Holy Baptism (Back to Basics: Revisiting the Catechism, Part 4)

[This week's online Midweek Lenten worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, focuses was on Holy Baptism, part of our series, Back to the Basics: Revisiting the Catechism. Below is the video and the text of the message.]



In Holy Baptism, God saves us from sin, death, and separation from God. 

This is what God’s Word teaches us in 1 Peter. Recalling the global flood of Noah’s day, Peter says, “only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water [the water of the flood] symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:20-21)

Some Christians, confronted by the words of Jesus’ apostle, shake their heads in disbelief. “Wait a minute,” they say. “Baptism saves us? Don’t I have to do something? Don’t I have to decide to follow Jesus? ” 

Listen: Scripture teaches that all human beings are born with sinful natures (Psalm 51:5). 

Ephesians 2:3 tells us that, “we were by nature deserving of wrath.” 

I would have an infinitely greater chance of deciding to look like Matthew McConnaughey than I have of deciding to be saved or deciding to follow Jesus. 

If you were suddenly dumped into the Pacific Ocean, your capacity to yell for help, swim, or even cling to a piece of sinking flotsam could only take you so far. You could not save yourself! 

In Baptism, it’s God Who does the deciding and God has decided through Christ to save the baptized. 

At least that’s what God’s Word teaches.

So, Baptism is life-saving, life-changing stuff! Jesus tells Nicodemus in John, chapter 3: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again…[and] Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” (John 3:3, 5)

In Holy Baptism, God remakes us as human beings. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “... if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 

When God’s Word and His Holy Spirit assault chaos, including those born into the chaos of sin, new life happens. 

This has always been so! 

In Genesis 1, the Spirit moved over the waters of chaos and brought the universe into being. 

At the beginning of His earthly ministry, Jesus went to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptizer. “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. [the Bible tells us] And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’” (Luke 3:21-22) 

This is what happens when we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God opens His kingdom to us and He sends us the Holy Spirit, the One Whose word brings the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection to us and we become children of God.

But how, Luther asks in the Catechism, can water do such great things? “It is not the water [the Catechism says] that does these things, but the Word connected with the water and our faith which relies on that Word. For without the Word of God it is simply water and not Baptism. But when connected with the Word of God it is a Baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Spirit.” 

Luther then quotes Paul’s New Testament letter to Titus: “[God] saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying.” (Titus 3:5-8a)

In Holy Baptism, God’s saving Word about Jesus comes to us and remains with us, tenaciously refusing to leave us or give up on us even when we turn away from Him, when we stop worshiping God with His people, even when we cease to believe in Him. 

God will not force the baptized to believe in Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

But, through the indelible commitment that God makes to us when we are baptized, He will keep bringing His saving Word to us so that we might believe in Jesus and be saved. 

This is what happened to me. I spurned God and claimed atheism as my religion for ten years. But God kept pointing me back to Jesus. God refused to give up on the commitment to be my Father and Lord and Savior that He made when I was born from above at the Baptismal font!  

Holy Baptism is the saving Word of God, embodied in the element of water. Just as I had no control over when I was born, I really have no control over when I am born anew in Holy Baptism. If we are baptized as infants, we cannot be unborn even if I walk away from God. And if a person is baptized as an adult, it will still be God Who calls them out of the darkness of sin and death into the light of His loving grace and will cause them to crave Holy Baptism. (In The Large Caetchism, Luther says that if a person comes to faith without having been yet baptized, they will "not despise" the sacrament!)

In the New Testament book of Acts, we read accounts both of individual adults being baptized after coming to faith in Jesus and of whole households, including the children, being baptized. 

In the entire New Testament, nobody says, “Before you can be baptized, you have to understand things.” 

And it doesn't say, “Before you are baptized, you have to reach a certain age.” 

Instead, the apostle Paul compares Holy Baptism to circumcision, the Jewish rite by which boys eight days old, were initiated into the faith. This happened long before they could know Who God is, long before they could understand the faith.

The evidence suggests that because God wants to give us new life and unleash His saving Word in people as soon as possible that the early Church baptized infants and children. They took Jesus’ words seriously, as we do, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:24)

In Holy Baptism, God gives all the baptized a share in Jesus’ victory over sin and death. On this point, Luther quotes Romans 6:4: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

As good Lutherans, we know that we can only be saved by grace through faith in Christ. 

That leaves the question of whether, like the man thrown overboard in the Pacific Ocean, we will stop striving and struggling and trust in Christ. 

And how do we do that? 

We don’t. We don't do anything!

The God Who comes to us in Holy Baptism sends us His Spirit to empower us to believe. “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit,” 1 Corinthians 12:3 reminds us. 

And the God Who comes to us in Holy Baptism keeps sending the baptized His saving Word: “...faith comes from hearing the message [that is, the Good News of Jesus], and the message is heard through the word about Christ,” Romans 10:17 teaches.

The Small Catechism reminds us that Christ has commissioned His Church to baptize. “...go and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus commands us, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19) 

It also reminds us that Jesus tells us why we need to baptize. In Mark 16:16, Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” 

However God creates faith in Christ within us, we are saved. If you've already been baptized, it is Holy Baptism that is the primary engine by which God moves us toward faith. And if you've come to faith without baptism, you will surely want to be baptized, a holy desire God will create within you. (As He did in the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts.)

Jesus commands us to baptize so that people who cannot decide to follow Him by the power of their own wills may be reborn and so that, by the power of the Holy Spirit unleashed in our lives each day, we will come to saving belief in Jesus and we will be sustained in that belief. 

That’s why Holy Baptism is so important. 

Our series ends next week with a look at Holy Communion.

Wait. What?

[This was shared yesterday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

John 16:12-22

The two things that every human being has in common are birth and death. 

And what birth and death almost always have in common for us is pain. 

We may sometimes hear of women who give birth to children almost unaware of being in labor until right before delivery or of people who pass away peacefully in their beds after long, healthy lives. But we note stories of people like these as the exceptions. 

When we are born into this world and when we die out of this world, there is almost always pain.

In the end, the only thing that can make the pain of birth and death bearable for us is the belief in new life beyond the pain. 

That’s why, long before most of the world had ever heard of Jesus Christ, people created myths of heroes that conquered death by exploits, virtues, or deal-making. The problem with these comforting stories human beings told (and still tell) themselves is that they’re all untrue, happy talk for the fearful. 

None of us is virtuous enough, or adept enough at making deals, or courageous enough in the face of what we go through in our lives to earn, gain, or steal life beyond pain.

In our gospel lesson for this morning, John 16:12-22, Jesus acknowledges that birth and death bring pain. But He also points to the hope of new life beyond pain, a new life in eternity without pain, for those who follow Him. 

Let’s be clear though. Jesus’ words would be nothing more than another version of the happy lies we tell ourselves as human beings if it weren’t for one simple fact: Jesus, has immersed Himself into our humanity, including its pain and death, so that He can absorb all of our pain, all of our death, all of our sin into Himself.

Jesus does this so that, after dying condemned for our sins, God the Father could raise Him from the dead. 

It’s Jesus’ dying and rising that makes it possible for all who, by faith, absorb the death of Jesus into our own bodies and lives to be raised to new life beyond the pain of birth and death. That’s what Good Friday and Easter Sunday are about.

At the beginning of our lesson, we find Jesus preparing His disciples for the pain--the grief--they’re about to endure as He is taken from them and murdered. In fact, Jesus has been deluging the disciples with teaching that fills several chapters of John’s gospel. The disciples must have sensed from Jesus’ words, even if they didn’t fully understand them, that a crisis was about to hit. Jesus has been giving them instructions for how to face the crisis. Yet, they must have also wondered, “How can we possibly remember all of this?”

Jesus promises the disciples that He will send the Holy Spirit to His Church. When, Jesus says, “the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come” (John 16:13). It was the Holy Spirit Who would enable the disciples to remember what Jesus taught about the meaning of His death and resurrection for a human race dying in its sin. It was the Holy Spirit that empowered the disciples to remember and so teach us that the pain of life is not the last word over those who trust in Jesus. 

Their remembrances come to us in the Bible. The Bible then is the Holy Spirit-inspired Word from God, pointing us to new life through Jesus. And this Word has power! Hebrews 4:12 reminds us, “...the word of God is alive and active…” 

When we read or hear the Bible, we encounter the same powerful Word God spoke to bring the universe into being. And this same Word, when we stand under its authority, brings us new life.

Jesus next tells the disciples, “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.” (John 16:16) 

This incites a confused and almost comical conversation among the disciples that might best be summarized as, “Wait. What?” 

They don’t understand what Jesus is telling them. At that moment, they really can’t. 

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? We lose someone we love or a way of life we’ve valued and we wonder how we can go on. 

Jesus tells the disciples that soon they won’t see Him anymore. They’re confused. Then Jesus adds to their fog by telling them, that “after a little while,” they’re going to see Him again. 

When the pain of death comes to us, it’s as hard imagine being able to once again see our dead loved ones as it must have been for my mom to believe that anything good was going to result from thirty-six hours of labor only to give birth to a scrawny blue breech baby who had to be put in an incubator and couldn’t hold up his head for months after his birth. New life out of pain is often beyond our imagining.

It’s because of our failure to imagine that God can bring new life out of pain that Jesus says what He does next in our gospel lesson. “A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.” (John 16:21) Jesus isn’t saying that moms develop amnesia about their labor pains. He is saying that that their suffering seems worth it for the joy of the new life they now hold in their arms.

As Jesus speaks here, He Himself is about about to deliver a new creation. He will labor on the cross so that when He rises, new resurrected life will come to Him. 

And like a mother delivering a child, Jesus doesn’t labor on the cross for Himself. Since Jesus was sinless and eternal, He didn’t need to endure the pain of death and birth to have life. He already had life to the full, perfect, sinless, eternal life.

Jesus labored for us. “For the joy set before him [Jesus] endured the cross, scorning its shame...” (Hebrews 12:2) 

And what was the joy set before Jesus? 

Jesus’ joy, the thing that made Him willing to suffer pain, cross and death, was you! 

The reward He sought was you, with Him, eternally safe and secure from the sin and death and separation from God into which we are born in this life. 

Jesus’ joy is to give new birth to you, beyond the pain of this fallen world. 

Jesus says that “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (John 3:3). Jesus, in the words of the Christmas hymn, was “born to give us second birth.” He died for that end as well. That’s how important you are to Jesus. He simply refuses to imagine spending eternity without you!

The new birth that Jesus brings is a free gift. We can’t earn, acquire, or steal it for ourselves. 

But to take hold of it will cost us our lives. The new life that Jesus secures for us can’t be ours if we insist on holding onto our pretenses of being in control in this life. We must let go of the myths of our self-sufficiency, goodness, or power. That’s painful; but it’s the way of following Jesus. “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy,” Jesus tells us in John 16:22.

So, how does Jesus’ life, death, and resurrected life become embodied in us so that we are part of His new creation? 

Not by anything we do! Jesus says in John 3:5: “...no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” 

Our new life begins when God acts to save us in Holy Baptism. 

In Baptism, He drowns our old selves and the Holy Spirit infuses us with the resurrection life that Jesus, like a mother who endures labor, has suffered to give to us. 

The apostle Peter says that the water of the flood in which God saved Noah and his family “symbolizes baptism that now saves you also..It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:21) Baptism is how God brings us into His new creation.

“Wait. What?” you might be saying right now. “Isn’t there something we need to do do? Don’t we at least have to believe?” 

Yes and no. We do have to believe. Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16) And, “whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Yes, we must believe. We must have faith.

But faith isn’t something we do. Faith is something we don’t do. Faith is something God, acting through Jesus Christ, does to us. 

I’m not saying that we won’t do things because we have faith. But we mustn’t confuse faith, childlike trust in God, with what we do because we already have received the gift of faith. 

We can’t manufacture faith in Jesus. 

Faith isn’t “positive thinking.” 

It’s not trying to psych ourselves into buying something as true, repeating in the style of the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz, “I do believe in Jesus. I do believe in Jesus.”

Faith is the creation of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit Who comes to us in our baptisms. 

The same Spirit Jesus promises will help us to remember the promise of new life amid the pains of this life. 

Faith happens when the Word of God--preached, taught, and embodied in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion--demolishes our desire to be gods unto ourselves and opens us to trust in Christ alone for life, when we can say of ourselves and Jesus what John the Baptist said, “He must increase, but I must increase.” (John 3:30) 

Faith is foreign to our inborn sinful natures. That's why the Bible tells us, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3) Faith is God's work in us!

Only faith created in us by God the Holy Spirit comprehends that Jesus bore the pain of death and agony to win new life for us. 

When we live in Spirit-powered faith in Jesus, we endure the pain of being separated from all our favorite sins--from gossip to covetousness, from adultery to worshiping ourselves and other false gods, from materialism to prejudice. 

But, born anew in Christ’s new kingdom, the Holy Spirit works to make us over in Jesus’ image, setting us free to live in the freedom of being God’s emancipated children, not yet all God that is going to make of us, but no longer slaves to sin, death, and fear, disciples of Christ with nothing to prove, everything to celebrate, and a Lord we want to spend today and all eternity glorifying! Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

5 Interesting Things About the Wedding at Cana

A wedding at Cana is remembered as the occasion for Jesus' first miracle, when He turned water into wine.

Here are five interesting things about John 2:1-11, in which the incident is recounted.

1. John begins the account with the words, "On the third day..." Most scholars now believe that this represents the third day of man named Nathanael following Jesus. How Nathanael came to do that is recounted in John 1:43-51. It appears right before the account of the wedding in John's Gospel.

Coming at the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry, the phrase, "on the third day," foreshadows Jesus' resurrection, which comes on the third day from His crucifixion.

2. There is whimsy in this incident, underscoring that Jesus is both true God and true human. Here we see Him as God and as a human being.

Jesus' mother presents Him with a dilemma: The supply of wine for the celebrants of a wedding banquet, the kind of event which typically ran for about a week in those days, had given out. Implicit in Mary's statement of fact apparently, is a request that reflects her understanding of Who Jesus is, the "Word made flesh," God in human skin.

But Jesus is also her son. Like generations of sons before and since, Jesus is playful in His response to Mary. I think we can well imagine a teasing tone in Jesus' voice and a smile on His face when He tells her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to Me? My hour has not yet come." (More on that below.)

Also, like generations of moms, Mary takes her son's teasing in stride and, certain that He will respond to her request, turns to the servants and says, "Do whatever He tells you."

Even if you don't believe that Jesus teased His mother here, you have to admit that choosing to reveal His divinity for the first time through an act that allowed a party to continue and prevent its hosts from being humiliated, seems, on the face of it, a whimsical choice on Jesus' part. But God isn't just solemn Lord of the universe; He's also the author of joy.

3. The "hour" to which Jesus is referring undoubtedly is the hour when His divinity was to be fully revealed. Of course, His divinity would be at least intimated soon. After all, who but God could turn water into wine?

But Jesus' divinity would not be fully understood until after His resurrection. Many still refuse to understand it or believe it. To those who paid attention though, miracles like this one served as signs of Jesus' identity and mission. They still serve the same purpose today.

4. The water turned into wine reminds us of the two Sacraments of the Church: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

The first is our port of entry into the Church. (By "Church," I'm not referring to a denominational organization or a specific congregation, but the Church composed of those who turn from sin and persist in believing in Jesus as their only God and Savior.) Holy Baptism is what Jesus is talking about in John 3:5, when He says, "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit." In Baptism, the Holy Spirit claims us as children of God. Of course, like all children, we may run away from being God's child. We may opt out of trusting in the God Who claims us in Baptism. But Baptism assures us that, as the old saying puts it, God is absent from our lives, it wasn't God Who moved.

The second is the sustenance Christ gives to us along our journey as believers. In a mysterious way we can't explain or articulate, Christ comes to us in Communion, offering us forgiveness of sin as we receive His body and blood in, with, and under the bread and the wine. This is what Jesus meant when, at the Passover He celebrated with His disciples just before He was arrested and executed, He handed them bread and said, "Take, eat; this is My body," then handed them wine and said, "Drink from it all of you; for this is My blood...which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Matthew 20:26-29)

The Lutheran movement of which I'm a part has always said that it's pointless to argue over how many Sacraments there are. But we also believe that three things make a thing a Sacrament, a mysterious means by which God's grace in Christ is imparted to us:

• It was instituted or commanded by Christ.
• It entails a physical element.
• It comes with the promise of forgiveness of sin to those who receive it with belief.

Interestingly, John's Gospel is the most sacramental of the for Gospels found in the New Testament. Yet, in it, we find no command from Jesus to baptize and He doesn't mention Jesus' institution of Holy Communion during his account of the Last Supper. John, the consummate artist, emphasizes the importance of the two sacraments by not including overt references to Jesus instituting either of them.

5. This incident, coming at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, is the start of what biblical scholars would call an inclusion which culminates at John 19:34. In this latter passage, wanting to confirm that Jesus, then hanging on the cross, is dead, a soldier pierces His side "and at once blood and water came out."

Ancient writers often used inclusions in order to emphasize an important theme. There are many of them in the Bible and an inclusion can encompass both large and small sections of Scripture. They offer a good interpretive tool for those who want to understand God's Word.

Everything within this particular inclusion, the story of Jesus' time on earth, helps us to stand in awe of the incredible fact that God took on human flesh to make His grace, power, and love accessible to all who believe in Him (see John 1:1-14; 3:16; 14:6).

Today, although we can't see Jesus, Who is alive and ascended to heaven, He remains accessible to us in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, among other ways. We also can experience Jesus, of course, in the Bible, God's normative and authoritative book for us; prayer in Jesus' Name; and the fellowship of other Christians. But the Sacraments, with their physical elements, have about them the mystery of the God, Who is Spirit, taking on flesh to become "the Lamb of God."

So, this passage, laden with whimsy and taking place at a party, also foreshadows Christ's death for the sins of humanity and His resurrection. It also points to the fact that all who believe in Jesus will, one day, be guests at a party--a banquet, a celebration--that never ends. (See also Luke 15:22-23.)

There's a lot more to be said about this passage. But this post is only about five interesting things. You might want to explore and reflect on the passage for yourself, using a good commentary like IVP Bible Background Commentary (New Testament) by Craig Keener.