Within a week we will be hearing shouts of, “He is Risen! He is risen indeed!” We are close to our Easter celebration and the promise of resurrection and new life.
It is this resurrection that we confess in baptism. Lives defined by brokenness reimagined and redefined in the promise of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When celebrated with sufficient water the image as Paul writes is one of being raised from death to new life. Broken saints becoming healing sinners.
And yet it is not the amount of water that accomplishes this new life but rather the promise of Jesus Christ that our brokenness in sin is forgiven and that our relationship with God is wholly restored. We are now one with the God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, through the creative power of God’s Word. The power of a Word present in creation and in the person of Jesus Christ.
In response to the question, “How can water do such great things?” Luther writes, “It is not the water indeed that does them, but the word of God which is in and with the water, and faith, which trusts such word of God in the water. For without the word of God the water is simple water and no baptism. But with the word of God it is a baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Ghost.” This proclaims to us that it is the promise of God’s Word that accomplishes these things through our trust it is ours with the water.
So then what we celebrate as the words, “He is risen!” ring on our tongues is that the very power of God’s grace raising Christ from the dead reigns in us and our lives. We no longer live in fear of death but celebrate instead that our lives freed from that fear empower us to use our mind, body, and spirit to serve both God and neighbor as Christ served all of creation trusting God’s will and laying down his life.
This conviction that our lives are freed from the threat of death and the power of sin transforms sinners into saints and broken lives into lives lived with empathy, compassion and power for others. God’s healing poured out into and through our lives. It says, “NO!” to greed and self absorption and instead extends its own gifts in the service of others. This attitude must touch our concepts of stewardship of creation, our use of our fiscal resources, our willingness to serve in our communities over against personal interests and use of our time, our willingness to be organ donors, to provide shelter, to feed the hungry, to visit the imprisoned, and to risk doing a good thing for our neighbor even knowing it may not be valued.
To confess that Jesus has risen and that we have been raised with him from the waters of baptism is to insist that we have been and are being made different by those events. We cannot go back denying the promise of God’s Word has ever been spoken over us. We have been made wet with that Word.
"He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!” Go in Peace and serve the Lord.