“The Sacraments: Baptism Part 2” Psalm 84 Romans 6: 1-11

  “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” For far too long this powerful question of Paul has been spoken of as if it is simply rehortical. As if the answer is so obvious that it doesn’t deserve the time. Of course, the answer is no. Or as Paul would say - by no means. Right?

But to Paul, this was an important enough questions that he does ask it. Because its important to how we tell the story of God.

If you ask people to tell you their story - where do most people begin? Usually at some big milestone. Maybe they start way back with their birth. Or maybe when they got their first job. Or wedding. Or birth of a child. 

But how many people start with their baptism? Or their moment of conversion? Or beginning of their Christian journey?

We are now in the second week of this brief explanation of the sacraments - chiefly baptism and Holy Communion. And we are doing something a bit untraditional. Instead of simply spending one week on each of the sacraments, we are spending two for a bit of a deeper dive. 

Paul is trying to remind the Christians in Rome about their baptism and the richness of baptisms meaning. It wasn’t just about immediate family coming together for an event - it was life changing. In fact, it tied you together with a whole new family - the body of Christ - and connected you with the saints throughout the ages. 

In fact, this act of baptism was so life changing, that you couldn’t go back to who you were before. Your old self - that self before you knew the love of Christ - that self is dead. And in its place is a new self, claimed by the relentless love of God. A self that has been set free indeed. 

Remember that Paul was a Jew. So if you asked Paul to tell his story, he would go way back. Back before his birth. Or even his family’s lineage. He would go back to the story of Exodus - where God came to set his people free from Pharaoh and take them out of Egypt and bring them into the promised land. But because Paul was also a follower of Jesus he didn’t stop there. He showed throughout time how God kept pursuing us and loving us, even when we fell short - to the point of Jesus giving himself up for us. That is grace.

So for Paul baptism is like a new exodus - a new path that God has created to bring us out of captivity to sin and into the promised land of new life in Christ. But if we keep looking back, keep wanting to go back to what life once was - that would be akin to the Israelites complaining to Moses that they wanted to go back to Egypt - misremembering it as a place where they were taken care of instead of a place of captivity. Of course the Israelites shouldn’t go back to Egypt! Of course we shouldn’t continue on sinning. For it is in Christ that we are free indeed. 

But what exactly are we freed for? We know that we are freed from sin, but if we believe that we are truly a new creation in Christ then we will believe that we are also freed for something - a different way of being. A different way to live our faith in action.

To answer that question, my friends, we need to look no further then the vows that we make at baptism. For some of us, these vows other people made on our behalf when we were small - promising to raise us up to come to know the freedom that can only be found in Christ. But they are also some of the same questions that we ask people when they join the church - either through confirmation or a profession of faith. 

Who are we? What are we saved for? To renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness,

reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of our sin. Friends, evil is real. We only need to turn on the news to see that fact. But as people of the water, people who have become alive in Christ, we believe that this is not the way of God. While other people may say that we can do whatever we want - we say, by no means. We want to live as people marked by God’s love and not sin. And because of that we chose not only to turn away from the spiritual forces of witness and evil, we renounce them. We reject them. We choose a wholly different way. 

And when we turn away from the powers that hold us captive, we can choose to accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. As people of baptism, we not only have a new life, we have new eyes and new hearts. We start to be able to see how injustice runs rampant in this world, how it has become so normative that we are blind to it - and we instead chose to be people of God’s care and provision. 

And why do we do this? Because we confess Jesus Christ our your Savior,

put our whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as our Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races. In other words, we choose not to make how we live be about us. We choose to make it about Christ. We know that we would never be able to accept the chains of sin by our own will and efforts. It just isn’t possible. But we can be set free by Christ’s grace and because of that we choose him. We choose his way which is so much better than our way. 

But here’s the thing, friends. Baptism isn’t just about this vow that we make to God. It’s also an opportunity for the whole congregation of believers to make a promise back to us. To nurture these persons in Christ's holy Church, that by their teaching and example they may be guided to accept God's grace for themselves, to profess their faith openly, and to lead a Christian life. This life of baptism isn’t meant to be lived in solitude. Every time someone comes to the waters of baptism we remember the promises we made and the promises that were made over us at our baptism. We remember the story of who we are. We are children of God on this journey of faith together. 

Brothers and sisters, what we do, our actions, those can only flow from who we are. If we feel like we need to keep sinning in order to prove God’s grace and love, we missed the whole point of being a new person. That is thinking of the old way - the way we once were. When we step into a new life in Christ all that we do and say flows from that place. And there, we don’t want to be bound up in sin any longer. 

We become like the pilgrim in Psalm 84 that simply longs to be with God. To proclaim the story of God. That is who we are.

We are people of the waters. We are people of grace. We are people who have been set free indeed! Amen and amen.