Grace and peace to you.
DP Washburn once told me the story of an old preacher who was asked what the sermon was gonna to be about and when the preacher said it was gonna to be on sin, he was asked what he was going to say about it, and he answered, “I’m agin it!”
Earlier in his letter to the Romans Paul wrote, “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” (5:20 NIV) And that statement is what compels the question that begins our reading today: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” (6:1 NIV)
Not surprisingly, Paul answers his own question: “By no means!” (6:2)
Both the old-timey preacher and Paul’s adversaries are operating in a system where sin refers to individual actions that are good or bad, that help us climb an imaginary ladder to a better place with God or send us hurtling into the depths.
But Paul understands sin as more than our human striving or failing.
For Paul, sin is a force that corrupts God’s intentions for the world and humanity. It is the devil and all the forces that defy God, the powers of this world that rebel against God and the ways of sin that draw us away from God that we renounce at baptism. (Holy Baptism, ELW)
And so he goes on to write,
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (6:3-4)
Against an understanding of baptism as ‘fire insurance’ or a performative ritual, Paul reminds us that baptism is about life and death.
One lecturer suggested this week that if we took baptism seriously, we would play a funeral dirge as we approached the font for the Holy Sacrament. His reasoning was that at the font where the earthly element of water is joined with God’s Word in Matthew 28 for us, we receive the promise and treasure of new life and new life is not possible unless it is preceded by death.
I know, we don’t like to talk about death. And we certainly don’t like to voluntarily enter into it. We prize our individualism and our independence too much for that. The death Scripture describes is death to sin, what Martin Luther describes as:
death to death, by which the soul is saved and separated from sin, as also the body is freed from corruption. By this death we are bound by grace and glory to the living God. (Luther's Commentary, 101)
In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther describes the new life we receive in baptism as:
victory over death and the devil, forgiveness of sin, God’s grace, the entire Christ and the Holy Spirit with his gifts. (Book of Concord, 461)
Next, echoing Jesus own words in John 11:25 when he told his followers, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.” Paul writes,
5 For if we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
The Greek translated here as “united” is better translated as “planted together with.”
Gardens, vines and growing things are common metaphors in Scripture. Often symbols of abundance and good life, in Genesis and John we are reminded that gardens are also places that contain both life and death.
In Genesis 2-3, the garden is the place where the tree of knowledge of good and evil stands and where the four rivers run that water the earth and bring life to it.
In John 18 and 19, the garden is where Jesus is betrayed and arrested and where he is buried and resurrected.
Our death to sin means “we are made completely pure and innocent in God’s eyes. The guilt of sin is washed away and we are made totally new creatures.” (Bayer, 77) But the old Adam still lives in the world and must be slayed again every day. As Luther writes, “Thus a Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, begun once and continuing ever.” (Book of Concord, 465)
If you’ve ever tended a garden, you know it can go to seed and weeds pretty quickly. Disease and infestation can kill and too much or too little rain can either rot or scorch the plants. But well-cultivated and tended, it holds so much more possibility, promise and abundance.
Our life in Christ does not mean that we escape death. But in baptism God acts upon us and makes us who we are. Our old lives and identities die and we are planted together with Christ where we are called to walk in new life (6:4), planted where we are that our lives would show God’s abundant love and mercy to the world.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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