Season of Baptism: Born Anew

Sermon 1-13-19 – Season of Baptism: B – Born Anew

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Do you remember the first time you ever flew in a plane? Was it when you were little, like the kid that sat behind me on my latest flight from Wisconsin? It was so cute - the flight attendant gave him a pin with his “wings” for flying for the first time, and he narrated our entire takeoff and landing – look mom, we’re so high! I see that farm!

I flew for the first time when I was in middle school, and I was excited but also trying NOT to use that discrete “in-flight bag” during my first experience of airline turbulence. Maybe you’re like my dad, who flew for the first time when he traveled with my family to New Jersey for my ordination. Or perhaps you have never left the ground at all, for whatever reason, and prefer to keep it that way, with both feet determinedly planted on Terra Firma.

Some of us love to fly, and some of us hate it, but either way, we are earthbound creatures - helpless to the power of gravity and our own flightless design. We cannot even attempt to fly without something to help us along – wings, engines, hot air, or parachutes.

So, what is it about flying that so fascinates some of us? What yearning drove the Wright brothers to be the first to achieve human flight? To be suspended in the air with nothing holding you down, to look down on the world and be separate from it, to no longer be constrained by physical limitations, to go where you wish to go. To many, this sounds like the ultimate freedom.

Today we have come together to experience a very special event, a “launch” of sorts if you will. This year we get a nice long time before the start of Lent, and why not fill it with an in-depth look at the event that launched our lives as followers of Jesus, and in fact, launched Jesus’ career as well? Ever week, we will be looking at the next letter in the word Baptism and connect a word that begins with each of those letters that describes the life of baptism and how WE follow Jesus.

And I am so happy to share that we should be having at least ONE baptism during this season, and possibly THREE!!!

Alright, let’s cut to the chase, and reveal what the letter B in our BAPTISM acronym stands for! B stands for … BORN ANEW.

Yes, it is true, that we were all born at least once…. The first time of course the say we arrived from our mothers’ wombs. So, why do we need another birth?

The truth is, we were all born into a pretty screwed-up world. When we arrived on this planet as little bundles of joy, we were also held as it’s prisoner – trapped by hatred and fear of the unknown, trapped by racism, injustice, and oppression, trapped by violence, conflict, and wars. We are also trapped by by own body’s limitations, and will be subject to judgment of our peers. We are also trapped by time, whose steady march has and will cause both joy and pain in our life. Our world, our peers, our friends, our family, even our body will betray her someday.

But our God will never leave our side. This is what God has promised to us through our baptisms – as Luther writes, “a bath of the new Birth in the Holy spirit,” “through the water of rebirth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit,” “daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God.”

If you remember way back from Catechism class, we in the Lutheran church have 2 sacraments, while other denominations have more, or even none. We have 2 sacraments because of our definition of what a sacrament is. According to Luther, a sacrament has 2 parts – does anyone remember these two? I’ll give you the hard one – a sacrament needs to be intuited by Jesus, or in other words, it has a “God said” or “God’s word” Part.

The second part to a sacrament is that it needs…. That’s right, and earthly part. Holy Communion was begun by Jesus on the night he was betrayed before his crucifixion, and he used _____ Bread and Wine, that’s right. In baptism, Jesus said, “Go make disciples by baptizing them,” and obviously the earthly part is …… water.

But how can plain water do such amazing things?

When the waters are poured over our heads, our old selves, trapped by the limitations and constraints of this world, will be washed away. We have been born anew and have arisen from the waters as new people, claimed by God as beloved children, never again to be held captive by the chains of the world we have been born into. The forces of evil in this world will be renounced and sent scurrying. The traps, chains, shackles, and locks of the world will be snap open and fall away.

It is in this moment that God declared to all of us in our own baptisms, “You are my beloved daughters and sons; with you I am well pleased.”

We heard them in a dove and a voice from heaven, as Jesus himself was baptized. This is a puzzling story, given what we know about baptism. Why did Jesus get baptized? What did Jesus have to be reborn from? Did Jesus have an old, sinful self, a self, trapped by the world that needed to be reborn? Why was Jesus baptized if he were already the Son of God, sent to die and rise again to defeat the power of sin and death?

What if Jesus’ baptism was an announcement to the world that its savior had arrived? What if this were God’s way of clearing Jesus for “take off”?

When we are baptized, we are anointed with oil in a ritual dating back to the very first followers of Jesus. We say that the baptized are “sealed with the Holy Spirit” and bear the mark of Christ on our foreheads. In this way, we could look at Jesus’ baptism as God’s stamp of approval, where God is confirming his true candidate for the office of Messiah and is announcing to the world Jesus’ true identity as God’s Son. Not unlike a kind of re-birth mark.

Just a few weeks ago, we heard the story of Jesus being born, and now Jesus is all grown up and ready to launch his career. During his tenure on earth, he will reveal God’s love to all people by feeding them, teaching them, healing them, and walking with them. His love for us does not stop, and even goes as far as through death itself. Though even death and the grave cannot stop Jesus from showing us God’s love in all things.

Jesus does all these things for us, because we are children of God, reborn into the Family of God, chosen and beloved. God takes us by the hand and leads us, like the little children we are, into a freedom we cannot fully imagine and cannot fully grasp yet. Even though we may walk through fire, and the waters of uncertainty threaten to overwhelm us, we are never alone. All this is promised and given to us on the day we were baptized.

But this is not a one-day affair. Just as our first BIRTH day marks the start of our lives, a wedding marks the start of a marriage, and graduation the start of life beyond a classroom, baptism is not a one-day event. Our baptism day was the inauguration of our own call to ministry, the day we were born to new life in the name of God. We belong to Christ, and we, ALONG with Christ, are born and called to be servants of one another.

The reality is that none of us lives out our baptismal lives perfectly. Sometimes, more often than we care to admit, we experience turbulence, bruise or break our wings, or crack our landing gear during a rough landing. But the beauty of life as children of God is that this birthright of love is ours forever. No matter how much the world seeks to keep us down, it has no power over us anymore. We have been born anew; the sky is the limit, and we have been cleared for takeoff.

Join us in the following few weeks as we continue to explore how baptism changes how we live and act in the world. Trust me, there is a lot to explore, and we have only just begun! Thanks be to God, amen!