On November 29, 1942, a curious looking airplane called the Grumman Duck took off from the iceberg-studded waters of Koge Bay on the south-eastern edge of Greenland. The goal of the flight crew, John Pritchard and Benjamin Bottoms, was to rescue seven members of a B-17 crew that had crashed during a search mission. The crew survived, but had already been stranded atop a glacier for almost three weeks. The Duck’s crew had successfully rescued two men the day before and was returning for more of the men. But after they picked up the B-17’s radioman, they encountered whiteout conditions and the Duck crashed, killing all three on board. For 70 years the Duck and its unfortunate passengers remained stuck in the snow and ice of Greenland, but in 2012 a salvage team was successful in locating the Duck under 40 feet of ice. Operations are now under way to salvage the Duck and to return the remains of the crewmen for a proper stateside burial.
Although such salvage missions are costly, they are not unusual. Many governments around the world have a “no man left behind” policy. Alive or dead, they promise to bring you home for a proper welcome, or for a dignified burial as a way to say thanks for your faithful service to the nation. Perhaps some of you have relatives who have received such a burial in a cemetery for war heroes. Or when they passed away they lay in state as hundreds of mourners passed by a flag-draped coffin to pay their respects. That certainly sounds like a better burial than dying atop a Greenland glacier and simply being left there until Judgment Day.
However, as we close out our sermon series on baptism, we’re going to learn how through this sacrament we have already received a better burial than any send off a grateful nation could give. Listen to our text from Colossians 2:8-14; 3:1, 2. “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. 9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross…1Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”
When we started our baptism sermon series, we learned that this sacrament provides a better birth. Now we’re saying that baptism provides a better burial? But aren’t the two opposites? They are but baptism provides both. When we think of the blessings of baptism we normally think of how that sacrament gives us new life. It does that by offering the forgiveness of sins, and giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit who creates faith in Jesus our savior. Through baptism we are born again into God’s family.
But our text this morning also clearly teaches that in baptism we are also buried with Christ. The waters of baptism securely tied us to Jesus, like a rope securely tied between two mountaineers edging their way across a glacier. And so everything that Jesus experienced, is now also part of our past and will be part of our future. When Jesus died on the cross, we also died. That sounds bad, but it’s not! Tell me, why do people fake their own death? Isn’t it because they’re running from something? They might have a debt they can’t pay and so they fake their own death so that the bill collectors or the mafia will stop coming around. The problem with those who fake their death is that they end up living the rest of their life on the run, hoping that no one finds out they’re really still alive. But in baptism we really died with Christ. And so our debt of sin is really paid. Paul put that dramatically when he said in our text: “He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13b, 14). Or as the Message translation puts it more simply: “Think of it! All sins forgiven, the slate wiped clean, that old arrest warrant canceled and nailed to Christ’s cross.” We don’t have to live in fear that God’s angels will catch up with us and hurl us into hell. No, baptism offers a better burial. We died to our debt of sin there while still remaining very much alive.
But not only was our debt of sin killed in baptism, so was something else. Listen to what Paul wrote in Romans 6:6, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him [in baptism] so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” If you watch any sci-fi movies like Star Wars, you know how the good guys will often end up as captives on the bad guys’ Death Star. They usually make an escape, but not until the Death Star’s gravitational field has been disabled. Only then can the good guys fly off into the safety of deep space.
Well the waters of baptism have disabled our sinful nature’s ability to keep us as its slave. We are now free to fly off and live as God wants us to live. Paul makes that point in our text. “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:1, 2). Paul goes on to describe what such a life will look like—a life in which we get rid of sexual immorality, greed, anger, slander and replace it with kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and humility (Colossians 3:5-15).
“But,” you might say, “why then do I keep on sinning if in baptism I’ve been freed from my sinful nature’s control?” Because our sinful nature is like those Death Stars in the sci-fi movies. It’s not going to let us go without a fight. And although our sinful nature won’t send fighter ships after us, it will try to entice us back into its control by saying that sin is fun and it’s certainly not as dangerous as the Bible makes it out to be. Anyway, since we have forgiveness it shouldn’t matter how often we sin. But all that is a lie, as our sinful nature’s goal is to recapture us and make us slaves again.
This is where making daily use of our baptism is so important. This doesn’t mean that you stop in at church to get re-baptized every morning. There’s no need for that because the blessings of baptism remain a life time. But making daily use of your baptism means calling to mind every day what happened at your baptism—that you died to sin and that your sinful nature’s control over you was broken. Therefore you are not destined to keep following its orders, even though it will keep issuing orders as does the command center of the Death Star even as it’s going down in flames. So just as it would be foolish for an escaped prisoner to voluntarily return to the Death Star, it’s foolish for us to voluntarily return to our sinful nature’s control.
Throughout this sermon series I’ve been pointing to features of our new baptismal font that help you remember the different kind of blessings we have through baptism. For example the flowing water reminds us that our sins are being continually washed away. The fact that our baptismal rock is drenched with water reminds us how in baptism we have been drenched with the Holy Spirit and therefore are more than ready to live as a child of God. And now here are a couple of more details worth noting. If you look at the font from above, you’ll see that the enclosure that holds the water resembles the shape of a coffin. I can’t say that was planned, but I did notice it soon after it was built and thought that was a neat way to remember how in baptism we have received a better burial. You see this area is not just a font of life, it’s also a tombstone marking where my debt of sin died as did the power of my sinful nature over me.
This isn’t the first baptismal font to signify this biblical truth. Ancient fonts were often built in the shape of a cross to remind the baptized of how, through the sacrament, they were connected to Jesus’ death. In addition to that, the early church would ask those being baptized to remove their clothes. They were then baptized naked and afterwards received a white robe to signify how through baptism they had put off the deeds of the sinful nature and eagerly embraced a life of righteousness. You might be glad we don’t follow that custom, but I do hope our new custom of inscribing your name on one of our rocks in the font takes off. Because that way every time you come to church you can see your rock and your name “drowned” again by the waters of baptism reminding you that your sinful nature has been drowned and so you’ve been freed and empowered to serve Jesus.
I started this sermon by telling you about those airmen who died on Greenland’s ice cap. If they ever do get the remains of those men back from Greenland for a proper burial, it will be nice for the surviving family members. But what good will it do the guys who died in that crash? It will just move the location of where their bodies will be brought back to life on Judgment Day. No, you might not receive a war hero’s funeral when you die, but you’ve already received a better burial—one that has cancelled the debt of your sin, and one that has cut the power of your sinful nature. Keep remembering this truth so that you set your heart on things above, not on things of this dying world. Amen.
SERMON NOTES
How does baptism give us a better birth?
Through baptism we died with Christ. Why is that a good thing? List two reasons.
Although our sinful nature’s power over us was broken in baptism, why do we keep sinning?
What does it mean to make daily use of your baptism? How will you remember to do this?
What was one curious custom in the early church regarding baptism and why did they do it?
So how does baptism give us a better burial?
