Grace to you and peace from our risen Savior Jesus. Amen.

T here’s something in the water. You hear that from time to time. It’s usually a joke used to explain a high number of occurrences of some event. Pure, clean, drinking water is supposed to be good for you. We don’t want non-water stuff in our water.

A recent scientific study found that in nearly all city water, water that comes through a water treatment plant, there is stuff. There are medications, chemicals and all sorts of things we use to treat various ailments and diseases, and that stuff is floating around in the water. That water that comes out of your tap, that water you thought was pure and clean, has stuff in it. Stuff that should not be there. Stuff that may not be good for you. There is some concern about the long term affects of this stuff on people.

Today’s subject is water, specifically the waters of Holy Baptism. Luther is clear about these waters. Long term use of Baptismal waters will kill you. He wrote:

Baptism means the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.¹

That’s because it’s not just plain water in Holy Baptism. There is something in that water too. Something that affects you. In the waters of Holy Baptism, God has poured His Word, His name, and His promise given through His Son Jesus. It’s that last thing, that connection to Jesus, that has such a deadly effect. You see it’s “the Jesus” in the water that kills you.

If you’re reading through the Bible this year, last week you read:

Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.²

Baptism is the washing that brings this promise to life, not by our scrubbing, but by God’s saving grace.

It’s because He died. He died on the cross as the one time, perfect sacrifice for all sin in sinful, messed up people, like you and me. As you enter these “Jesus” filled waters of Baptism you now find your death. Luther often talked about Baptism as death by drowning. He said you should drown yourself in the waters of your Baptism everyday, day after day. In doing so you kill the old you, the sinful you, the messed up you and then rise to a new life, a new creation, in Jesus.

St. Paul is a little more graphic. Paul says Baptism is crucifixion. Baptism is being drowned to death, with Jesus. He also says Baptism is like being buried in a grave to rot and mold away.³ You see Holy Baptism shapes our very existence as Christians. It shapes who we are, what we are, how we act, how we think, and what we believe. It shows us how our entire existence is based on death and resurrection.

Again from last week’s Bible readings: Jonah’s plunge into the sea wasn’t just punishment, it was a form of dying. Yet God raised him up. In the same way, Baptism is our descent into death, like Jonah, but also our rising into new life through Jesus Christ.⁴

H ere’s the problem, and I think this is true, not just for you, but for a lot of people in the Church, including many pastors. The problem is we do not take this dying and rising seriously enough. Too often it is sen as a good-luck charm. Too often we treat Holy Baptism as just the start, the first step in the journey, of a Christian life. Something that happened once, maybe many years ago. We treat it as the start of a process, rather than the entire process. We see it as an event at the start of the trail rather than something is with us throughout all of life.

That’s probably because we get distracted. We get distracted by the culture in which we live. Our American culture tells us that all of our problems are fixable. We just have to find the right procedures, or the right recipe. We just have to do the work and work hard. We can find our own way, just be diligent, be strong. Then we just follow the directions and everything will be okay.

Now that’s not an entirely bad way to think. Thinking that way is part of what has made America the great nation it is. We work hard, get an education, earn money, sometimes great wealth, off of the hard work and self-determinating spirit we try to instill in our children, so you will live a good, successful, life. That idea, however, cannot fix every problem. There are some problems hard work cannot fix. There are some problems the best education cannot resolve, and the best books cannot help.

Baptism teaches us: No amount of effort on our part, no amount of ethical muster, or collection of wisdom, no matter how many people we bring together, can fix God’s problem with us. We need to die and we need to be born again from above,⁵ resurrected new again. That is what our Baptism does to us. That’s what our Baptism teaches us. That is what our Baptism should teach us every day of our lives, as long as God gives us breath to breathe on this Earth.

Praying the Psalms last week included Psalm 72 says

He delivers the needy when He calls,
The poor and he who has no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy… and from violence He redeems their life.⁶”

B aptism is God’s way of delivering us when we cannot deliver ourselves. This is where your Catechism can help you. You see Luther had to deal with the same problems and misunderstandings when he was a pastor. In his day people thought Baptism was just one step of many a person had to take to try to earn God’s love and forgiveness. Luther taught Holy Baptism was not just the first small step of our Christian life, but the very center of our Christian life. It is everything about our Christian life.

Your Baptism is just as important as Jesus’ death and resurrection. That is because in Baptism we are crucified with Jesus. Then just as He is risen from the dead we rise too, just like Him.⁷ That’s why Luther says things like, through Baptism we are drowning the old Adam to death, the old sinful-self to death, so that we can rise to a new life through Jesus, to eternal life.

Some people think the way to become a better Christian is to gradually work at being more moral, to gradually work at becoming a better person. That is all a bunch of lies. Those are not bad goals. They are things everyone can always work at, but that is not the Christian faith.

Those lies are what give some people the idea everyone in church is “just a bunch of goody-goody-two-shoes pretending to be goody-goody people who never have problems.” All of you know that is not true. You all have families with troubles and problems of various sizes and seriousness. So if you can see the Church is not about pretending to be good, then why do some pastors teach that foolishness in their churches? Worse yet: Why do some people believe it?

The truth about becoming a better Christian is not about becoming a better person. That’s not a bad thing to do, but that is not what the Holy Christian Faith is about. The Holy Christian Faith is about gradually working yourself closer and closer to your grave. It is about gradually walking closer and closer to your death, which comes in God’s time, by God’s will.

I t is in that final breath, that final moment, the true power of Holy Baptism shines most brightly. Brighter than Harry Potter’s wand; brighter than Gandolff’s staff, brighter than the most powerful forces that can be known in the Universe. Brighter than a summer bonfire burning against a dark sky; brighter than the lightning that cracks across fields in July storms. Holy Baptism shines in that moment because in that moment your Baptism brings your salvation. Your Baptism which has washed you clean and made you perfect in the eyes of your perfect heavenly Father. Baptism bring you Jesus.

Baptism is a two sided coin with your death on one side and your resurrection on the other. The two cannot be separated. They are one. Thank God for that. I’ve lost track of the number of beds where I have sat next to someone to remind them, near their own death, of that very fact, that very promise, that very wonder of reality.

Like I said, long term exposure to this water will kill you, but that death, a death in faith, is not a scary death, it’s not a fearful death, because it is a death that frees us from sin and sin’s affect forever. It does that because through Baptism we do not die alone, we die with Jesus, who died to sin once and for all. It also means we rise with Jesus who defeated death.

The Bible says:

One who has died has been set free from sin. If we have died with Christ we will also live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again and death will not have any power over Him. Because the death that Christ died He died to sin once and for all.⁸

You were Baptized into this death. You were buried with Him, by your Baptism into His death,

so that just as Christ was raised from death to life by the glorious power of the Father, you too will walk in to newness of life. If you have been united with Him in a death like His, you will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.⁹

This little pool of water may look very unassuming. It might not look like much. In fact sitting here it sometimes gets in the way. That’s kind of the point. It must get in the way. The way that leads to the cross, the way that leads to heaven, and the way that leads to the Father’s throne must come through Holy Baptism. It is there we are born into the house of God. It is there we become children of God. It is there forgiveness comes, holy cleansing comes, and purity before God comes.

Once it comes, as we grow and mature in the faith it remains on us. It stains us. It stains us just like sin stains us. It penetrates to the marrow of our bones. It marks you as one redeemed by Christ. That means bought back from slavery Satan. It brands you as one of God’s chosen. Coming to this water will kill you. It will also “live you.” Living in your Baptism each day is remembering that mark placed on you and God’s call faith.

There is definitely something in this water. Thanks be to God for that.

Amen.

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