As you look to the water of your own baptism, consider not that the water is wet, but, rather, that it is rich with the Word and promise of God for one reason only: Because Jesus is in that water.
The epistle for the Baptism of Our Lord is always Romans 6, whatever the changes to the Old Testament and Gospel lessons are. It is a solid rock of a text. A dear seminary professor of mine (Robert Kolb!) once confessed to us in class that as he was preaching in chapel over the years on a great many different pericopes, the death and life dynamic of the baptized believer was his constant pole star. So, he would say, “No matter what the pericope, you’ll know I’m always really preaching on Romans 6.” That is logic which is hard to argue with if your pulpit is meant to deliver the Christ dead and raised, the instrument the Holy Spirit uses to slay and vivify your own hearers Sunday after Sunday.
One challenge for the day’s celebration is to faithfully deliver the fact of Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and somehow ensure your listeners hear it as good news, while maintaining the distinction between Christ’s baptism and their own Christian baptism in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The gospel of Christ’s baptism is that He was baptized for you, for all humanity, all Israel reduced to one, a baptism of repentance for a man who needed no repenting. Jesus is God in the water being washed over with the filth of sins and sinfulness not His own. My faults, my sins, are what Jesus willingly takes on in order to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3:15). My faults, my sins, are what Jesus ultimately takes to the cross in His death as well. We are not baptized into Christ’s baptism. We are baptized into Christ’s death (Romans 6:3-4). As Israel passed through the Red Sea to freedom, so Christ (all of Israel reduced to one, God’s son) faces the death we face, in solidarity with us. He goes one further and actually dies for us with all sins and sinfulness. Again, they are not His own, but yours, mine, and the sins of the world. And that is the death into which we are baptized. It is also the resurrection into which we are baptized (Romans 6:4-11); drowned in water, saved by water (also see 1 Peter 3:18-21). Christ draws us through death to life in Christian baptism. Dead to sin, alive to God in Christ.
The great pitfalls of preaching this Romans 6 text center on presuppositions that question the efficacy of baptism or get caught up in modern evangelical allergies to ecumenical catholic practice. My one word of advice on this for theologians is that theologians are tasked with doing theology, and theology is always about what God is doing. So, ask yourself the serious question as you study this text: What does God do and what is God doing in baptism? Unreflective theologians will immediately bully their way into a text, knowing their conclusions before the words of the scripture have had time to digest. The eisegesis that rules the roost, particularly in treating pericopes or verses dealing with Christian sacraments, usually manifests as squeezing biblical texts into rigid dogmatic boxes, or inserting presuppositions of magisterial reason over and above the reading of the text. Imagine the foolishness of presenting Romans 6 to your hearers by preemptively saying, “Well, we all know this is just a symbol of something that is really going on in the heart, so now let’s hear how Paul talks about this.” Imagine a sermon that attempts the esoteric by outlining how Romans 6 divides between “baptism of water” and “baptism of spirit.” Notice how neither of these moves actually preaches what Paul delivers plainly, here and in many other places in his letters. Preaching Romans 6 wrong includes using the text to defend your particular brand of Christianity, where you risk twisting the actual words of holy writ to your own purposes. Your intentions may be good, but the goal in such a case is perverse, because the goal in preaching this or any text is to deliver the Christ dead and raised for the salvation of your hearer. She needs to hear, see, and know she is justified for Christ’s sake, apart from any of her own doing. The passive verbs of the Romans 6 text help reinforce the good news of this delivery (no merit of the saved, all work to God’s credit); who have been baptized... were baptized Romans 6:3; were buried Romans 6:4; we have been united with him Romans 6:5; our old self was crucified with him Romans 6:6, and others.
The Christ at the center of the text helps reinforce this goal as well. Where is Jesus? Deliver Him. Focus on Him. Find Him and help your hearer find Him by removing the obstacles in the way of seeing Him. Here, on either side of the epistle pericope, the Jesus is the Lord’s servant, the one in the water, being baptized by John (Isaiah 42; Matthew 3). Here, in Romans 6, the Jesus is the Christ who died (Romans 6:3), buried and raised (6:4), united with the baptized believer in death and resurrection (6:5), the one with whom our old self was crucified (6:6), and the one with whom we have died and will live (6:8). The Jesus of Romans 6 is the one who is raised and will never die again, over whom death has no dominion (6:9). He died to sin, once for all, and lives to God (6:10). This is the Christ in whom we count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. This Jesus is location. This Jesus is identity. Baptismal identity is more than a name, more than a christening. Baptismal identity is being one with Jesus.
Baptismal identity is more than a name, more than a christening. Baptismal identity is being one with Jesus.
This unity, this identity is the thing that runs the show in Romans 6. Here, there is no sympathetic magic or mere symbolism, a reenactment of divine drama. Paul, much to the contrary, lays it out as essential, ontological: This is the case. You were buried in Christ’s burial. You rise again to newness of life both in the “not yet” and in the “now.” And this is to baptism’s credit. What God does there is kill and make alive. Your life now is either with the living Christ, or it is back to the boneyard. There are only two options: A party in paradise or a rave in the grave. That is the black and white of it at the very beginning of the selection with the Apostle’s rhetorical question: What shall we say then, shall we go on sinning that grace may abound? Mē genoito! That conclusion, the answer to the question, is just as relevant to the baptized believer in real time, switching from the negative, “By no means – here is what not to do,” to the positive, “Here is what to do”: Count yourselves dead to sin, living, rather, to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11).
Just laying out a doctrine lesson for your hearer is a mistake in a sermon as well, even if it is good doctrine. You need to deliver Christ. On this occasion, that is the Christ in the water with His cousin John. Why is He there? And what does this have to do with my baptism? Romans 6 is here in the lectionary to ensure Christ’s baptism is not simply one more bit of our Lord’s life and ministry to check off the list on the way to passion week, but, rather, to confront us with this earliest bit of our Lord’s ministry as gospel, that what He is doing there, He is doing for you. Uniting that with the “uniting with Christ” theme in Romans 6 will deliver Paul’s argument about baptism faithfully and deliver the Christ for your hearer.
The Jesus in the water is a Jesus who came to stand as a replacement for the many, as a replacement for you. He substitutes with God’s righteousness what you cannot attain on your own. He substitutes with His love the love that was corrupted in you, the love for your neighbor, yourself, and your God. When God looks for His child, His Israel who has run away, He sees Him in your substitute, the Israel who does His Father’s bidding. Jesus is Israel in the water for Israel, Israel in Jerusalem for the Israelites, Jesus being brought out of the city to suffer for Israel, carrying His own cross, Jesus nailed to a cross for all Israel, laying down His life and dying a slave’s death as slave of all, servant of all, in solidarity with all who are servants, all who are enslaved to sin. In His baptism, He is baptized with the water of sinners as a sinner. Dying He dies for sinners, He dies for Israel, and He dies for you. The son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to lay down His life as a ransom in replacement for, in exchange for, as a substitute for the many. It is for you, in solidarity with you, delivered to you.
This Jesus for you is the Jesus into whose death you die in the waters of your baptism, and in whose resurrection you rise (Romans 6:3-4). Here, we dare not, like Peter, protest that He need not wash us, that we are the ones who ought to serve Him. Why is it that cousin John at His baptism and Peter at his passion insist on preventing the goods that Jesus wants to deliver? Wash me in Your words, in Your water. Lord, wash me on Your own terms. The baptism You underwent was my death that You died. Now, in my baptism, You wash me with Your death; buried with Christ, we rise again, dead to sin, alive to this Jesus who is delivered to you. The Jesus delivered to you is the Jesus in the water. It is John’s water, Israel’s water, and your water too.
And the Jesus who is delivered to you is standing still in solidarity with you. He is where you are, and where He is you want to be. Look not at the water of Jesus’ baptism to find your identity. Look to the Jesus in the water, and there you find the one whose baptism pointed to the bloody trial, the baptism of suffering and death He died to make you His own. Look to the Jesus whose resurrection calls you out of the watery grave of your own baptism. And as you look to the water of your own baptism, consider not that the water is wet, but, rather, that it is rich with the Word and promise of God for one reason only: Because Jesus is in that water. And where He is, there you want to be. And where you are, there He is, delivered for you to deliver, redeem, and renew you.
--------
Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Romans 6:1-11.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Romans 6:1-11.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
