(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “You Only Feel Wet”, originally shared on January 3, 2024. It was the 292nd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
As we start the new
year, is your glass half-full or half empty? It’s neither. Today we’re going to
find out why. Twice.
Sally and I hope
that you are having a happy start to the new year.
Last year ended on December 31, 2023, or
12/31/2023, or 12/31/’23. Or 123123.
It was a big day for weddings, I understand.
Why?
Because it would be easier for couples to
remember their wedding anniversary?
Because it was an unusual, random
coincidence?
I understand that the wedding chapels in Las
Vegas were packed.
In any case, there are three more reasons to
weep over the decline of American culture. :\)
We are going to begin the new year with
something to really celebrate, though.
It’s our baptisms.
Baptism is not a matter of life and death.
It’s something way more important than that.
Have you ever seen a glass whose water line
is half-way between the top and the bottom? Is the glass half-empty or is it
half-full.
Most of us know by now to say that it is
“half-full”. We’ve been told that people who say “half-full” are more
optimistic, more goal oriented, and more successful, so we say it. Because we
know that is the right answer.
But I think that there is a third
alternative. And that is that the glass is “completely full”.
It’s half-full of water and it’s half-full
of air!
Baptism is like that, only more so.
Baptism completes us. What was broken in us
is made whole. We who were no people are made God’s people.
Martin Luther, the 16th century
Church reformer said about Baptism, in his Small Catechism, that,
“It brings about forgiveness of sins, redeems from death and the devil,
and gives eternal salvation to all who believe it, as the words and promise of
God declare.”
Water certainly is powerful. You probably
saw the 6’, 12’, even 20’ waves and high tide that hit the coast along LA’s
beaches last week, and even higher waves up the coast, that brought flooding to
the coastal buildings.
But that is nothing compared to the power of
transformation that is brought through the waters of Baptism.
Water also brings life. I put a trash can
out under the roof of our house to collect the rainwater at one spot. It filled
to overflowing, and I will use it to help sustain the life of our lawn and
landscaping.
But that is nothing compared to the fresh
new life that is brought through the waters of Baptism.
How can water do such great things as it
does in Baptism?
Again, Luther says,
“Clearly the water does not do it, but the word of God, which is with
and alongside the water, and faith, which trusts this word of God in the
water.”
That faith is a gift from God to all who
repent and receive the gift in the living relationship with the one true living
God for which we were created. Baptism restores us to our true selves!
It changes everything.
Most of us have been baptized. Great things
have been done for us. But many of us don’t feel any different. Why?
The answer is found in the reading from the
Gospel of Mark that will be read in the vast majority of churches all over the
world this coming Sunday, in Mark 1:4-11.
In it, we first get a review of the work of
John the Baptist, who we heard about on two Sundays in December and again on
Christmas Day.
And then we see this, in verses 9-11,
9 In
those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the
Jordan. 10 And
just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and
the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And
a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well
pleased.”
Did you see that?! Jesus was baptized by
John.
If Baptism grants forgiveness of sins,
redeems from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who
believe it, and Jesus needs none of those things, in fact grants them, then why
did Jesus need to be baptized?
I think that the answer is, though it
doesn’t become clear until later on, that He didn’t. Jesus didn’t need to be
Baptized any more than he needed to be crucified, but he did it as a model of
His love for us.
Paul writes, in Romans 5:8-10,
8 But God proves his love
for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. 9 Much more surely then,
now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from
the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God
through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we
be saved by his life.
So, if Baptism is such a big deal, why
doesn’t our Baptism make us feel different?
Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish Lutheran
theologian and philosopher, said that the hardest kind of Christian to be is a
Christian in a so-called “Christian” land. That is, in a place where the
Christian faith and worldview are the norm.
If that’s true, then I guess it’s going to
get easier and easier for us to recognize ourselves as Christians as our land
becomes more and more secular. 😊
But it’s not going to be easier for a while
because, a Christian worldview will be our culture’s mainstream worldview long
after most people have forgotten why.
It’s hard being a Christian in the negative
view of the world, but we still live in a largely Christian country in terms of
our values.
Even now, you just have to travel to a
non-Western world, non-Christian country and then return to see how deeply
Christianity still influences our culture and our values.
But it’s more difficult to be a Christian
when it’s easy to go along with a so-called “Christian” culture and to be
affirmed for it, while not really knowing a living relationship with Jesus
Christ. That would make us “counter-cultural”.
It’s like being a fish in the water. How can
the fish know water itself, except by contrast with its environment?
It’s like the name of a book I read when I
was doing competitive adult Masters Swimming before the pandemic, on the
psychology of competitive swimming, called You Only Feel Wet When You Get
Out of the Water.
Most of us don’t remember our Baptism,
though some of us do. It is done by God once for all time. Our feelings
don’t mean we are Baptized. It is only the mighty act of God that does it.
We have already passed though death into
eternal life. And it happened in our Baptism as a gift of God’s grace! We don’t
have to feel it; we just have to trust it.
We are, in the theme of a long-ago youth
convention, not “the walking dead’, but we are the “walking wet.”
Ross Douthat, an op-ed columnist for the New
York Times, wrote a book called Bad Religion, in which he referenced the
current decline of the Christian Church in the United States with the
observation that most of our wounds have been self-inflicted. Near the end, he
says that the Christian Church has found itself in decline and seemingly near
extinction several times in its history, but two things brought it back: holy
living and the Arts.
Paul makes the connection between holy
living, baptism, and death & resurrection in Romans 6:1-5,
1 What
then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may
abound? 2 By
no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do
you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death? 4 Therefore
we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in
newness of life.
5 For
if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be
united with him in a resurrection like his.
There’s a passage worth chewing on in 2024.
It holds the key to what we have to offer in
2024, and always: new life!
The cross of Jesus has won for us the crown
of everlasting life, not through our efforts or strength, but as a gift for
which we give glory to God.
And what we have received, we share: the
good news of Jesus Christ, the community of we who are at the same time saints
and sinners, the joy that is a non-refundable gift, and the peace that passes
all human understanding.
This coming Sunday will also be a milestone
in the Church year. It will be the first Sunday after the Epiphany.
This coming Saturday is January 6th,
The Day of the Epiphany. We are in the Epiphany season, the third season of the
Christmas Cycle, the one that reflects on what just happened. And everything
that has happened has come through God’s doing, through the greatest power in
the cosmos and beyond, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The part about John the Baptist in our Bible
reading from Mark for this coming Sunday ends with John comparing himself to
Jesus, in Mark 4:7-8,
7 He
proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not
worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. 8 I
have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit.”
And that is the second way our glasses are
completely full today. Our life’s glasses aren’t half-full or half-empty. We
are completely full in the power of the Holy Spirit.
All the church needs is the Holy Spirit,
for whom one of the Bible’s principal metaphors is “streams of living water”.
May we seek that power only and live each day in it only as God’s people, the
Baptized. Come Holy Spirit!
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