Living the Baptismal Life

The Rev. Kathi Johnson

C Easter 6: 5 May 2013

Text: Acts 16:9-15

Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Grand Prairie, Texas

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This past week, I paid a visit to one of the area assisted living facilities to see a parishioner. This facility has a pretty typical layout for these types of places – right inside the front doors, there’s a large lobby-type area. On my way out, I paused in the lobby to get my keys from my purse. A gentleman who was hanging out in the lobby saw me – and my collar – and called over to me, asking me what church I represented. I walked over to him and we began to talk.

Well, mostly, he talked. He had some fascinating life stories, and it became obvious quickly that he is a Christian. He gave me a Bible study sheet that he apparently types up each day, and then he began to tell stories about his time with Wycliffe Bible Translators – a missionary organization that puts the Bible into the hands of many around the world by translating the Scriptures into their own language.

He told me about a time when a colleague was struggling to capture the word “faith” in a particular language. The colleague couldn’t figure out how to express the word “faith” – until one day, one of the native men came to him and sat down on a chair. The man then lifted his feet up off the ground.

That simple demonstration became the way to explain the concept of “faith” to this culture because it showed the man’s total dependence on – or faith in – the chair to hold him up off the ground. When we sit on furniture, we cannot will the furniture to hold us up – it doesn’t hold us because we want it to or because of any action of ours – it just holds us.

Our faith in God is similar. Yes, we are called to be faithful followers of Jesus and to work with and for others, but at the end of the day – it is our faith that holds us. And it is God working through our faith that gives us the power to live baptismal lives – to live and serve as followers of Jesus.

This past week, I also spent time with a parishioner during her husband’s surgery. Around midday, we were sitting in the waiting room, eating our lunches. Another family came in, and sat down briefly, and then two of them left to visit their relative, who was in the Intensive Care Unit. They left an older woman to sit alone in the waiting room.

Over time, Jeanne and I heard the woman begin to cry. I got up to throw away my trash and then I went over to sit next to the woman, who had begun to cry harder, leaning forward in her chair, leaning on her cane. Jeanne followed suit, coming over to sit on the woman’s other side. At first, the woman seemed a bit startled by our presence next to her, but then she began to talk with us, sharing stories about her sister – her critically ill sister – who was in the ICU. Not only that, she asked Jeanne several times about Brooks, about their family, and offered her prayerful support to them.

Later on, when I was talking with Jeanne about sharing this story with you all, she looked surprised at what I was asking. To me, what I was asking was to share what I thought of as an extraordinary action – a person, heavy with her own burden, going over to sit and be with another burdened person. And she simply said to me – “Well, of course. That’s what you do.”

That’s what you do. And that is baptismal life. You see, baptism isn’t merely me splashing some water on Trajan’s head and calling it done. Baptism is water – combined with God’s word – and not only that – but God’s word that calls us to go and make disciples of all nations. Baptismal life, then, is the living out of that combination – the living out of our Lord’s command to us to show others the love of Jesus.

Our lesson from Acts today tells about another baptism, in a much different time and a much different place from our own. Paul and his companions are traveling, spreading the gospel of Jesus. Paul sees a vision of a man from Macedonia, calling to Paul, asking him to come to Macedonia – a Roman province located near modern-day Greece.

While in Macedonia, they meet a woman named Lydia, a successful merchant, and they baptize her and her entire household. Lydia then opens up her home to the missionaries – the newly-baptized one is already living her baptismal life! And it is her home that becomes a launching pad, of sorts, for the gospel of Jesus to be proclaimed to a whole other area of the ancient world! This is baptismal life.

Trajan will be baptized in a few minutes, and we will be witnesses to the very beginning of his baptismal life. But Trajan’s parents, his sponsors, and this congregation will promise to support him in his faith and in his living out of that faith as he grows older, too. Baptismal life isn’t lived alone – we are joined, one to another; and we are called to be faithful followers and proclaimers of Jesus, all of us.

As I left the assisted living facility that I mentioned at the outset, a gentle rain was falling. Having no umbrella, I walked to my car, not rushing to get out of the dampness, but actually relishing the rain falling down upon me. It reminded me of the waters of baptism, falling, falling, falling down upon me – the waters that fell upon me when I was two and a half weeks old.

This is the same water of life (as Luther called it) that will fall upon Trajan today; this is the same water of life that fell upon Lydia; this is the same water of life that falls upon all who are baptized. It is water and the word of God, combined, to give us new life, to claim us as Christ’s own – forever.

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