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.

Getting Personal

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

Matthew 4:18-22
I once heard a megachurch pastor talk about a survey his congregation conducted to understand what caused their newer members to join. This congregation’s worship attendance had grown explosively: By the time this study was conducted, the church’s weekend attendance was about 10,000. 

The survey determined that the number one people joined the church was this: anonymity. People joined this big church so that they could show up, consume what was offered, and leave without anyone knowing them. Most had been members of other, smaller churches and they started attending the megachurch in order to avoid any personal connection with Christ and His Church. You can imagine how disappointed the pastor and church leadership were to see those results.

A congregation doesn’t have to be of megachurch status for people to keep themselves anonymous. The church growth experts would classify Living Water as a middle-sized congregation. But even our Sunday morning numbers are sufficiently large for people to keep themselves anonymous if they choose to be. Anonymous Christians are folks who show up on Sunday mornings (sometimes) and make regular offerings but really aren’t engaged with Christ or the Church in any other way.

Of course, we all go through seasons of life when we can’t be that involved with other Christians in our church community. Ill health, overtime hours, parents or spouses or children in need. A lot of things can diminish our capacity for engagement. 

But some people choose to remain anonymous Christians. They want just enough of Jesus to say they know something about Him, but not enough to heed His call to follow Him and to love their fellow disciples as He has loved us. 

That’s sad because living in community with the Church is how God supports us in living joyfully and confidently in the grace God gives to us when the Word of Christ meets the water at our Baptism.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been involved in a series on Living Out Our Baptism. We began by remembering that at Baptism, the saving Word of Christ comes to us and we are given a share in Christ’s death and resurrection. 

Our call from that point forward is to trust in God’s baptismal grace, even when temptations assail us or when we feel that we’ve committed unforgivable sins. 

Two weeks ago, we remembered that Christ gave us the Church and one week ago, we remembered that He gave what Martin Luther called “the little church,” the family, to help us affirm and grow in the relationship with God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--that God initiates with us in Holy Baptism. 

Today, in this last installment, we discuss a tool used by Jesus, but often forgotten by the Church, a tool designed to support and encourage people in their faith and to challenge us and ensure that people are praying for and with us as we each daily seek to follow the God Who saves us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

I want to point you to a few places in Scripture where we see Jesus focusing on the use of this tool. Look first, please, to Matthew 4:18-22. This comes after Jesus’ baptism at the Jordan and His temptation in the wilderness. It says: “As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’ At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” 

Matthew 10:2-4 gives us a full listing of the names of the twelve people who Jesus called to be His apostles: “These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.” I think that Matthew takes the time to name them because each one of these people were important to Jesus as individuals, just as you are important to Jesus as an individual person.

It was into this group of people, the twelve, that Jesus poured the second greatest amount of time and energy during His ministry. He met with these men, traveled with them, talked with them, ate with them, laughed with them, and showed them that He was (and is) the way, the truth, and the life, the Savior of the world. During Jesus’ time on earth, the twelve were a small group.

But Jesus had another tool He used to prepare His disciples for living out their relationship with Him beyond the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Jesus seems to have poured His great attention and energy into three of the apostles: Peter, James, and John. 

• When Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter, He took these three apostles with Him. 
• When Jesus went to the mountaintop to be transfigured and speak with Moses and Elijah, He did so in the company of these three men. 
• When Jesus went to a secluded spot to pray on the night of His arrest, He asked these three to accompany Him. 

Peter, James, and John formed another kind of group. Some call them cells, relating to the Church, the body of Christ, the way the cells relate to our entire bodies. Some call them micro-groups. Around here at Living Water, we’ve taken to calling them triads or quads. (Or when we’re being silly, quad-daddies.)

Why exactly did Jesus start small groups? Did He want to have in-groups and cliques? 

You need to look no further than John 3:16 to know that Jesus wasn't into cliques. Jesus told Nicodemus that, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” 

Jesus didn’t come into the world to start exclusionary cliques. He came into the world to do what everybody in the world needed to have done for us: He offered Himself as the sinless sacrifice for our sin and to rise from the dead so that all who turn from sin and believe in will share in His death and His resurrection! God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4). All who believe in Jesus will be saved!

Jesus started groups for this reason: The life of a baptized disciple of Jesus Christ is not to meant to lived anonymously. In fact, it really can’t be lived in any sustained way anonymously. 

Christ took on human life in order to know us personally, from the inside of human experience, and so that, as one of us, He could offer His sinless life for us. 

And after He had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, He didn’t tell the eleven remaining apostles to print up brochures or tracts to be anonymously distributed by the post office; He didn’t tell them to sell advertising; He didn’t tell them to hold mass meetings. Being and making disciples, living as baptized disciples of Jesus, was never meant to be an anonymous enterprise. 

A literal rendering of Jesus’ words in the Great Commission are, “As you are going, make disciples of all nations…” Living out our Baptism--being disciples and making disciples--is intensely personal, something to be done as we're going about the world, interacting with other people. 

But, studies show that, at most, we’re incapable of having any kinds of close relationships with more than seventy people. And even then, most of those relationships will be little more than, “Hey! How are you today?” 

Living out our Baptism is best nurtured when we’re part of a small group whose members read and reflect on God’s Word together, hold one another up in prayer, and call each other out when it’s appropriate. Interpersonally. This is how faith best grows. This is how our confidence in Christ most grows. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another,” Proverbs 27:17 says. 

Weekly worship with the whole congregation is important. But when we rely on weekly worship to keep our faith sharp, it’s too easy to be anonymous, to grow dull in our faith, to forget about God’s love for us given in Christ, to forget to read and reflect on God’s Word, to forget to pray, to forget to trust in Christ, to forget to repent for sins that, left unchecked, can overtake our lives and our faith.

I would like to invite you to be part of a small group. 

Our Life and Learning Team will be meeting again the week after next to start new small groups...although several have been meeting for a while now. 

But you needn’t wait. If you have two other folks in the congregation who would like to join you in a small group, this is what you need to do: 

• 1. Pick a book of the Bible that each of you will read a chapter or a paragraph at a time on your own during a daily quiet time. (Maybe shoot for three to five days a week for a quiet time initially.) 
• 2. You can structure your daily personal quiet time with God in this way: Stop (to talk with God about your life, confess sins, seek guidance, ask God to illuminate His Word as you read it); Look (read God’s Word and discern what He may be telling you that day); Listen (ask God to help you see the implications for your day of the passage that struck you as you read); and Respond (ask God to show you what He wants you to do in response to His Word). 
• 3. Then, when you get together in your group, maybe every two weeks, ask each other what God has been telling you in His Word; share, as you feel comfortable, what’s going on in your life; pray for each other, and set a time to meet again.

Simply put, a small group is composed of a group of baptized believers gathered around the Word of God--the Word about Jesus Christ--seeking to help one another grow in confident faith in Jesus. While one person may act as a facilitator, there is no “teacher”: the Holy Spirit, the One Who comes to us in Holy Baptism, is our teacher. 

If you’d like help in starting a small group, just write something on the attendance pad like, “I want to be part of a small group.” 

I’ve been part of several small groups over the years. Some have thrived. Some haven’t. But I can tell you that it’s in these small groups, where Christ gets up close and personal, that my faith in Him and my love for fellow believers has grown the most. The same can be true for you. Amen

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

The Little Church

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning, September 22.]

Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Colossians 2:11-12
One thing that people taking lifesaving training are taught is that if a person you’re trying to save from drowning fights against you by thrashing and flailing to save themselves, you must not allow two people to drown. Sometimes, no matter how perfectly a lifesaver does her or his job, drowning people, by their actions, will choose not to be saved.

As we come to part three of our series, Living Out Our Baptism, I offer this as an incomplete illustration of Holy Baptism. 

God is our Lifesaver. He has sent His Son into this world to die and to rise so that we can be saved from sin, death, darkness, and separation from God. The Holy Spirit gives us an undeserved share in Christ’s victory over these things, accomplished on the cross and confirmed by the empty tomb when the Word about Christ meets water. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God claims us as His own. 

But just as the drowning person must stop thrashing and trust the lifesaver, we too must trust the One Who has claimed us as His own. 

We need to trust in the One Who died and rose for us. 

Jesus puts it succinctly: “Whoever believes and is baptized,” Jesus says, “will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16) 

In Holy Baptism, God saves us; but unless we trust in the Savior, if we insist on thrashing around, intent on being gods unto ourselves who try to save ourselves, we will be condemned. 

“The work of God is this,” Jesus says elsewhere, “to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:29) 

Faith is jettisoning all attempts to save ourselves--through good deeds, high achievements, sterling relationships--and clinging only to the God we know in Christ.

Holy Baptism is usually the beginning of our lives with God. Whether we’re baptized as infants or adults, our call will be the same: to live out our baptisms by doing the work of God, believing in Jesus. 

Baptism plays the same role today in the lives of all believers in Jesus as circumcision once played in the lives of male believers in Yahweh in Old Testament times. 

In circumcision, God called Israel to faith in Him, not to thrash around, seeking after other gods or going their own ways. And every circumcised boy was called, usually at about fourteen years of age, to make a confession of their own faith in God. 

Today, a person is baptized, then called to confirm their faith at a point when they’ve been instructed and are able to confess for themselves their belief that, “Jesus us Lord.” We call the rite in which a person confesses Christ as their Lord for their own lives, Affirmation of Baptism or Confirmation.

The apostle Paul shows us how Baptism has replaced circumcision and brings even greater blessings in Colossians 2:11-12: “ In [Christ] you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

Last Sunday, we talked about the importance of the Church in helping the baptized to believe in Jesus. But for children, especially, there’s a more intimate community that God has given to help the baptized to trust their lives to Jesus. It’s the family. Martin Luther called the family the little Church. 

Through the years, I’ve asked Christians who most influenced them to believe in Jesus. Sometimes, but rarely, they tell me it was a pastor. Far more often they say things like “my father,” “my mother,” “my grandmother,” “my grandfather,” “my brother.” “my sister,” "my husband," "my wife."

Families can be places where the baptized are instructed or catechized in the faith. To catechize someone is, according to the dictionary, to “instruct…[them] in the principles of Christian religion…”  People who are catechized are people who learn the basics of Christian faith. And no matter how advanced any Christian disciple may appear, no Christian disciple ever advances so far as to not need daily refamiliarization with the basics of our faith, things like salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed (which faithfully summarizes the Bible's teaching about Who God is), the Lord's Prayer, Holy Baptism, and Holy Communion. Luther spoke of the importance of Christians reconnecting to the Catechism, by which he didn't mean the Small and Large Catechisms that he wrote, but the basic truths of Christian faith.

But Luther did write his Catechisms to help Christians do this. In fact, he wrote them in response to what he saw as an urgent need. Not long after those who adhered to the principles of the Reformation were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, it was decided that in Saxony, where Luther lived, theologians would be sent out into the congregations to determine how well the Reformation was being instituted. Luther himself visited some churches and was appalled by what he saw.

In the preface to The Small Catechism, written for use by families in their homes, Luther minced no words:

The deplorable, miserable conditions which I recently observed when visiting the parishes have constrained and pressed me to put this catechism of Christian doctrine into this brief, plain, and simple form. How pitiable, so help me God, were the things I saw: the common man, especially in the villages, knows practically nothing of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are almost entirely incompetent and unable to teach. Yet all the people are supposed to be Christians, have been baptized, and receive the Holy Sacrament even though they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments and live like poor animals of the barnyard and pigpen. What these people have mastered, however, is the fine art of tearing all Christian liberty to shreds.

In our baptismal liturgy, there’s a point in which parents bringing their children to the font are asked to make certain commitments. The pastor tells them: 

In Christian love you have presented this child for Holy Baptism. You should, therefore, faithfully bring her to the services of God’s house, and teach her the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. As she grows in years, you should place in her hands the Holy Scriptures and provide for her instruction in the Christian faith, that, living in the covenant of her Baptism and communion with the Church, she may lead a godly life until the day of Jesus. 

The pastor then asks, 

Do you promise to fulfill these obligations? 

And the parents are called to respond, 

I do. 

The parents are asked to make these commitments for their baptized child so that, when she or he has received some basic instruction in the faith, they will be able to say, for themselves, “I believe!”

God has always intended for children to receive their most influential instruction in discipleship in the home. 

This pattern--God claiming children as His own and calling their families to teach them the faith so that, like their parents, the children can believe in God and be saved from sin and death--goes all the way back to the Old Testament. Take a look with me, please, at Deuteronomy 6:4-9. Deuteronomy is an address by Moses given to the people of Israel just before their entrance into the land God had promised them. In this passage, Moses begins, 

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 

Now, the word translated here as commandments is, in the Hebrew in which the Old Testament was written, haddebarim, from the root word, dabar. That literally means not so much commandments, as words. 

Moses is telling Israel to remember the words of God, God’s commands and promises, Law and Gospel. Israel was to keep at the center of their beings the Word of God, which is filled with God’s life. (As Hebrews 4:12 reminds us, "...the word of God is living and active...")

Moses goes on: 

Impress [God’s words] on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. 

God’s Word needs to be at the center of not only our own lives, but of the lives of our families. 

Without attending to God’s Word, without commending this saving Word that points us to repentance and faith in Jesus, it’s too easy for us and our loved ones to thrash around without hope or peace in the dark waters of a world fallen into sin and death.

Some of you have heard me speak of the time when, after a spring rain, my great-grandmother and I walked out into her front yard. I was about six years old. In the sky to the southeast, there was a rainbow. My great-grandmother told me that because of God’s love for us, He made rainbows a sign of His promise to never destroy the human race in waters and to save all who believe in Him. She catechized me and obviously, her words had an impact because I still remember them some fifty-nine years later!

Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family members: You have an important role in ensuring that the other baptized people in your families know to take hold of the lifesaving Jesus. 

He has done everything needed to save us. 

But unless we impress God’s Word on our families, talking about it when we travel, when we lie down at night, when we rise in the mornings, those precious baptized people in our lives may not remember that Christ’s outstretched hands are there to be grasped, that Christ’s gospel, His promise to never leave us, and His promise to give us eternal life with God can be trusted, are free to all who will let go of saving themselves and trust in Him to save them. 

Jesus gives us a great commission to make disciples around the world. That disciple-making starts in our own families, in our own homes, among the baptized people under our own roofs. 

May we fulfill this part of Christ’s great commission. 

Amen

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