“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?…” Romans 6: 3
“But exhort one another daily… lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ…” Hebrews 3:14
First we begin with the Myth of Mere Science:
Once upon a time the Church dominated everything and in order to hold on to her power, the Church controlled knowledge and information. The Church did this by convincing everyone that miracles, events in which natural laws are undone, were really real. The virginal conception of Jesus, the existence of Angles and demons, the resurrection of the dead, as well as the Sacraments, are, according to the Church, really real miracles. But clear thinkers, questioned the Church’s claims. Men like Galileo, challenged the superstitions as well as the Church’s control over knowledge and information. Galileo was the Father of the Scientific Method who launched the war against the Church’s magical and unscientific nonsense. From Galileo onward, through dungeon, fire, and sword, Science the Mother of All Truth, has defeated the Church, the Mother of All Superstition. That is the Myth of Mere Science and myth it is because Galileo was a Christian who actually believed in the Church, her narrative and her life-giving Sacraments. But this Narrative of Mere Science is the fundamental presupposition of just about every department of study in colleges and universities throughout the United States and Europe. Whatever college or university your children attend in the future, it will be assumed that Science is the final truth. This Myth of Science is also the fundamental presupposition of most Protestant Seminaries in the United States and as one historian put it, the Protestant Reformation gave birth to the Enlightenment and that, “broke the stranglehold of the Roman Catholic Church on Europe.” In fact the intentional denial that miracles really real was an article of faith for Protestantism. John Calvin wrote:
“But that gift of healing, like the rest of the miracles, which the Lord willed to be brought forth for a time, has vanished away in order to make the new preaching of the gospel marvellous forever.”
Why do I go on and on about miracles? I do so because the text for today is about Holy Baptism and Holy Baptism bestows upon the child, as the Book of Common Prayer declares, “that which by nature he cannot have,” which means that it is a supernatural action, which means that Holy Baptism is miraculous. And that will bring us back to participation which is a state of being that is effected supernaturally.
“But exhort one another daily… lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ…” Hebrews 3:14
The idea is that daily, mutual encouragement of other Christians renews, replenishes and awakens one’s confidence in Christ. It shakes us from our slumber. But the phrase I am interested in is this:
“we are made partakers of Christ…”
The word that gets translated as “partakers” is the same word that is translated as “participation.” Paul assumes that participation is fundamental to our common life and in Romans chapter 6 he describes in detail what, when, and how one begins to, “ participate in Christ.”
“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death…”
In order to clarify the meaning of “participation in Christ,” we must reminded ourselves of what we have learned over the last few years about what it means to be in someone. Recall that we have talked about our participation in Adam. All humanity was in Adam when he disobeyed God and as a result we have inherited the wounds of the Fall. We were lost in Adam.
But remember, God called Abraham to fight back against sin and death. And God did so not by giving Abraham more commandments, but by making a promise. God promised Abraham that He, God, would use Abraham’s family to redeem all creation and it would begin with the birth of a son. Even though Abraham was well beyond fathering a child, he believed God and it was “counted unto him for righteousness,” and he was in Covenant — but it was not just reckoned to him as an individual person, it was reckoned to everyone who was “participating in” Abraham and that means all of Abraham’s unborn children who were within him, his seed, were also in the Covenant. This is called the Abrahamic Covenant, what Paul calls the Promise. Let me give you one more example of participation from the book of Hebrews:
“By faith Abraham… sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the joint-heirs with him of the same promise… “ Hebrews 11: 9
What I want you to understand is that Jacob did not live in a tent with his grandfather Abraham because Abraham was dead when Jacob was born. That is not what the writer of the Hebrews means. What he means is that even when Abraham was all by himself, all his children, who are joint-heirs, were within him and in that sense Isaac and Jacob sojourned with Abraham, indeed in that sense, King David sojourned in the desert and so did Jesus Christ because they were in Abraham’s loins. The Promise God made to Abraham was a Promise made to his seed and by this Promise God enlisted Abraham and his family to begin reversing the disaster that Adam’s sin had brought upon creation. That is the Abrahamic covenant; what Paul refers to as the Promise. Jesus is the Seed of the Promise and thus the perfection, the finality of the Abrahamic Covenant. Through his, Jesus’ faith, Jesus’ own faith in God the Father, he finalized the New Covenant.
God the Father established the New Covenant with is Son, his incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. He did not establish the New Covenant with the Second Person of the Trinity, but rather he established it only after the Second Person of the Trinity was made flesh through the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is impossible for God the Father to make a covenant with God the Son or with the Holy Spirit because it is nonsense. It would the supreme example of gilding the lily because there is perfect love and identification of mutual wills between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
But when the Word was made flesh, God the Father then made a covenant with God incarnate, Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son who, in his humanity, was the Seed Abraham, the Promised Seed. Now the work that God initiated in Abraham to bring an end to sin and death came to fruition in the Son of Mary. The promises of the New Covenant are realized in John 17:
“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.” John 17
If you read John 17 this week, remember that it happened literally only minutes before his arrest in the garden. That is when he made the decision to consecrate himself as the blood sacrifice that sealed the New Covenant.
It is clear just how powerful, how great the consequences to participate in someone. Now the question for us is, how exactly does one participate in Jesus Christ? How are we made to be in the Messiah of Israel? How do we get in? The answer is, not by asking Jesus to come into your heart and not by your own will and effort. Sincerity and the desire to grow closer to Jesus are good and virtuous, but they remain on the natural level and what is required for one to be “in Jesus,” to “participate in Jesus,” is that which by nature we cannot have which is supernatural. That is what our Lord has provided for us in Holy Baptism:
“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death…”
There is one chief function of Holy Baptism: Holy Baptism is the instrument by which we were incorporated into Jesus Christ himself. Through baptism the God who is God takes hold of our lives and binds our mutual destinies to the destiny of Jesus Christ. If you are “in Jesus” when his destiny is your destiny. Baptism creates this new relation between Christ and the person baptized, the relation of personal indwelling.
But if one is in a church tradition that does not believe miracles are really real today, that the age of miracles has passed with the death of the last Apostle — well if that the case, you have to devise other reasons, other non-biblical reasons for baptism. For example, in such a church, Baptism becomes mere profession of faith in Jesus, a public declaration of one’s trust in Christ, or even the sign a Christian that has replaced Circumcision. “But above all,” this tradition will teach, “Baptism does not actually do anything. Nothing mystical, nothing sacramental, nothing really and truly happens to the person who is baptized. Baptism is your instrument to communicate publicly your faith is Christ.”
But please, please understand this. That is not true. All the professions of faith in the world, all our resolutions and good intentions to follow Jesus will not make you a child of God or enable you to break from sin and walk in newness of life.
St. Paul answer to that tradition is unambiguous:
“For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise…” Galatians 2:27
Baptism is not our instrument of communication, it is God’s miraculous instrument, the supernatural instrument, by which you were born again as God’s own child, and by which you were given the faith that you now exercise in Christ Jesus. Paul is saying is that we have been moved from one kingdom into another kingdom by the faith of Jesus Christ. We are not “in” Adam nor are we participating in the Kingdom of Sin and Death. We have died to that kingdom because we have been baptized into Jesus Christ and made members of his Body. We are the true children of Abraham, the Children of God, siblings of Jesus Christ and our destiny is love God and his creation as he loves us.