Mysteries of the Church. And our life in Christ begins with the Sacrament of Baptism, with water and the Word. Water, of course, is significant in all religions because human life is impossible without it. It bathes us, transports us, and slakes our thirst. Water flows through the heart of every civilization: waters of flood and of fertility, of death and each new birth.

Baptism is an initiation, and all initiative experiences involve dying and being reborn. At each new stage of life we bid farewell to who we were, that we may welcome who we are now to become. Baptism is the elevation and perfection of this universal human experience. The waters do not simply wash away our sins but drown us, drown who we were, the old sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. And we rise as the New Adam, as Christ Himself.

We are baptized into Jesus’ own death, already died for us, and into Jesus’ own eternal life, already begun. The old soul, the moral life, is crucified, and in its place arises the Holy Spirit, who is the very Life and Breath of God, dwelling now within us. The waters close over us as the earth closed over Jesus, and we burst forth again from those waters as Jesus burst forth from the spiced Tomb. In Baptism we are given the Name of Christ, the Spirit of Christ, and thus as well the mission of Christ.

We are to go and feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, instruct the ignorant, rebuke the wicked, forgive the sinner, and speak God’s Truth to power, knowing that it is no longer we who do these things but Christ who lives within us. Thus are we His Body. Thus are we His hands and feet and mouth and spine still at work in this world. And this is a lifelong struggle—to no longer be ourselves but to be little Christs for our neighbor.

But lo, I tell you a mystery: the more we drown the ego, the more we step aside and let Christ work through us, the more we finally become who we were meant to be all along. In losing our individual ambitions we become individuals at last.

All this is true not by our own efforts, not simply by the evocative symbolic power of water, but because of the Word of God, which is to say God’s promise to meet us in the waters. Baptism is the promise of God, God choosing us, God choosing sinners and claiming us for His own. And God does not break promises. Because of this, we baptize only once, and need never be baptized again. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. But we do need to return to our Baptism, return to God’s gracious promise, each and every day.

For indeed, if the Old Adam is drowned in Baptism, he yet remains a powerful swimmer. We still sin, do we not? We still fall short of what we know we ought to do: how we ought to serve, ought to love, ought to forgive our neighbor. That’s what sin is, really: not some bizarre religious taboo, but the failure to act in love on a practical daily basis. Christ calls us to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile—which really just means don’t retaliate.

Don’t return evil for evil. Learn to let things go. In the East they call this active inaction. And that’s a hard pill for us to swallow. The Christian is still to resist injustice, of course, still to defend the innocent and the oppressed. But not out of ego. When we are wronged, we are to forgive, to swallow our pride. And that feels like dying, doesn’t it? It feels like a narrow path, like a powerful Cross to bear. And yet this is the life to which Jesus calls His disciples. Let he who has ears to hear listen.

When we fall short of our calling to be the Body of Christ for this world—and we do so, oh, so very often, don’t we?—we return then to the waters of Baptism. We return to the promise of forgiveness in God. We confess our sins, both individually and as a body, and we lay them before the Font. And as surely as that water is wet, we are forgiven for our failure to love. And we are given new life, new birth, a new day in which to serve with joy. Every night, the Christian dies to her sins, and every morning she rises forgiven anew.

This doesn’t mean that we are freed from the consequences of sin. Indeed, true repentance must entail a willingness to set things right. Forgiving is not forgetting. When we forgive, we do not pretend that a wrong did not occur. Rather, forgiveness means that the relationship is restored, and we go forward now together: older, wiser, hopefully kinder, humbler for our repentance, and joyful in our absolution. Baptism is dying and rising in Christ, each and every day.

And so, when at long last our mortal life has run its course below, we need not fear to die. For we have been dying and rising our whole lives long. Mortal death is nothing more than the fulfillment of our Baptism, the fruition of God’s promise. And we rise from the grave that one last time, never to die again.

For if you die before you die, you won’t die when you die.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.