Die All, Die Merrily

Full of Eyes

  

Propers: Ash Wednesday, AD 2025 C

Sermon:

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.

“Doomsday is near: die all, die merrily.”

—Henry IV, Part 1, Act IV.

Baptism is the heart of Lent: Baptism, which is nothing less than death and resurrection.

We forget the sheer scandal of a Crucified God. The classical world commonly held gods to be immortal, physically flawless, save for such extreme exceptions as Hephaestus, hurled as a child from Olympus’ peak, thus hobbled for the rest of time. But enlightened philosophers, well-read men, did not take such myths literally. They believed in the gods, but to their credit did not hold that the gods could be capable of evil. Many a biblical literalist could learn from their example.

The notion of a god appearing as human, that wasn’t so bad in itself. Gods could appear however they saw fit, which tends to be our own understanding of angels. But the concept of a god becoming truly human, with all the requisite fragility, flesh, and filth, sweat and spit and stink, that proved beyond the pale. Now imagine the Christian claim that not just a god but the God—the One eternal, infinite, almighty, all-knowing, omnibenevolent Creator of the cosmos—became incarnate as a poor Jewish rabbi, wandering the desert wastes, until tortured to death as a traitor.

I mean, that’s just gross, right? Scandalous. Gauche. And His followers were even worse. Men and women, citizens and slaves, foreigners and freedmen, gentiles and Jews, would gather all together every week, regardless of social status, in order to share some weird mystery cult initiation where they drowned children and then consumed the flesh and blood of their murdered God. What a bunch of atheists! I heard that sometimes the women were in charge, so you know something funny’s going on.

Christians were dangerous. In between their bizarre and blasphemous rites, they were out in the streets, tossing aside the established social order, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, riling up the poor and oppressed, telling young men not to join the Legions. So of course they had to be killed; but, you know, in a civilized manner. Make a public example of some. Aim for the leaders, the outspoken, the prominent. Give them every reasonable opportunity to repent. Then make sure at least they die in an entertaining way. Waste not.

This remained the reality for three centuries in the Church. To walk the Way of Jesus was to bear the Cross of Christ, not as a metaphor but as an instrument of execution. You ran a very real risk of ending up as one of Nero’s torches, or Diocletian’s lions’ food. So when we talk of Baptism as baptism into death, keep in mind that such was rather literal.

When Christ neared Jerusalem for that final fatal time, He discouraged many from following Him, for concern that they didn’t understand what they were in for. All that talk of putting hand to the plow and not looking back, of letting the dead bury their own dead, I read that not as a condemnation but as protection. People had to understand the perils of the faith. Go home before you get yourselves killed.

I have often opined that engagements are meant to be broken. It sounds a little cynical, but I think it’s true. You need a period of preparation, of knowing what you’re getting into, before you make the leap. This is triply true for becoming a Christian. Those who were drawn to Christ, who sought out Christian Baptism regardless of the cost, were required to undergo a time of training, learning, penitence and prayer. This could last a year or more, as body, mind, and soul must all be armed for what’s ahead.

The Western Church—for better or for worse always a bit more practical than the mystical East—pared this period of catechesis down to 40 days, a number rife with biblical significance, representative as it is of the 40 weeks necessary to bring a child to term. 40 is the number of birth, of the pain and growth entailed in bearing forth new life. For 40 days, minus the festival Sundays, the catechumenate would fast, repent, read, and pray; culminating with their Baptism at the Easter Vigil. Immediately thereafter, in the same liturgy, they would be welcomed to Holy Communion at the Table of our Lord.

In those waters, by the power of God the Holy Spirit, the Old Adam in them, the old and sinful creature in us all, drowned; and they arose from those waters with the life of Christ within them; bearing His Name and His Spirit; brought to His Body and Blood. We are baptized into Jesus’ death, already died for us, that we need never fear death again; and into His eternal life, already here begun. We are baptized only once, yet we live it each and every day: dying every evening to our sin, rising every morning now in Him.

Over time, baptized Christians began to observe Lent in solidarity with the catechumenate who were preparing for it. And this is good, because the gift of our Baptism is a living reality, a process of God’s grace always at work within us. We too need fasting, prayer, and penance. We need to learn to let go: to let go of fear, let go of greed, let go of our egos and excesses. Fasting is a freedom. It helps us to untether from merely material things, from the over-consumptive practices that eat away our souls.

Consider this the athletic dimension of our faith. We fast from little things, do right in little ways, be honest with little truths, so that when the time comes, when our lives are on the line, we might have the strength to do what is beautiful, good, and true regardless of the cost. As athletes lift weights in order to train for the contest, so we practice little mercies to prepare to be Christ for the world. For he who is faithful in little, shall be faithful also in much.

Most clergy whom I know find Lent to be a relief. Not in that we have less to do—quite the contrary—but in that this is a time of letting go, of sloughing off unnecessary encumbrances. Lent is a season for contemplation, and humility, and silence. We return to our Baptism, to embracing our death, that we might thus embrace resurrection. Close your eyes and be quiet: imagine that you cannot move, cannot speak; that you have no possessions, no ability to act; that you have died and are laid in the tomb.

What remains? Not thought. Not sensation. Merely awareness: of calm, and peace, and a comforting darkness, which holds within it the love undergirding all the cosmos. Let yourself die—not literally, not suicidally. But die to your worries, your cares, your stresses, your insecurities. Die to your regrets, to your shortcomings, to your sins. Die and let them go; commit them all to Christ. Let your wounds enter His.

Thus empty shall we be filled: filled with His Holy Spirit, who is the Breath and Life of God; filled with Blood and water, flowing from His riven side. And know that no matter what happens, regardless of what might befall us, we are His and He is ours forever. He will never leave us orphaned. Through life and death and resurrection, we have God in Christ. And nothing, nothing—not sin, not death, not hell, not loneliness nor cancer—nothing in all of heaven, nor on earth, nor underneath, could ever separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.

If we fly up into heaven, He’s there. If we fall down into hell, He is there. There is nowhere we can be that Christ is not already. What then is left to fear? We cannot suffer anything He has not suffered first. He knows what we here undergo, and He will see us through. So be bold and loving and fearless, and never be dismayed. You have already died. You are already risen. The terrors of the grave for us forever are undone. The ashes of repentance are a comfort. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, are words to set us free.

Oh, my beloved, welcome to Lent. Welcome to these 40 days. Let us walk the Way of Jesus Christ for love of all the world, right up to that empty Cross and broken-open Tomb. There shall we find our salvation. There shall we find our new birth. For he who seeks to save his life will lose it; but he who dies for Jesus’ sake has found it.

This is the promise of your Baptism. And God does not break promises.

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

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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Nidaros Lutheran

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