Baptism of Our Lord
Matthew 3.13-17
Holy Trinity, Manasquan
Vacation
in
A roof-alanche happens when the deep snow on a roof becomes too heavy to remain stable and slides crashing to the ground. There was three to four feet of snow on the roofs of the buildings when we arrived, so it wasn’t hard to imagine someone being buried beneath that weight if it let go. One staffperson told us that a roof-alanche sounds and feels like a VW beetle plunging off the roof and onto the ground. To keep village residents safe, paths between buildings are carved through the snow ten or more feet beyond the perimeter of the roof. (Interestingly, those paths aren’t made with shovels or snow blowers, but by young and hearty staff members, young men called mavericks, who don snowshoes and tramp back and forth to pack the newfallen snow.)
Because
Holden borders the Glacier Peak Wilderness and many staff and guests
cross-country ski or snowshoe into the backcountry, there are annual training
sessions on avalanche awareness. We
watched a movie one night about avalanches, introduced by the founder of an
avalanche awareness institute, and learned that this has been the deadliest
season in decades for
Holden is a Christian community, one of our Lutheran Outdoor Ministry sites, so there are devotions every day. The day after we saw the film, a village resident spoke about the avalanche of sin that threatens to bury and kill us, and the blanket of grace that keeps us safe so that we don’t perish. He told me afterward he chose not to speak about an avalanche of grace because that would conjure up death not life. And yet, I said, we speak about baptism as a drowning, a dying to sin and rising to newness of life. I mentioned that we live at the Shore, where the overwhelming power of the ocean, the deadliness of rip tides and undertow, helps us understand that baptism isn’t so much a baby bath as a watery grave for the old self that has to die before the new self can be born.
It’s
easier to see why the old self has to die in the adults who are baptized than
in the babies and children. The only sin
in infants is original sin, whatever it is in us humans that makes us look out
for number one instead of each other, that makes us worship ourselves instead
of God. As we grow, we’re capable of a
whole host of specific sins, ranging from minute to monstrously large
ones. When we prepare adults for
baptism, they’re well aware of how they’ve fallen short of the glory of
God…. Much like the adults whom John
baptized in the
Almost all of us have been baptized, most of us as infants. That’s a sharp departure from the past, when only adults were baptized, and some of them as close to the end of their lives as possible. The Emperor Constantine, who legalized Christianity in the fourth century, waited until he was on his deathbed to be baptized. That’s because the people then believed that really big sins could only be forgiven in Holy Baptism. If you committed one of the three whoppers (murder, adultery, or apostasy, denying of the faith) after baptism, there was no forgiveness possible, and no hope of avoiding hell. Not trusting themselves to watch their P’s and Q’s, people hedged their bets by being baptized just before they exited this life.
I was baptized over 50 years ago, and I’ve committed plenty of sins since then. I haven’t needed any major changes of course or heart like John Newton who went from the slave trade into the ministry, or convicts who experience a jailhouse conversion and go from being criminals to high caliber Christians. But I, like all of us, have taken missteps of sin that have caused avalanches in which I or others were buried, at least temporarily. They say that 90% of people who die in avalanches caused the catastrophe themselves. ‘Seems similar to our lives, where we bring so much of our suffering on ourselves. Even after our baptism.
In baptism we are a new creation in Christ, but we don’t always feel or act like it. Sometimes something looking a lot like the old self rears its ugly head and needs to be cast out. Maybe we selfishly ignore others’ needs: the lonely widow on our street or the hungry who visit the food pantry at First Pres or the displaced who live in refugee camps abroad. Maybe we need Jesus to slay the demon of perfectionism or bitterness that has wrapped cords around our heart and threatens to strangle us. Maybe there is an addiction in our life that makes us a slave to its demands so we’re not enjoying the freedom of a beloved child of God. If so, there is hope!
Thankfully we no longer believe that committing sin after baptism is an eternal death sentence. What does St. Peter say in this weekend’s reading from the Book of Acts?
…[E]veryone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. Acts 10.43
This weekend’s commemoration of the
baptism of our Lord calls us to celebrate our own baptism, and what Martin
Luther called the daily gift of our
baptismal dying and rising. We are
baptized once, but we are able to repent and therefore to be “reborn”
lifelong. When the avalanche of sin
comes crashing down on us, there is the possibility of a reverse avalanche of
grace. Jesus, who was sinless, insisted
that John baptize Him, as a sign that He identifies with us in our
sinfulness. He took our sin upon Himself
on the cross, so that we “may not perish but have everlasting life” (John
3.16)…. The blessings that flow from
Pastor Mary Virginia Farnham
Because we die
with Christ in baptism, this life is not all there is. As I read the newspaper a few days ago, I was
surprised to see that the quote of the day was by the avalanche expert we’d met
at Holden. A reporter interviewed him
because the day we viewed the film a 13 year old girl named Emily was killed by
an avalanche while hiking in a national forest 60 miles outside of