Sunday, January 13, 2013

Promise Me We'll Be Alright

Brad Sullivan
1st Epiphany – Baptism of Jesus, Year C
Sunday, January 13, 2013
St. Mark’s, Bay City
Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

After Jesus was baptized, his life changed forever.  His old life passed away, and a new life began.  Before his baptism, Jesus was simply the son of the carpenter, Joseph.  We know almost nothing of his life before his baptism except for his birth, and an incident when, as a boy, he wandered away from his parents, and showed his wisdom and knowledge of scripture in the temple.  Beyond that, nothing is told about him, presumably because there was nothing particularly to tell.  He lived his life.

After he was baptized, however, a new life began for Jesus.  His ministry began, his teaching began, his miracles began.  He ceased to be the carpenter’s kid from Nazareth and became an itinerant preacher and healer directing people to God, and bucking the religious establishment anytime it didn’t direct people to God.  Jesus’ old life was dead after his baptism, and his new life began. 

“You are my son, the beloved,” God said at Jesus’ baptism, “with you I am well pleased.”  While always God’s son, at his baptism, Jesus ceased to live his life as Joseph’s son and began living as God’s son.  In Jesus’ baptism, there was a death of who he was and a rebirth of who he was to be.  Before his baptism, he was presumably with his family, maybe a bit different, but basically his mother and father’s son, and his brother and sisters’ brother.  After his baptism, beginning his ministry, his family seemed rather embarrassed by him, even saying they thought he was crazy.  There was a death for them as well, in Jesus’ baptism and then a rebirth in his resurrection.

For us too, we believe baptism is a death of who we were and a rebirth of who we are to be.  Now for many of us, baptized as infants, there aren’t a whole lot of ghosts in our past yet, not a whole lot of who we were to die in baptism, and yet, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans,

all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  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. (Romans 6:3-4)

Whether we are baptized as infants or as adults, we are baptized into Jesus’ death so that we might walk in newness of life.  Part of this means eternal life, that we will continue to live on in Christ Jesus even after we die.  Walking in newness of life also means that, like with Jesus, baptism is a new start.  Something of our old life dies in baptism, that something new in us may live.

It seems that the timing of this death and rebirth might vary.  While eternal life in Christ is given to us in baptism, newness of life in this world doesn’t always come right at baptism or even at confirmation.  In Confirmation, an older child or adult can mark the death and rebirth in his or her own life and begin in earnest to live in newness of life and to step out in ministry as Jesus did, but that doesn’t always happen perfectly either.

Sometimes we stray from the path given to us in our baptisms, turning away from the life God has in mind for us, and only after turning back to the path God has in mind, do we truly realize the death and newness of life that happened in our baptism.  Sometimes this happens more than once…a day.

Every time we stray, die, turn back, and are brought to newness of life, we are baptized in a way, made clean once again.  Baptism is a continual washing away of the ghosts of our past, the pain and hurt which we have caused and which has been done to us.  Baptism is an eternal washing, an eternal gift of God’s grace to us so that every time we turn back to the path God has in mind for us, our old life dies, a new life begins, and we hear the words of God, “you are my child, my beloved, with you I am well pleased.” 

            The song, “Ghosts That We Knew” by Mumford and Sons, from their album Babel, illustrates the idea of rebirth, and letting go of the past and beginning life anew.  

"Ghosts That We Knew"

You saw my pain washed out in the rain
Broken glass, saw the blood run from my veins
But you saw no fault, no cracks in my heart
And you knelt beside my hope torn apart

But the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
We'll live a long life
So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh they gave me such a fright
But I will hold as long as you like
Just promise me we'll be alright

So lead me back, turn south from that place
And close my eyes to my recent disgrace
'Cause you know my call
And we'll share my all
And our children come and they will hear me roar

So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh they gave me such a fright
But I will hold as long as you like
Just promise me we'll be alright

But hold me still, bury my heart on the coals
And hold me still, bury my heart next to yours

So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh they gave me such a fright
But I will hold on with all of my might
Just promise me we'll be alright

"But the ghosts that we knew made us black and all blue
But we'll live a long life”

And the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
And we'll live a long life

-          Mumford and Sons, Ghosts That We Knew, from the album Babel

Amen.

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