“A Matter of Death Then Life”

A Sermon Based Upon Romans 6: 1-14.

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Sunday,   September 14th, 2014

“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Rom 6:11 NRS)

On the corner of 56th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City, is St. Peter's Lutheran Church.  Not long ago, a small group of tourists went for a visit.  They were astonished by what they saw.  The baptismal font (what mainline churches call their baptismal basin for sprinkling) is off to the left, by the main entrance into the sanctuary.  That in itself is appropriate, for baptism is the entry into the Christian life. 

But this particular baptismal font is unlike what you normally see in a Lutheran Church. It is a large deep pool. It's elevated, about chest high.  A casual visitor might confuse it for a hot tub, large enough for three or four people. But there are no spa jets inside, and the water, always filled and ready, is quite chilly.
       The tour guide asked the pastor of that church, "How do baptisms get done at St. Peter's Lutheran?"

        "Just like anywhere else," he replied.
        "Do people get dunked in the Lutheran church?"
        He answered, "Some do.  Others stand outside the font, and water is sprinkled on their heads."  "The most important thing," he added, "is that, however we do the baptism, sprinkling or dunking, we have to use enough water to kill people."

(From a sermon by William Carter, entitled,  “Thank God, We’re Already Dead!” at www.sermons.com).

When you were baptized, did the pastor use enough water to ‘kill you?’    Paul says our “baptism” is more about ‘death’ and ‘life’ than it is about water.    One eight year old was being told she was being ‘buried with Christ’, and she answered,  “Well, that’s not very nice!”  She’s right.  It doesn’t sound nice, it sounds nuts and even a bit weird.  Maybe that’s our problem, says Lynn Sweet, we’re not weird enough.   Baptism is about killing off our old life, so we can begin a new life in God. 

WE MUST NOT CONTINUE TO LIVE IN SIN

“Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase”? (6:1, NAS)  Paul begins his discussion about “baptism” and the Christian Life, by saying that we should not keep on sinning.   Since God loves you, forgives you, and gives you his grace, then the logic could be that if you sin more, you have more grace, right?   Wrong!   Paul is serious about sin and if you want to live the Christian life, you must get serious about sin too.   Even after love and grace has become real in our lives, sin is still a powerful, tempting, addictive, and dangerous pull against the person we should become.  

Remember Tennessee William’s play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”?   When the famous author, living in New Orleans, was finishing his play, he had been tinkering with several different titles for his masterpiece.  He made his final decision one day, when he realized he was living between two streetcar lines.  One Streetcar was going in the direction to a place called Desire.  The other Streetcar was going in the opposition direction toward Cemeteries.  This, Tennessee Williams thought, was a perfect picture of the human condition.  We live our lives between Desire (Sin, the wayward desires of our hearts) and Cemeteries (Death, the wages of sin is death).  We are enslaved by Sin and we dominated by Death and trapped between Desire and Cemeteries. That’s how Tennessee Williams saw it (From Fleming Rutledge, “Not Ashamed of the Gospel”, Eerdmans, 2007, p. 190-191).

Paul takes sin seriously too, but many people don’t.   What about that Father in Georgia, Justin Harris, who left his 22 month old son, Cooper in his hot car?   Accidents do happen, but it looks premeditated the dad was sexting other women while at work that day.    Or do you recall the recent Penn State Scandal concerning Peter Sandusky, who assaulted young boys while doing charity work?   A most recent article in Huffington Post Sports section says that even as terrible as this was it “dwarfs” others issues going on in college sports today.  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/09/penn-state-scandal-sandusky-assault-college-sports_n_1083561.html.

Our society worships “sports” and many see it as an avenue toward success.  While there is no doubt that play and sports can be good physical and mental discipline, the problem is, however, that you not only need to discipline your body, but you also need to learn to discipline your mind and heart, which can be an even greater avenue toward being a successful human being.   Developing the inner discipline,  strengthening your moral compass and training in self-control, is just as important, if not more important than the strength training, athletic ability, and physical discipline.  A good example is what is currently happening in American Football.   The rising concern about concussions and head injuries comes from the inability of a sport to control, discipline, and restrain unnecessary roughness and violence.  

Back in 2012, the Washington Post, published an very interesting article by columnist, George Will.   His first two lines caught my attention:  “Are you ready for some football?  Are you ready for some autopsies?”   He goes on to tell us what happen on opening day of NFL Training Camp as it coincided with the closing of a casket.  Well the Funeral was actually back in April, but the investigation of why 62 year old Ray Easterling, an eight-season NFL safety committed suicide by gunshot, was that the autopsy found moderately severe chronic traumatic encephalophathy (CTE),  progressive damage to the brain associated with repeated blows to the head.  

We all know what the uncontrolled, increasingly violent level of play is doing to both players and the sport, and it’s not just the hard hitting, it’s bigger than that.   Another thing Will noted is how the sport has ‘grown’, and I’m not talking about its popularity.  Will says that back in 1966, “Bear Bryant’s undefeated Alabama team had only 19 players who weighed more than 200 pounds.  The heaviest weighed 223.  The linemen averaged 194.  The quarterback weighed 177.  Today many high school teams are much bigger.  In 1980, only three NFL players weighed 300 pounds or more.  In 2011, there were 352, including three 350 pounders.  Thirty-one of the NFL’s 32 offensive lines averaged more than 300 pounds….”  And on top of all of this, various studies indicated high mortality rates among linemen resulting from cardiovascular disease.  For all players who play five or more years, life expectancy is less than 60; for linemen it is much less.”  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-footballs-problem-with-danger-on-the-field-isnt-going-away/2012/08/03/ff71ec48-dcd0-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html

 “Sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it." (Gen 4:7 NRS).  That’s what God said to Cain, just before he murdered his brother Abel out of envy and jealousy which ended in an act of terrible violence.   It not only ended Abel’s life, is destroyed Cain’s life as well, making him a fugitive and wanderer the rest of his days.    This powerful warning about sin comes early in the Bible.   It is the kind of warning that comes through Tennessee William’s play which is about the dangers of undisciplined desire.   If we don’t take the ‘mastering’ of sin seriously, we are in serious trouble.  This is why baptism is a matter of death and life.

WE MUST CRUCIFY OUR OLD SELF

Have you noticed I titled this sermon, a matter of death, then life, instead of the usual way of life and death?   There is a reason for this.  If you want to live the Christian life, death comes first.  You must get serious enough about sin that your ‘crucify’ your old self.   

Now, of course “crucify“ is very strong language.   But when Paul speaks of the “old self was crucified” he is not speaking literally, but figuratively, yet still seriously.   He says a follower of Jesus must deal with sin first, before he or she can live the Christian life.   Later on, in Romans 8,  in all the beauty of the King’s English, Paul reminds us to first “mortify the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8.13, KJV) and to the Colossians he said even more emphatically, “Mortify your members….! (Col. 3.5, KJV).   In newer translations “mortify” means “put to death.”  

Though the language sounds harsh we need to understand that Paul is indirectly quoting Jesus from the gospels:  “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.  And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; (again) it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matt. 5:29-30).   Both Paul and Jesus speak in direct, graphic terms, but please don’t take them to be about physically ‘hurting’ oneself.  They are speaking of helping yourself by undergoing a kind of spiritual “surgery” where the procedure brings release, freedom and healing.   But how?  How do we perform spiritual surgery to “crucify” desires to sin?’’   Let me simplify:

Name it!   Have you ever heard the old adage, “Where there is a will, there is a way?”  The phrase is not biblical, but the idea is.  This is in fact, what Paul does over and over in his letters.  He makes lists and writes down the “sins” that need to be eradicated (See Rom. 1.29-31;  1 Cor. 6: 9-10;  Gal. 5: 19-20;  Eph. 5: 3-6;  Col. 3.5-6, and 1 Tim. 1: 8-11.   Paul puts into our consciousness a sense of what is right and what is wrong.   He wants to create a “will” and a “desire” in us, to will to change by teaching us what is God’s will.  Maybe we should rephrase the old adage, “Where we know God’s will, there is a way!”   Before you can “crucify” your sin, you need to name it and you need to name as God has named it.

Claim it!   But then you have to claim it, as your own.  This is the difference we saw between President Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.  President Clinton resounded, “I did not have relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky!”  President Carter said, on the other hand, “Yes, I have looked at a woman and had lust in my heart.”  Now, we know that what President Jimmy Carter admitted was not good for him poltically.  But the truth is when Jimmy Carter claimed his sin, he did not act on his sin and that was good for him spiritually.  President Clinton, well, we all know the terrible truth about that.  The point I’m trying to make is that if we want to crucify the flesh, after we name it, we’ve got to claim it as a real struggle in our own life.   You can’t suppress it.  You can’t deny it.  You can’t run from it.  The power of sin, as Paul said, is real and overwhelming.   We are not all tempted by the same sin, but we are all tempted by some kind of sin (1 John 1.8), because we are people who live in weakness of our flesh.  If we want to conquer it, and control it, we must confess (1 John 1.9)  and claim it.  

Lame it!    After we’ve named it and claimed it, then we must “lame it”!   This is what Jesus means when he says, “If you right eye offends you, pluck it out!” and “If your right hand offends you, cut it off!” (Matt. 5.29-30).   This is much more drastic than that children’s song, “Be careful little eyes what you see!”  or “Be careful little hands what you do! For the Father up above, he is looking down in love.  Be careful little hands what you do!   After sin has gotten hold and taken over in our adult lives, we have to challenge it more directly, as God told Cain, “Sin desires to have you, but you must master it!” (Gen. 4.7).

We can take control and lame the power of sin in our lives, when we, as Paul says, “have been united with (Christ) in a death like his….." (6:5).   Paul’s point is that our sins are killed off through our spiritual union with Christ's death.   By uniting with Jesus we are able to live in the freedom, joy and love of Christ as we let the old life die.  In a book on leadership, Garry Wills writes about Harriet Tubman, the remarkable slave woman who led African slaves to freedom by way of the Underground Railroad.  That invisible railroad came through North Carolina, primarily through the Sand hills and Greensboro, and was primarily run by the Quakers.   The story goes that when the slave leader Harriet Tubman was a teenager, she tried to stop the beating of a fellow worker. Her master hit her on the head, and the blow broke her skull. Harriet lingered near death for weeks. For the rest of her life she suffered from occasional catatonic spells due to the injury. But the injury also set her free.   As Wills notes, "The blow that cracked Tubman's skull struck off her psychic chains. She had already died once; she had nothing to lose." (As quoted in a sermon by Bill Carter from Garry Wills, Certain Trumpets: The Call of Leaders (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 41.)

By uniting with Christ we can free ourselves from the desire and dominion of sin’s power.  But how do we take that very first step?  How can we overcome sin when we still live in the flesh, still face temptation daily, and when all of us still live in a world where sin dominates “to make (us) obey its passions (6:12)?   How can Paul expect us to “put to death, whatever is earthly….” (Col. 3.1) and how can we “consider ourselves dead to sin” (6:11)? 

WE MUST CONSIDER OURSLEVES ALIVE TO GOD.

We come now to the final initiative, which is truly the first and last action we must take to join with Christ in drowning out the sins of our life:

Tame it!    Coming ‘alive to God in Christ Jesus’ (6.11) is not some kind of gimmick, trick, self-help program, or easy 4 step method.  When Paul started this whole conversation by asking “shall we continue in sin”, it was like asking are you going to ‘stay on’ or ‘remain’ in this place?   Thus, the ‘sin’ we must remove is not like overcoming a bad habit, but it’s, as N.T. Wright has written, like “freeing ourselves from a dark ruling power that can only be escaped by moving into a whole new country.” (N.T Wright in “Commentary on Romans”,  Abingdon Press, Vol. X, 2002, p. 537).     

When you move into a new country the language is different, the food is different, the landscape is different, the people are different, the roads are different and even way people work and play is different.   I’ll never forget when we moved to Europe, we knew we were definitely in a different country when we arrived at our destination on a Saturday afternoon.  We went out to find some diapers for our 2 year old daughter and were shocked to find that every single store in the country had closed at 12:00 noon on Saturday and would not open again until Monday morning.   Hello!  We knew unmistakable that now we were in a different world with different values, different standards, and very different ways.

The great evangelical mind, C.S. Lewis, understood that ”God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there.  There is no such thing.”  (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/cslewis151474.html).    Again, gaining the power over sin is not a strategy, a procedure or any kind of special technique, it is about establishing a living ‘relationship’ in a new kind of ‘world’ where Jesus Christ is not only your savior but he is Lord of everything you do and everything you want to do.  When you are continually with him, the desire for everything else dies because nothing compares to what you gain in Christ.

So let me conclude with a question: What would make you want to live a life like this?  Why would we want, as Paul explains it, to “present (ourselves) to God” (6.13) , crucifying our old self (6.6), living ‘under grace’ (6.14) so we can be ‘instruments of righteousness’ (6:13)?    Could we imagine that even a child might understand? 

In one of her short stories, Flannery O'Connor tells about a four-year-old boy named Harry Ashfield.  He lives in an apartment with parents who neglect him.  Their lives are more concerned with drinking, partying, and recovering from hangovers. A cleaning lady takes young Harry to hear a preacher down by the river. Harry has never heard anything like that preacher. As the preacher stands hip deep in the river, he speaks about Jesus and a kingdom of God where every child is safe. Little Harry starts paying attention.
         "Hey, preacher," cries out Mrs. Connin, the cleaning lady. "I'm keeping a boy from town today. I don't think he has ever been baptized."
          The preacher says, "Bring him over to me." Turning to Harry, he adds, "Have you ever been baptized?"
          Harry asks what that means. The preacher says, "If I baptize you, you'll be able to go into  to the kingdom of Christ. You'll be washed in the river of suffering, son, and you'll go by the deep river of life.  Do you want that?" That sounded pretty good to Harry. He wouldn't have to return to the neglect of his parent's apartment. 
          "You won't be the same again," the preacher said. "You'll count." And he takes the boy, swings him upside down, and plunges him into the water. The child comes up, gasping for air. Then the preacher says, "You count now."

At the end of the day, Mrs. Connin takes Harry home. Everything is different for him now. He wants no part of his parents' parties.  He is no longer comfortable being cooped up in their apartment while they ignore him.  All he wants is to go back down to the river, where he can jump in and go looking for the kingdom of Christ.”   Flannery O'Connor; "The River," A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), p. 44.

When your heart takes the plunge into God’s river of grace, your life starts to count for something and you figure everything differently.   Sin and death no longer rule your life or your future.  Everything was a matter of living and then dying, but now, it is all a matter of life.    Amen.