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Sunday 28 May ’17
Seventh Sunday of Easter
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Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
My wife and I had an interesting discussion recently that came to mind again as I read the Epistle for this Sunday. It was centered around a single question: “Which is the greatest of the sacraments?” If an observer of our conversation would have simply looked for a short answer, that person would think that my wife and I had different answers to that question. Her response was Holy Communion. My response was Holy Baptism.
St. Peter proclaims in this Epistle that is before us that “Baptism now saves you.” This is the simple reason why I say that Baptism is the greatest of the sacraments. Our very salvation, indeed our very entry into the Kingdom of God, is through the waters of Baptism in which we are brought to eternal life by none other than Jesus, the first to enter the waters, the first both to die and to rise from the grave to eternal life. Apart from this sacrament of initiation into the life and mysteries of the Church, there is no Christian sacramental living. The other sacraments of the New Covenant are all rooted in being joined to Christ in Baptism, being clothed by Christ with the wedding garment that makes us worthy to enter the Kingdom of God.
So why did my wife say that the Eucharist is greater? She did so because of her concerns of what does Baptism mean to an infant who is brought to the sacramental waters? In most instances, candidates for Baptism have not chosen to draw near and receive this sacrament. But at the Altar, Christians intentionally draw near, desiring to partake of the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. For Christians, this moment is the sacred moment to which the Word of God and the Sacraments of the Church push us, knowing that here we encounter Christ to the greatest depth that we shall experience in this life and in this world. Nothing shall top that moment until we stand before Christ in the fullness of the Kingdom and behold him no longer veiled in bread and wine and no longer known to us by faith.
The difference between my response and that of my wife lies at the heart of frustration over sacramental living that comes through often veiled in humor. You have all heard jokes, I’m sure, the line:
How do you get the mice out of Church?
Baptism and confirm them!
We laugh at that. We make jokes, covering our frustration with humor, about the Church’s significance in the life of some persons as:
“Hatch, Match, and Dispatch.”
In the face of that reality, we who are the Church need both to quote this Epistle and the promise that Baptism does save us, and then to lay out what it means to be baptized, and what it means to be saved by Baptism. We need to do this, for there are far too many who simply rely on their Baptism as an act accomplished in the past while giving little thought or attention to living as one who is baptized today. We need to remember that Baptism is not complete when we walk away, or are carried away, from the sacramental waters. If we are baptized, whether as infants for whom the vows were made by someone else, or even as adults, who chose to receive the sacramental waters of life, the fact that we are baptized means precious little if day by day we do not live as Christians, if we neglect the Eucharist and the other sacraments of the New Covenant, if we absent ourselves from the life of the Body of Christ which is the Church.
Do you know when our Baptism is completed? I have heard some attempt to drive Christians to daily live out their Baptism who say that it is completed in our death. I have heard others say something close to this; that Baptism is completed in our resurrection on the Day of Resurrection when Christ shall call the faithful from their graves on the last great day. But even these answers, I believe, miss out on something. Even in the Kingdom of God, when sin and death shall be no more, we will continue to be the sons and daughters of God. And how is it that we have been adopted by God to be children of God? That adoption began in Holy Baptism. And as we shall never cease to belong to God, indeed our Baptism shall never be complete. We will always, both here and in the Kingdom to come, walk as ones dripping wet in the baptismal waters in which Christ has saved us and claimed us as his own forever.
This awareness fixes our eyes on Christ, as it should. Note here that I said it is Christ who has saved us, and is saving us even now. When we speak of Baptism, or the Eucharist, or any of the Sacraments, as saving us, we are referring to the means of salvation. But remember that in these means of grace, there is a savior. His name is Jesus, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. If we remember Baptism, but forget Christ, our Baptism is meaningless. If we regularly partake of the Eucharist, but fail to seek and see Jesus, our communion is not to our benefit but to our judgment. If we do not see Jesus, we would be better not to come to this Altar. As I once heard a brother priest of mine say once: “If this isn’t Jesus, I can eat better bread and drink better wine at home.”
But this is Jesus! It is he alone who saves us. It is in him that we fix our hope. Today, therefore, let us remember that it is not the sacraments that save us. We are saved by Christ, who in the sacraments saves us, completing in us what is lacking, pouring out upon us daily the gift of eternal life. And in that remembrance, let us ever strive, not just on Sundays, but every day, to walk dripping wet as if we just left the font and were born again as children of God who never forget Jesus, the lover of our souls, who longs that we might love him as he has first loved us.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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Father Timothy Alleman
Rector of The Church of the Holy Cross
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