Sermon: May 15 2022 Fifth Sunday after Easter

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

Scripture: Romans 6:1-11 | Mark 10: 35-40

They always knew that Jesus was destined for greatness.

He’d healed people, multiplied a few fish and loaves to feed thousands. He’d become famous, gathered huge, expectant crowds of followers. By then, folks were saying that “this is it… here comes the Messiah.” The Messiah being the figure sent by God to take the throne of creation, and set the world right. Jesus is the guy.

Of course, if Jesus is the Messiah he’s gonna have to parade into the holy city of Jerusalem on a donkey. According to the scriptures, anyway. But it’s also what every king or conqueror does when they take power. It’s what the Romans did when they invaded. If Jesus is next, he’s gonna have to do that, too.

So Jesus and co. are getting ready for the big parade. Psst, a voice whispers in Jesus’ ear. It’s James and John, a couple commercial fisherman Jesus pulled off the boat to come follow him early on in the early days. They were there at the beginning. This time, they do the pulling, dragging Jesus to a quiet corner to discuss some post-parade details.

“Teacher,” they say. “We’ve got a little favour to ask you.”

“Sure,” Jesus replies. “What can I do for you.”

“Considering that we signed up first,” they say. “Considering the fact that we’ve been with you the longest, and considering the fact that we gave up our commercial licenses and some pretty decent contracts to get behind you. We figure it’s only fair if we each get a seat at the cabinet table once you’re sworn into office, one on your left and one on your right. Minister of the Interior, or Oceans and Fisheries, whatever. The point is that once you’re in power you’ll need some loyal people in high places. And who’s more loyal than us?”

Now, there are lots of moments in the New Testament where Jesus does a little forehead slap because his disciples don’t really get what he’s talking about. This one’s a classic.

“Uh…” Jesus replies. “You guys really have no idea what you’re getting into, do you? You really sure that you can drink the cup I’m drinking? You really sure you wanna get dunked in same font I was baptized in?”

Of course, the cup Jesus is talking about, the baptism Jesus is talking about, is his upcoming execution on the cross. Despite the fact that Jesus told them on many occasions that he’s gonna be betrayed, suffer and die, these guys assume that Jesus is going to waltz into town, take the throne, rule like any other king. And that following him means a piece of the power pie, hoisting the spiritual Stanley Cup. They assume that they’re on their way to bliss, their own share of the glory. They assume that each step towards Jerusalem is a step on a ladder to the stars. Each is a wrung to greater glory. More power, additional prestige.

I mean, to be fair to James and John, this is generally how we think spirituality works. It’s all about being better, doing better, transcending, growing. Awakening, enlightening, educating. Success, achievement, prosperity.

These aren’t necessarily bad things, of course. Jesus’ brand of spirituality has a ladder alright. But Jesus says that the ladder actually goes in the opposite direction. Less power, less prestige. More sacrifice, more suffering. This ladder leads not upwards to blue skies, but down into to the dirt. Not upward, but downward into the same death that he himself will endure. “The cup I’m drinking from is my own death. It’s not all smiles and sunshine. Shoulder that cross. My baptism is drowning in the waters of death. You sure you’re ready for a swim?”

This week we continue with our sermon series “Living Under Water,” on baptism as a way of life. Last week we talked about baptism as birthing. Being made new, becoming a new person. New life, being born again. But, as Jesus says, it’s a new life that first comes out of death.

“Do you not know?” The Apostle Paul asks in his letter to the church in Rome. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

In baptism we are reborn, raised to newness of life with Christ. But it’s a life emerges out of the tomb. One of the early Christian theologians, Cyril of Jerusalem said “three times you were plunged in the water, signifying Christ’s burial for three days. By this action you died and you were born, and for you the saving water was at once a grave and the womb of a mother.”[i] (slide) In order to be raised with him, we have to die with him. There’s no Easter Sunday without Good Friday. Baptism is not only birthing, it’s burying. It’s dying in order to rise.

Now what do we mean by dying, exactly?

Paul says that “with Christ our old self was crucified, so that the body of sin might be destroyed and we no longer would be enslaved to sin.”

Our “old self” is us and fallen, broken creatures. In our inability to do the good, and our tendency towards self-centredness. In all of our selfishness, all of our greed, our envy, and our hatred. Our resentment, the will to power in us that is the source of so much human heartache and violence. The wounds that cause us to wound others. That’s our “old self,” what Paul calls elsewhere the “Old Adam,” after our first parent. It’s our complete failure to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and our neighbours as ourselves. Our failure to be like Jesus. To be the people we were created to be.

Paul says that that this old self doesn’t just need a few tweaks, behavioral modifications, or strategic improvements. That’s like patching termite rot with a coat of paint. He says that the old Adam in us needs to be traded out entirely, needs to drown. It’s like compost—it’s gotta perish before anything new can grow. It needs to hop in a grave and die.

Which sounds pretty terrifying, if you ask me. Impossible, even. Like, I don’t wanna give up a lot of that old Adam stuff. I’m reminded of a brutally honest prayer by the great theologian Stanley Hauerwas. “Forgiving Lord,” he prays, I do not want my enemies forgiven. I want you to kill them (as sometimes prays the Psalmist!). Actually I would prefer to pray that you punish them rather than kill them, since I would like to watch them suffer. I fear losing my enemies,” he admits to God, “Because they’re more precious than my loves. If I lost my hates, if I lost my enemies, how would I know who I am?”

Letting our hates die is costly. Letting our resentments, our inadequacies, our anger, our judgmentalism, covetousness and self-justifications… letting our sin die is the last thing we wanna do. We can’t do it, even. Because its grip on us is so tight that we can’t imagine life without it. Like any drug, we’ve become so dependant, so accustomed that we can’t pull ourselves away, for fear we would be destroyed in the process. We need a drastic detox.

One of the most disturbing sermons I’ve ever read is one on this text from Romans. It was delivered by Stanley P. Saunders, an American preacher and academic, and civil rights activist to the Open Door Community, an Christian community devoted to serving and advocating for the homeless in the slums of Atlanta, Georgia. Which unfortunately closed in 2017. This sermon was delivered on the day of his infant son, Carson’s baptism.

“Whatever else we might think is going on during a baptism,” Saunders says. “Whatever else we might think is going on during a baptism there should be no way to avoid the conclusion that while baptism is about new life and celebration, it is also about a death in the family…”

Here’s the disturbing part: “In a few minutes,” he says, “we are going to put my son Carson to death.” “And soon after that we hope to raise him up again. In fact, if all goes according to plan, these events will happen so quickly that you might think the death didn’t really take place. But don’t be fooled. Carson Paul Smith-Saunders is going to die today. Brenda and I have come to believe that this is necessary because we no longer trust our capacities, as sinners living in a broken and distorted world, to raise him up in a way that befits the dignity and beauty he possessed at the moment of his birth, and to preserve his life from the powers of violence and death. We are convinced that his ongoing participation in this world will only corrupt and finally destroy him. So, we decided to give him back to God.”[ii]

Like I said, one of the most disturbing sermons I’ve ever heard. Holding children and death together in this way sounds rather morbid, but maybe this is the only kind of image that can get at this incredible truth. Saunders and his wife knew this truth. The truth that our old selves are beyond repair from the very beginning. The truth that we need a complete restart, from the bottom up. They understood the truth that we don’t have the capacity to create this new life for ourselves, let alone our children. But that our only hope is to be found in the cross. To give ourselves back to God. To give ourselves entirely over to Christ, to die, trusting that we’ll be raised to new life with him.

And the good news is that we have nothing to fear. We have nothing to fear because Christ has conquered death and sin in himself, and has been raised. I’ve said this each of the last few weeks in this series. Baptism isn’t a magic charm that fixed us. But it carries God’s promises to us. This promise says that we can let our old selves go because we trust that whatever in us has to die, Christ is raising something new and beautiful in its place. It’s a promise we can cling to day after day after day. That we can give ourselves over to God, dying and rising daily in Christ.

Do you not know, brothers and sisters, that when we were baptized in to Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death?

What in you has to die?

The good news is that you can let it die. Because as we have been united with Christ in his death, so too have we been united with him in his resurrection. Baptism means the old self is dead and gone, and that in Christ you are a new creation.

Every time you wash your face, remember this truth. Every time you bathe your kids, wash your car, or duck and cover in the rain. That you have been drowned with him and raised to newness of life. Remember Christ’s death is yours, even more so, his resurrection.

Amen.

[i] Quoted in Kevin J. Adams, Living Under Water: Baptism as a Way of Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022), 47.

[ii] Stanley P. Saunders, “A Death in the Family,” in The Word on the Street: Preforming the Scriptures in an Urban Context (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 42.