“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus

have been baptized into his death?”

I know, I know.  You folks all came out for an Easter service.  You’re ready to hear about new life, about the possibility of forgiveness, and hope.  I need to hear those things as much as you do. 

But generations of Christians have read these same words from Romans on Easter Saturday.  And there’s a reason that these words of death and life bear repeating, again and again and again and again.

You know, if you read through the Old Testament, you come across the story of the Exodus in dozens and dozens of places.  It’s a great story – it tells of the Israelites being slaves in Egypt, and of God sending Moses to tell the Pharaoh “let my people go!”  The story of the Exodus tells of God leading the Israelites safely through the sea, feeding them with manna in the wilderness, and bringing them into the promised land.  It’s a great story.  But the Hebrew people don’t tell this story over and over and over again just because it’s a great story.  They tell it because this story, more than any other, tells them two things that they must remember. 

First, it tells them who God is: God is the one who saw their suffering and liberated them, and who continues to hold their people in the palm of God’s hand. 

Second, it tells them who they are as a people: they are the nation that was liberated by God, and they are the people who are bound to God by a covenant, a law, that they must follow.  They are a people loved by God. 

This is why the story of the Exodus is repeated so many times in the Bible.  The Israelites must remember who God is, and who they are in relationship to God.

When Paul writes his letter to the Romans, he, too, has a story to tell.  It’s a story that the people have heard before, but he tells it anyway.  Since the days of Paul, our ancestors in the faith have continued to read Paul’s words because they needed to hear the story, too.  It’s a story that tells us who God is, and who we are as God’s people. 

God is the one who came and walked among us, who took our human form and died among us; God is the one who brought the light of resurrection into our world that we might know God’s grace. 

This story tells us that we are the ones who are baptized into Christ’s death, that we might also share in his resurrection.  We are the ones who are invited to be dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 

This afternoon, we’ve gathered together here in a strange sort of time, half-way between Good Friday and Easter.  As we gather for worship, we come anticipating the joy of Easter morning – and, yet, we know that throughout Saturday, Christ’s tomb remained closed.  We are still surrounded by darkness, and yet we celebrate, for we know that the light is coming soon.  This is an in-between sort of time, no longer Good Friday but not yet Easter.  And so, tonight, we read from the Psalms, from the Gospels, and from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome because we need to remember who we are, and who God is.   We need to be reminded that death and life will always be a part of our lives, and we long to remember that God is with us in both our dying, and in our rising.   

When I say that we need to be reminded that death will always be a part of our lives, I really believe that.  Not only that, but this is exactly the way it should be.  As Christians, we are baptized into Christ’s death.  If we want to be members of Christ’s body, then we must remember that his body hung on a cross.  By becoming a part of him, by his becoming a part of us, we choose to join ourselves to death.  This is not a negotiable part of our faith; this is (or ought to be) what it means to bear Christ’s name. 

Will Willimon is a man who is a pastor, and who has been a teacher to many pastors.  He tells a story of serving in an ordinary, Mississippi church.  He asked them about Paul’s words to the Romans, about the idea that we are baptized into Christ’s death.  “Has anyone here had to die in order to be a Christian?”  One man replied,

"I thought that I couldn’t live in a world where black people were the same as white people. When segregation ended, I thought I would die. But I didn’t. I was reborn. My next-door neighbor, my best friend, is black. Something old had to die in me for something new to be born."

I’m sure that many of you have stories like this one.  Ways in which you’ve had to let parts of yourself die, in order that God’s grace might have room to work in you and through you.  Willimon writes of what it takes to become a mature Christian.  He says, “In this faith, we grow up by learning to come down, to let go, to release our grip on our claims of self-sufficiency and self-significance and self-perpetuation.” 

Paul writes that our old self must be crucified, in order that we might no longer be enslaved to sin.  These are hard, hard words, but he means it!  Just as none of us enjoys thinking about our own physical death, none of us wants to think about letting parts of ourselves die.  We may not be proud of our impatience, our arrogance, our quickness to judge, our unkindness, the ease with which we give into temptation.  But that doesn’t mean we’re eager to let them go!  And yet, as we live out the journey that is begun at our baptism, we are called to allow these parts of ourselves to die.  I once heard it said that in the life of every Christian, there should be funerals daily, as we struggle to let go of those parts of ourselves that make it so hard to experience God’s grace; to share God’s grace.

This is the part of our lives that we’re perpetually living on Good Friday.  But thanks be to God, there is also Easter.

Just as the Israelites needed to hear again and again the story of the Exodus, we need to hear again and again the story of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.  After all, it’s not just a story of Jesus.  As Christians, it’s our story too: with our death comes our rising.  Our baptism pulls us into a world of suffering and death, but it is also our baptism that calls us upward, that we might experience Christ’s resurrection in our own hearts.

We can’t hear this too often, or tell it too much.  This is the gospel, the good news.  This is who we are: creatures living from Friday to Sunday, with the light of Easter pouring in on all our Good Fridays. 

Being dead to sin is a daily process.  Being alive to God is a daily blessing.  This is how we are present to God, and to our neighbor.  This is who we are.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Easter Saturday Sermon by Sara Olson Dean delivered March 26, 2005.