I’m getting some mileage off of a picture of me holding a baby just after I applied the water of baptism. Someone told me that I can write a lot of blogs and never get a response but a picture of a baby being baptized “goes viral”. That is as t should be. Baptism is the foundational event of our life and not to be taken lightly. God claims us in baptism and makes us His. We did nothing except die and get buried.
Here is a bit of the connections we have up here in the North country. Vice president of the LCMS Herb Mueller was baptized in North Dakota and has strong connections here. This is from a blog entry on “Witness, Mercy and Life Together”
The best way to express it is, “I am baptized!” It’s a present reality. Speaking
historically, of course, one can say, as I do, personally, “I was baptized,” in that
it actually happened on Holy Trinity Sunday, May 31, 1953, at St. Andrew’s Lutheran
Church on the North Dakota prairie some four miles north of Niagara, North Dakota,
at the hand of my father, then pastor of that congregation. Though it happened
nearly 60 years ago, however, it is still a present reality, so “I am baptized.”
It was not something I did. It happed to me and it has shaped reality for me ever
since. My parents brought me up in the faith, teaching me the Word of God. The Lord
Jesus has brought into my life so many people to show me His grace (my wife, Faith,
being the most important) and to flesh out for me what it means that I am baptized.
All of this is pure gift of God in Jesus! All of this comes from living each day in
the God-given confidence, I am baptized.
How does our Lord’s apostle put it?
Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized
into His death? 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. For if we have been united with Him in a death like
His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His (Romans
6:3-5).
Let’s parse this a bit. You “have been baptized.” It’s a gift. It happened to you.
It is essentially God’s doing, no matter what age you were when it happened. What
happened? What did God do? “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into
death…” It happened to us. God buried us with Christ. Why? So that “as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of
life.” This brings the great promise for all so united with Christ: “if we have been
united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a
resurrection like His.” That’s what we are called to believe. All of us have to die.
But in Jesus Christ, God is in the business of raising the dead. In fact, this is
the only game in town. This is what God does – He raises the dead, in Jesus, all who
are united to Him.
