A Sermon on Romans 6:3-11 for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity. Delivered by Pastor Caleb Strutz.

“Remember the Alamo.” I’m sure that’s a phrase you’ve heard before, whether from history class or Johnny Cash or Peewee Hermann, but what does it actually mean? “Remember the Alamo.” Are you supposed to remember the mission-turned-fort in San Antonio, just that there’s a building there? What good does that do? Of course, the phrase arose after the Battle of the Alamo, when Texans seeking independence were killed by Mexican troops. But are you just supposed to remember that event, that it happened? What’s the value in that?

“Remember the Alamo” was used as a battle cry when the Texans fought to regain that land and push out the Mexican army. They were supposed to remember the sacrifice of those who died and were called to continue fighting for independence. “Remember the Alamo” isn’t just supposed to recall a place or a past event, but to draw on larger ideals and to motivate the present fight for independence.

In our Epistle, Paul talks about Baptism in a way that expresses that same tension between a past, historic event and a present, ongoing reality. He doesn’t quite use this exact language, but he is calling us to remember your Baptism: not only the past event and what happened there, but also the present effects that Baptism brings about.

Unfortunately, the Biblical doctrine of Baptism is one that’s quite controversial in our religious landscape today. Driving between Resurrection and Our Savior, I must drive past a dozen churches that don’t teach what the Bible says about Baptism. Baptism is twisted to be something that we do to demonstrate our faith and show our commitment to God, instead of a gift that God gives to create and strengthen faith.

Now, we’re pretty clear about what we teach about Baptism and it’s not super beneficial to rail on why everyone else is wrong, but we are surrounded by it and need to be aware of that.

But even some of the ways that we as Lutherans talk and think about Baptism can be unhelpful. You see it in parents or grandparents who push for a child to be baptized even though that child won’t be raised in a Christian environment, as if it’s just a box to be checked off.

Sometimes we talk about Baptism as if we’re establishing our credentials. “Well, I was baptized a Lutheran” as if that’s some kind of guarantee that we will always be right or never have anything to learn.

But I think that the most prevalent danger when thinking about Baptism is that we don’t. One Lutheran theologian called Baptism “the other sacrament.” Yeah, we know about it, yeah, we believe the right stuff about it, but it’s not something very prominent in our minds.

Most churches don’t have Baptisms all that often. It doesn’t come up super often in the lectionary or when reading the Bible. It’s something that we just don’t think about all that often. Baptism is seen as this past event that just kind of stays in the past.

Now, I realize that that’s not super hard-hitting Law, but think about what that’s actually doing. God has attached immense blessings to Baptism and given wonderful promises about it. If we don’t appreciate that as we should, then we’re taking God and His grace for granted. And that certainly is dangerous.

When Paul opens our text saying, “Or do you not know,” that’s a bit stronger than a rhetorical question. “Do you not know? Do you need to be reminded?” Yeah, we know the right stuff, but do we know it? Yeah, I was baptized, but what does that do? What does that mean? Or have we forgotten?

Now, when Paul talks about Baptism, he is, very clearly, talking about that past event, he uses language like “we were,” “we have been.” But he’s also clear that Baptism isn’t something that stays in the past. Now, he does highlight what happened. We “were baptized into His death.”

Now, talking about Baptism as death doesn’t sound that appealing. But “our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with.” Because we are baptized, we are dead. Dead to sin. Our sinful nature, which we inherited from Adam, wants to fight against God. But it has been crucified with Christ, put to death with Him.

We are full of sin, but Jesus is without sin. So being united to His death means that our sin is placed on Him. His death means that we are free. “For he who has died has been freed from sin.” That doesn’t mean that we will never sin ever again, “done away with” doesn’t mean destroyed completely. But we are “no longer … slaves of sin.” Our relationship with sin has changed. Sin does not reign over us any more. It’s still there, but we are no longer subject to it. We still sin, but now we fight it because Christ has won the victory for us.

That death is a past reality, it actually happened when you were baptized. But we don’t always see ourselves as still being dead to sin. Sometimes it looks like sin is very much alive in our lives. But that’s not how God sees it. All of our sins have been placed on Jesus. We are united to His death. Baptism doesn’t stay in the past, but we are to “reckon [our]selves to be dead indeed to sin,” to consider ourselves today as dead. This death is ongoing. We died to sin in our Baptism so our current relationship with sin is not the same, and we are called to continue to be dead to sin.

But of course death is only half the picture. “[J]ust as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

In Baptism, you died to sin and that is an ongoing death. But you were also given new life. And that’s really Paul’s main concern in this section of Romans, the resurrection life that we are living right now. We are also to consider ourselves “alive to God.”

Baptism isn’t just about death and sin. It’s also about life and how we live. Just as the old man was crucified with Christ, so too, the new man of faith is united with Christ in His resurrection. And we are to walk in this new life, it changes the way we do things, as we are now dedicated, not to serving sin, but to serving God.

Baptism has ongoing effects as we live our lives. It isn’t just a past event, it’s something that strengthens us and renews us day by day. Don’t say “I was baptized,” but “I am baptized.” This is something that has relevance to your day-to-day life, something that gives you the strength you need, something that continues.

Baptism has these present effects because it is permanent. A one-and-done. The effectiveness of Baptism doesn’t wax and wane for it rests on Christ’s completed work of salvation. It’s something that we turn to and are renewed in day-by-day because that’s how we are united to Christ. Don’t say, “I was baptized a Lutheran.” No, you were baptized into Christ and connected to His life-saving grace.

And we confess the saving power and the ongoing relevance of Baptism in our services. We begin with the Invocation: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” calling on the Triune God, into whom we are baptized, placing His name upon us again, as it was then, and tracing the sign of the cross on ourselves, as it was at the font. This morning, the Absolution concluded by quoting Mark 16:16, “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.” We return to the forgiveness first given to us in Baptism and are renewed and prepared to enter God’s presence to hear His Word and receive His Sacrament in the rest of the service. But it all starts by returning to the font.

[You may have noticed, if you’ve been paying close attention, that, for that first portion of the service, I’m standing at the font and even placing my hand on the font, as a reminder that as we confess our sins and receive forgiveness, we’re gathered around Baptism and restored again by that saving flood.]

If you’ve ever stayed in a hotel room and nosily peeked around in the nightstand, you’ve probably run across a Bible distributed by the Gideons. Here’s my Gideons Bible, I saw my dad had one when I was a kid and asked if I could have it because I thought it was pretty cool. But in the back cover here there’s a section titled “My Decision to Receive Christ As My Savior.” As a kid, I read that and thought, “Yeah, of course, I accept Jesus as my Savior,” so I signed my name on the line and then saw that there was another line for the date. And that confused me. I certainly wasn’t going to write that date, because I already knew about Jesus before then, the only date that I could think of was the date of my baptism. So I asked my dad and he explained the false theology surrounding conversion that was displayed there, so I actually took a Sharpie and blacked out that section entirely, I didn’t want false doctrine in my Bible. But I think there was a lot of truth in that child-like faith.

If someone ever asks you when you “got saved,” you can confidently say, “When I was baptized.” We can point to that date, to that event, as the moment when we died and rose again with Christ. But that event doesn’t stay in the past, but is continually made present to us as we live out our baptismal lives. Even though you probably can’t remember the event of your baptism, every day you can remember that you are baptized, that you are a child of God, that your sins are forgiven in Jesus. Amen.