Sermon for the Feast of Trinity
Celebrating the Rite of Christian Confirmation
Baptizing AND Teaching
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen. In today's Gospel, Jesus ties His Baptism and teaching closely
together, as if the two acts were (in some senses) inseparable. "Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations," says the Lord, "baptizing them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching
them to observe all that I have commanded you." Then Jesus adds for you one
of the most comforting and consoling promises in all of the Scriptures:
"Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Dear Christian friends,
You should think of God's miracle of Baptism as being somewhat like the
amazing technology all around us today. Depending on your age and technical
abilities, this analogy may be a bit different for each of us:
1. For the more elderly among us, your Baptism could be
compared to learning how to use the DVD player or one of those new converter
boxes that will allow your old television set to receive digital signal.
When the DVD player or converter box is first installed, you get the basic
idea how the machine works, but then you have to start using the thing. By
trial and error, experience and struggle, study and exploration, you get to
know your DVD player or converter box all the more as time goes by. The
device works well for you as soon as it is hooked up to your television-even
when you do not fully understand what the device is all about. But then, the
more you get to know your DVD player or converter box, the better use you
make of it and the greater benefit you receive from it.
Your Baptism is a lot like your DVD player or converter box. That is to say,
you immediately received great blessings and benefits from your heavenly
Father as soon as you were baptized "in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit." All your sins were fully and completely washed
away. The curse of death was removed from you. Christ wrapped Himself around
you and now provides you with a strong armor and defense against the attacks
of the devil. Just as your digital converter or DVD player immediately
serves you as soon as it is installed, your Baptism likewise began providing
great and miraculous things to you as soon as you entered the water. But
also like that DVD player, which becomes more beneficial to you as you use
it over time, you likewise will benefit more and more from your Baptism by
using it more and more. Through hardship and struggle, repentance and faith,
study and exploration, God's miracle of your Baptism will continually
increase in its benefits to you the more you use it:
a. The more often you are tempted and tested by evil desires, and
the more often you say to yourself, "I need not fall into this sin and give
way to it, because I am baptized," the more reliable you will find you
Baptism to be. Your Baptism will become for you a trusty shield against your
familiar temptations.
b. The more often you console your guilty conscience by making the
sign of the cross and say to yourself, "I am a baptized child of God. He has
fully forgiven me this sin and every other sin by washing me in Jesus' blood
and righteousness," the lighter your burden shall seem to be. Just as a boat
or raft seems lighter when it is floating in the water, so will your burden
of guilty memories and regrettable acts seem lighter when they are set
afloat in Baptism.
c. The more often you study and search God's Word for the benefits of
your Baptism, the more of your Baptism you will see therein. Soon the
Scriptures will seem to drip with baptismal benefits.
2. Maybe it is no so helpful for you somewhat younger
Christians-you thirty- and forty-somethings-to compare your Baptism to a DVD
player or digital converter box. You already are quite comfortable with that
relatively simple technology and not at all challenged by it. Very well
then: let's compare your Baptism to Word Perfect® or Excel® or some other
computer program that you regularly use. You had to learn certain things
about that program before you could use it at all. Now that you have the
basics of the program down, you can use it well enough. However, there are
still tons of things in that computer program that you have no idea about.
You can write a letter or run a simple report. But spend some time exploring
the many unused menus and functions that have been built into your computer
program. You will be amazed and delighted at all the powerful things you can
do, once you learn more about your program's capabilities.
Your Baptism is a lot like that computer program you use. A lot of
Christians are content just to get the basics of their Baptism figured out,
and then not spend too much time learning more about it after that. Like a
computer program that you can learn just enough about to be dangerous, but
not fully utilize, many Christians will be content only to learn base-level
lessons about Baptism in confirmation class, but never continue studying,
learning and utilizing the many amazing and powerful benefits that Baptism
provides. Yet if you were to take a few moments now and again-perhaps once a
week in Bible Study or Adult Sunday School-you would be amazed and delighted
to learn the many other great joys your Baptism provides, once you further
get to know your Baptism's capabilities for you.
3. Then we have the younger Christians among us-the video
game crowd. You have never mastered and solved a video game by NOT playing
it. How do you get good at a video game? You spend a lot of time at it. You
play it over and over again. You practice the parts of the game you do not
understand as well until you are able to master it.
Once again, the same thing may be said of your Baptism. Each of you young
people is at a different stage in learning about your own personal baptism
"in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Some of
you are still learning the Bible stories in Sunday School. Some of you-such
as you three Christians here in the front row-have completed your
confirmation studies. NONE of you have mastered and solved the game, so to
speak. All of you still have many things to learn about your Baptism and its
countless benefits (just as I still have many things to learn about my
Baptism). You will never learn and master your Baptism by NOT spending time
continuing to learn it. You will not grow in your Baptism unless you
continue returning to it over and over again, in the same way that you would
play a video game over and over again. Each time you make the sign of the
cross upon yourself, your Baptism will benefit you more; each time you rise
in the morning, turning away from your sins and trusting in Jesus, your
Baptism will benefit you more; each time you come to worship; each time you
study the Word with your parents or with me, your Baptism will benefit you
more. Just as a tree grows larger and stronger and more able to stand up in
the wind over time, so will your Baptism provide you with increasing
strength and endurance as time passes and you "grow in the grace and
knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18).
Having compared your Baptism to today's technology, there is at least one
sense in which this is not a very good analogy. This analogy between
technology and Baptism is not good because, in the case of today's
technology, our children know much more about what is going on than we do.
Stated another way, the older people know less about technology than the
younger people know.
The opposite happens when it comes to Baptism. The plain truth is that these
young Christians who are being confirmed today-and not just these, but
countless other Christians in their age group-these Christians know and
understand much less about their Baptisms than their parents knew and
understood when their parents were here being confirmed many years ago.
Something is going on in the Church, something for which we are all
responsible and something that is not good. The something is that we are no
longer training our children in the Scriptures as thoroughly as we ourselves
were once trained. We are no longer requiring our children to learn and
understand their Sunday School lessons. We are no longer making worship a
necessary staple in their weekly diet. We are no longer able to impress upon
them, as deeply as we once did, the blessings and benefits of their Baptism.
Where Jesus says in today's Gospel, "Make disciples of all nations,
baptizing. and teaching," the Baptisms continue, but the teaching has begun
seriously to falter. This is a serious sin of which we are all guilty, and
from which we all must repent and find ways to change.
In today's Gospel, Jesus ties His Baptism and His teaching closely together,
as if the two acts were (in some senses) inseparable. "Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations," says the Lord, "baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all
that I have commanded you." In the same way, the teaching will do you little
good without the Baptism, and the Baptism will do you little good without
the teaching, just as a horse will do you little good without a bridle, and
a bridle will do you little good without the horse. Rather than regarding
our Baptisms as something we do than forget, we must instead regard our
Baptisms as being like today's technology. That is to say, we must regard
our Baptisms as something requiring our focused attention, so that we may
learn all the more the benefits of forgiveness and life that our Christ has
given us here. We must regard our Baptisms as requiring our regular use-like
a video game or computer program-so that we grow more familiar and more
accustomed to the good things that Baptism gives us on a daily basis.
What is the chief benefit your Baptism gives to you every day? Jesus tells
you in today's Gospel: "Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the
age." Your Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and dead, but death could not
hold Him. More powerful than death is He, and rising up from the dead, He
ascended into heaven to fill all things in heaven and on earth. Having
destroyed sin, death, and the devil for you, nothing can conquer or
overwhelm Him-and through Baptism Jesus comes to be with you forever.
· Through Baptism, Jesus washes away your sins, and through His
teaching, Jesus assures you that you are indeed forgiven.
· Through Baptism, Jesus has set you free from the snares of the
devil, and through His teaching, Jesus assures you that overwhelmed and
destroyed by the devil.
· Through Baptism, Jesus has guaranteed your resurrection from the
dead, and through His teaching He offers you comforts and assurances even in
the darkest hour of your greatest need.
Congratulations on your confirmation, my young saints! Use your
Baptism as you would that technology with which you are already so familiar.
Join your fellow saints here in continuing to examine and learn and grow
into what it means to be the baptized of Christ. And never fear: your Lord
Jesus is with you always.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts
and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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