Given at Christ Church, Worton
Romans 6. 3-11
Death and New Life on Good Friday in the churchyard of Holy Cross, Seend. © Gerry Lynch, 7 April 2023.
I have a short address which I give at every baptism, where I explain the symbolism for any attendees who may have had minimal contact with the Church. I always get a few raised eyebrows when I explain that baptism is a symbolic drowning—a dying to sin, followed by a rising to new life. This is something particularly obvious in the case of a total immersion baptism, but it is implicit in a sprinkling as well.
In tonight’s reading, St Paul is quite explicit that in baptism, we share in Christ’s death—and it’s because we share in Christ’s death, that we are able to share in His Resurrection.
This works on two levels: baptism marks our symbolic rebirth as a Christian in this life, called to live differently from then on. On another level, Baptism is a sacrament, an outward and visible sign of what God is doing for us inwardly and spiritually through Grace. So no mere matter of symbolism, but an actual washing away of our sins that fits us for eternal life.
Baptism is thus both a new beginning to our earthly lives and the beginning of our journey towards our eternal lives.
It would be nice to think that we only needed one new beginning. But, that’s not how life works. There is the natural and healthy need for new beginnings when a particular phase of our life has run its natural course. But also, we can’t escape our tendency to commit sins. This is why there is space for us to confess our sins privately to God at the start of every Communion service, and for the priest to pronounce God’s absolution of those sins. Every time we come to a service of Holy Communion, we have the opportunity of a new beginning—if we take the time to examine our consciences and bring our sins sincerely to God in our hearts. God’s Grace is as abundant as we need it to be.
Like Baptism, Resurrection works on two levels. It is something we should be experiencing continually throughout our lives as Christians, and it is something we look forward to in the life to come. Indeed, new life after death is written into the very fabric of the universe – that is something very obvious in a climate like ours at this time of year. But also, look at how new stars are born from the remains of exploded stars; look also at how the elements that make up our human bodies are only created in the depths of stars, and scattered through the universe when they explode as supernovas.
The hoary old argument about whether Christ’s Resurrection was ‘physical’ or ‘spiritual’ misses the point: it was both. Our spirituality and physicality aren’t things we can simply decouple from one another. They are both essential parts of who we are, and so it will remain in the life to come. We tend to assume that Resurrection means the loss of our bodies. But the Gospel Resurrection accounts depict Christ’s body clearly changed profoundly in nature, but also visibly carrying the wounds from the Crucifixion.
Of course, when we die, much dies with us. Remember, as in the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, there are good and wicked things growing in our souls. Some of what will die, inevitably, will be good things that have run their natural course; but much will also die that hinders us from entering eternal life. The process of killing these hindrances first began at our baptism. May we have the Grace to follow that process through to our rebirth in God’s eternal presence. Amen.
