New Life!

Entering the Family of God

Sermon for Sunday, June 24, 2007

1. Good Morning. Let’s Pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

2. In a few minutes Stephen and Malinda Byrne and their parents will come forward with baby Maggie Gene and together with them we will participate in the ancient sacramental rite of Baptism!

Now when wonderful times like this happen in the life of a community it’s a great time to stop and reflect on what it means to be baptized.

I want to approach this reflection from two angles. The first will be biblical and theological/historical and the second will be from a more contemplative perspective.

As I proceed I’d like to encourage each and every one of us to reflect upon our own Baptism or lack thereof so that God will be able to pour more meaning into it – OK?

3. First let’s take a Biblical and Historical look at the Sacrament of Baptism:

Whenever I think about the sacrament of Baptism my mind immediately flies to the Great Commission:

Matt. 28:19

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

“Go and MAKE disciples – baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” This is both our charge and the formula for the Sacrament of Baptism!

Jesus is commanding us to do this and He’s telling us to do it in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Immediately after this Homily we will celebrate this wonderful sacrament and you will hear me say those words over Maggie Gene – I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Sprit Amen!”

Now in Old Testament times the rite of entry into the chosen people of God was through circumcision but this entry rite was replaced in the New Testament with the Sacrament of Baptism and it became the entry rite into the Church of Christ.

In Colossians chapter 2 beginning at verse 9 we read:

Col. 2:9

  For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

And so from the earliest days of the Christian era mothers and fathers have brought their children soon after birth to the Church for the Sacrament of Baptism.

Throughout the ages the ancient church has held that there are 7 sacraments and Baptism is the entry sacrament to all of the others. These 7 sacraments are:

Baptism, the Eucharist, Confirmation (or Chrismation), Confession, Anointing of the Sick, marriage, and Holy Orders.

Sacraments are given to us by God as “Means of His grace.” What we mean by this is that through the Sacraments God shares the largess of Heaven.

Let me put it this way – it’s through the syringe of the Sacraments that God can inject us with the medicine of heaven.

Now God can do this in many many ways but the sacraments are clearly one of His primary methods for accomplishing this.

They are not merely empty rituals but since they are truly sacraments they accomplish what they intend - they actually convey the reality for which they stand. So the Sacrament of Baptism stands for and conveys washing from sins and entry into he family of God.

A Sacrament communicates the grace or power of God through the use of material objects.

In the 4th-century St. Augustine's defined a sacrament as an "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

A sacrament conveys God's grace independently of the faith or moral character of the celebrant or recipients. Its value springs from its divine institution, "from the work already done" (Latin “ex opere operato”), in which the sacrament participates.

We must never forget that for this sacrament to be fully appropriated by its recipient the recipient must lean in of what our Latin forefathers have referred to as “ex opere operantis” ("from the work being done").

Now I want to quote from William H. Willimon in his wonderful book “Worship as Pastoral Care” as he leads us into a deeper understanding of what a sacrament really is:

“In contrast to the human-centered, human-conditioned, Enlightenment view of the sacraments, Christian theology has traditionally asserted that God is the actor, and we are the recipients of what God does through the sacraments. The efficacy of the sacraments does not entirely depend upon us, upon our ability to love God or to lead holy lives. In his infinite love, God has not left us alone. God continually, graciously, gives Himself to us and makes Himself available to us through touched, tasted, experienced, visible means. This, God does (thank God) in spite of our best intentions. We do not have to make it happen!

If we be loved and if we be healed and if we be saved, it is first and forever because of God’s own active, self-giving, initiating love. As Calvin said: ‘He condescends to lead us to Himself by these earthly elements, and to set before us in the flesh a mirror of spiritual blessings . . . He imparts spiritual things under visible ones.’”

4. OK now let’s look at this wonderful Sacrament through a contemplative lens.

So what happens to me when I am baptized? What’s really happening here at a very deep level?

Willimon reminds us that:

“Baptism is proclamation and experience of the fact that we are who we are because God has first chosen us and loved us and called us into His Kingdom. To the question, Who am I? baptism responds that I am the one who is called, washed, named, promised, and commissioned!”

Baptism gives me the way and means to draw nearer and nearer to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and thereby closer and closer to the person I was created to be!

Why does God want us to be baptized? Ah this, to me, is the real question that begins to plum the depth of what’s really happening in Baptism.

Remember the Apostle Peter reminds us that Christians are what?

1Pet. 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

11 Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

Ah! Why are we baptized? Can you see it yet? Because our God loves us and wants to call us to our coronation into His royal priesthood.

We’re chosen and baptism is our coronation into our royal citizenship! Into our regal priestly calling!

And in the fullness and power of our Baptismal authority we’re to no longer live as the world lives – no longer allow our hearts and minds be conformed to the world’s ways but we are to live as aliens and strangers in this strange shadowland. To live good lives among the pagans around us so that they will be drawn to glorify God because of our behavior and ultimately be drawn through the entrance gate of Baptism to their own heavenly calling as royal members of God’s heavenly priesthood – here on earth!

When Maggie Gene is Baptized very soon this will be her royal coronation and while most of us won’t be able to see into the heavenly realm that will break through in her baptismal coronation we can rest assured that heaven will be replete with great celebration when one soul enters into God’s Kingdom!

Heavenly music will be playing and all of heaven will stop and look upon her and upon us who are now responsible for our spiritual formation into the dream God has dreamed for her. Amen and Amen!

I want to close by reading once again Psalm 139. Let this psalm be the cry of your heart this morning to our God who knows you and me so well and has called us to His breast through the majestic sacrament of Baptism. Please listen now as I read:

Psa. 139:1

  O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. 5 You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.

Let us pray . . .