Baptism: A Sign of Rebirth and Belonging

By John Fisk
Romans 6:1-8.

 Who was Nicholas Flammell?  That was a question Harry Potter sought to answer in the book, the Philosopher’s Stone.  Nicholas Flammell was an alchemist who lived in Paris in the 18^th century.   Alchemists were students of chemistry and philosophy and they pursued the elusive goal of turning base metal into gold.   But the best of them, including Nicholas Flammell, understood this not as a physical matter but rather as a spiritual transformation.   How do the base elements of our lives as human beings get transformed into spiritual gold? 

Now this is a question which Christian baptism addresses.  Baptists practice believer’s baptism, because we only baptize those old enough to understand and believe for themselves.  Believer’s baptism is all about transformation.   The Apostle Paul in Romans 6 describes baptism as a dying of the false self and being raised as a true self in Christ.  We die to the old and false and are raised to the new and true in Christ.  Our true identity is to be found in Christ.  Our hope for being new people does not come from the false self, but only from the true self, which exists in Christ.  Baptism calls us to transformation, to be who we are meant to be in Jesus Christ.

 What is the false self?  It is that way of being which relies on our own resources and does not trust God.  The false self trusts in all manner of other things – the illusive security of money; the obsessive pursuit of success at work; relationships which we manipulate to get our own way; a false sense of our own sufficiency; living behind a façade of pretense; and not least the denial of our own mortality.  Much of our way of life is dedicated to propping up this false sense of self.  But baptism faces us with the challenge to leave all that behind, to let go the false self and its sinful ways, and to open our lives to the possibilities of the true self in Christ.  We bury the old self symbolically under the water, and we are lifted up to the new.

 Paul was a realist and he knew that this transformation does not happen overnight.  It’s a long process for the gold in us to shine pure and bright.  It takes time and baptism symbolizes a beginning.  “So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ”, wrote Paul.  From this day forth every time we fall back into the old ways of being, we can remember our baptism and realize that we are alive to God through our true self in Christ.

 The true self is filled with light, love, kindness, patience, humility, faith, peace and compassion.  These are the qualities of Christ and we share in them because we have been baptized into his dying and rising.  God calls us through baptism to be part of a new world that God is creating.  So baptism is not only a sign of transformation but also a sign of belonging - to God’s new world, to God’s new family, called the Church.

 According to psychologists the main challenge of growing up is a question of identity: who am I?  To know the truth I have to know myself.  Christian faith goes one step deeper and says, to know who I am, my identity, I must know to whom I belong.  Do I belong to the gods of the world with all their images of wealth and success and popularity?  Or do I belong to Jesus Christ, who cares so deeply for me that he sacrificed himself for me?  No one can love me more than someone who dies in my place.

 So when I get lost on this Christian journey I can remember the day of my baptism and be reminded that I belong to God, to Christ and to the community of faith, the church.  I remember the day of my own baptism clearly some 33 years ago. I felt I had found a spiritual home.  I was no longer adrift in a lonely world.  Today two young women are to be baptized and will find a spiritual home with this congregation of God’s people.  May their deepest longings find satisfaction in God, our Lord and Savior.  Amen.