Baptized Into Hope

Before the coronavirus pandemic put the kibosh on my social life our family would visit friends, share meals with other families, and watch as our kids tried to one-up each other on a backyard playset. Inevitably I would have to take one of our kids to the bathroom which meant it was my turn to make sure the kids washed their hands after they had done whatever it was, they needed to do.

Our last pre-coronavirus kid get together had us at the home of a family in which one of the adults is a United Methodist pastor. I took one of the kids to the bathroom and as we were splashing more water on one another than on our hands I noticed a laminated sign taped above the faucet in the bathroom. It read, “Remember Your Baptism and Be Thankful.”

After our trip to the bathroom, we stopped by the kitchen to refill a water bottle and snag one of the last juice boxes. I reached for the faucet in the kitchen and the same sign, the one from the bathroom was taped above the kitchen sink. “Remember Your Baptism and Be Thankful.”

All four of the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – agree that Jesus was baptized and crucified. The details of the Nativity were left out of the Gospel of John and Mark, well, Mark omitted a tiny detail we like to call Easter. The Gospels disagree on a lot of details, often contradicting one another, and that can leave us scratching our heads wondering about locations and timing. But all four of the Gospel writers agree that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River.

John the Baptist, living in the wilderness, dressed in camel skin and eating locust and wild honey had been calling the people of Israel to a baptism of repentance – an invitation to turn away from their sins and towards God. John’s invitation was to a human act. As the waters of the baptism offered by John fell down the head and face of the one receiving it, the weight and guilt of the sin of the one being washed by the water remained. This is the baptism the church in Ephesus remembered.

The problem is that the baptism the Ephesian Christians remembered stopped a step short. According to Acts, “Paul said, ‘John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, in Jesus.’”[1] The Ephesian Christians missed that our baptism is not about what John the Baptist did, rather our baptism is into the life and death, the ministry of Jesus Christ, the One whom John the Baptist had been called to proclaim.

Assuming our unrighteousness upon himself, Jesus will take our unrighteousness with him to the cross - by the baptism of his suffering, death, and resurrection, Christ has done for us that which we were and continues to be unable to do for ourselves. 

We have been made righteous.

We are right before God.

Our justification began in the Jordan River and was realized on the cross when Jesus died for the empire colluders, thieves, religious hypocrites, and everyday people. John’s baptism was one of repentance – turning towards God. Jesus’ baptism and our baptism into his life, death, and resurrection is about the work completed by God. The waters of baptism are not a solicitation, no, we are celebrating that in Christ we have received the pardon we could have only hoped for and have claimed the name beloved child of God.

“Remember Your Baptism and Be Thankful.”

As a pastor one of my favorite things to do, OK it’s my favorite thing to do, is to stand at the baptismal font and baptize new Christians – babies, confirmands, adults, and everyone in-between. What I love about the moment the water runs down the face of the person receiving it, is seeing the hope in their eyes and in the eyes of those who have gathered with them – family, friends, and the entire congregation. Not a hope in their own ability to do, say, or think the right things. No, it is the hope that can come only when we realize that through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, we have been baptized into new life through the One who was baptized by John in the Jordan River.

Every person who has been baptized – regardless if you were sprinkled, poured over, or dunked (remember, it is about the work of God in Christ) – being baptized into new life in Jesus Christ has been baptized into Hope. Hope that can only come from the One Hope of the World.

The Hope found in our baptism is an invitation to clothe ourselves in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Hope in a life that is no longer our own. No longer are we constrained to the trappings of a world that would rather pull itself apart than come together. A life that looks to the glory of God rather than the glory of and for ourselves. A life that leaves the 99 seeking out the one who is lost.

Hope in a death that does not hold the last word. The darkness of death is no more. Death has lost its sting.

And Hope in a resurrection that Christ has promised we too will participate in.

Remember Your Baptism and Be Filled with Hope.

The coronavirus pandemic, in addition to putting the kibosh on Pastor Jeff getting a haircut, has made it so that the liturgical act of remembering this hope cannot be done in the traditional manner we are accustomed to. In years past Pastors Ed, Jeff, and I would stand in front of the congregation, holding the baptismal bowl and invite the entire congregation to come forward, placing their hands in the water with the invitation to, “Remember Your Baptism and Be Thankful.”

“Remember Your Baptism and Be Thankful.”

In that invitation we are inviting person after person to remember that they are clean.

You are clean.

You are righteous.

Your sins, all of them, including that one you cannot forgive yourself for committing, has been washed away.

It is done.

Once and for all.

For everything, full stop.

No asterisk.

No, if/then prerequisites.

Because you have been baptized into Christ you are no longer your sin.

You are no longer what sin and death call you.

You have been baptized into Hope.

In the waters of our baptism God has clothed us in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and given us a full pardon. The baptism offered by John was not able to do this and if we think today that the person doing the sprinkling, pouring, or dunking has any control over what is happening in this holy moment we are wholly mistaken.

Professor James Torrance put it best: “But it is not the water, not the church, not the minister, not my faith, not my dying and rising, which forgives and heals. It is Christ who has done this for us and in us by the Spirit. So, we are baptized ‘in the name of Christ’ - not our own name - and we are baptized into a life of union with Christ, of dying and rising with Christ, in a life of communion.”

In your baptism, you have been raised into a new Hope, and that Hope is new life in the life and death of Jesus Christ.

“Remember Your Baptism and Be Thankful.”

All week I have been thinking about the laminated signs in my pastor friend’s home. The next time I am able to visit I think I’ll bring a Sharpie marker with me and do a little editing while the one of the kids is washing their hands - “Remember Your Baptism – you have been baptized into the Hope of Jesus Christ – and Be Thankful.”

[1] Acts 19:4 (NRSV)

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