A Sermon for the Easter Vigil, March 19, 2014
At the baptisms of Melissa Ashley Bilza and Jessica Rose Floray
Once upon a time a man walked
into a small country church and asked the preacher about being
baptized. After some conversation, the pastor agreed and on the following Sunday
the two men along with the members of the small church gathered at the river
for the big moment.
They waded into the river, and
the preacher took the man by the shoulders and shouted “Do you believe?” “Yes!” the man said, and with that the
preacher pushed him way under the water until the bubbles got smaller and
smaller and then after a moment pulled him up.
“Do you believe?” the preacher
shouted again. Spouting water from the first question but still determined, he
nodded his head and once again the preacher pushed his head under the water and
then after a moment, pulled him to his feet.
A third time, the preacher
shouted into the man’s face “Do you believe?”
The man pushed the preacher away
and said, “Yes! I believe! I believe you’re trying to drown me!”
All of which is to say that
Baptism can be a little overwhelming.
While we did not march down the
Delaware and we will not dunk Melissa and Jessica in the river, and just because
I am going to pour water on your heads at that font, don’t think for one minute that we Episcopalians don’t
immerse.
Episcopalians live our baptisms through immersion. Every day.
Take tonight’s liturgy. What we
did today was immerse ourselves in a whole lot of symbolism. We lit and blessed a brand new fire and we held candles in the darkness to remind us that in
Christ, God drives away the darkness of death and sin and brings light to our
lives. We steeped ourselves in Scripture, hearing again snippets of the long story
of how God has never forgotten us. We heard that from the moment of our creation and all through
our history God has worked to save us from the consequences of our sin…right down
to this very moment. We have sung ancient and new songs of hope and worship and
expectation. We have joined with Christians all over the world who tonight
carry the same light and sing the same songs and tell the same story. We have
joined with Christians who have been doing this for centuries.
We have engaged every sense in
telling the story: sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch to remind us that God
is engaging our whole being, our minds, our hearts, our imagination, and our
ethics. What you two women are doing tonight, and what every Christian does in
their baptisms, is to immerse yourselves in a new relationship with God in
Jesus Christ.
The Apostle Paul is talking
about this kind of immersion when he asks the Christians in Rome “Do you not
know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into
his death?”
He is saying that when we go
down into the water it is like going down into the grave. And we come up out of
the water, it is like stepping back into life. He says that we immersed in Christ’s death and
in that immersion we are changed, we take on Christ’s life.
Baptism is the complete
initiation into Christ’s body, the Church. But “initiation” in this case is not
mere hazing, mere boot camp after which you get a medal or certificate, but
“immersion” into Christ. Paul uses the word “with” six times in this short
little passage. You are not just joining a club in baptism, you are being
immersed into the divine and this will change you.
Have you ever tie-dyed a shirt?
What do you do? You bunch up the shirt and tie the bunches together with string
and then you dip—baptize!—the shirt in dye. And when you untie the strings the
areas that were bunched up, voila, you
have a shirt with a new design! And if you repeat the process with different
colors, you can get a different funky design. The colors may fade or run or
blend with each other but they won’t go back to being a white t-shirt from
Target because in the dyeing process the very fabric, the very threads, have
changed from their old color to the new.
In the Book of Acts, we hear of
a woman named Lydia, who knew all about baptism. She did it for a living. She
lived in the Greek city of Phillipi and she was, the Bible tells us, a seller
of purple cloth. To make that cloth purple she had to take the wool and bleach
it—baptize it in a bleach and water
mixture—to get out the impurities. And then she had to baptize it again in the
rare purple dye to make into a very valuable, rare and much sought after fabric
that all the wealthy and fashionable people wore in Paul’s day.
Lydia, a woman who was both
wealthy and the head of a household—a rare thing in the first century—heard
Paul preach about Jesus and decided that she, too, wanted to be baptized,
immersed into the life of Christ. And so she was, she and her whole household.
Lydia was one of the earliest supporters of the brand-new church. I will bet
that when she heard the Apostle Paul talk about being immersed in Christ, and
coming out new and whole and changed, she knew exactly what he meant.
Being immersed in Christ will
change us. As we take the plunge into baptismal living we will discover that
God in Christ will have the way of getting into the secret parts ourselves, and
changing us in ways we never expect. It is not that we never be without
tension, or choice, or difficulty, but rather that we are being changed at the
very fiber of our being into the people that God made us to be.
In the early days of the church
it was a common baptismal practice for those entering the water to lay aside
their old clothes, depicting their surrender of the former life of sin and
death. They emerged from the water like newborn babes and then were clothed in new,
white garments. According to Eugene Peterson’s version of Colossians in a
version of the Bible called “The Message,” it is not just new garments that are
put on. No, the newly baptized are "clad in the wardrobe God picked out
for them: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline and the
all-purpose garment of love." The symbolic garment we will put on each of you, a white stole, is more than a fashion statement. It is another reminder that you have put on Christ.
In your baptisms, you have
immersed yourselves in Christ. You
choice to be baptized tonight has led you to be immersed in grace and now be filled
with the life of the risen Christ.
So as you have been immersed,
immerse yourself in prayer. Take the plunge into scripture and become part of
the story of God’s salvation. Steep yourselves in the rhythm of the sacraments,
the church’s year, and the church’s time. Wade into the world with acts of mercy, justice and practical caring. Marinate yourself in Christian
community, where you find people who far from perfect and who often stumble but
who are just as immersed in this ongoing, unfolding, joyous, spiritual experiment called baptismal living.
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