First reading: Isaiah 42:1-4,6-7
Psalm: Ps 29:1-4,9-10
Epistle: 1 John 5:1-9
Gospel: Mark 1:7-11

for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.
And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.

Our baptism

Today we reclaim our baptismal promise. In commemoration of our Lord’s baptism in the Jordan, we stood this morning, proclaiming our faith and our resolve to live by those promises.

What were those promises? Simply they were the renunciation of evil and a statement of belief in God as He has been revealed to us, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Further, we state that we believe in the Holy Church and the effects of our participation in the Holy Church: an eternal communion of saints, of which we are a part, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of our bodies, and life everlasting in God.

In our baptism we reject the things that destroy human life — all of which is precious and beautiful, and we accept new life, the fullness of life, in Christ Jesus. We offer ourselves as those begotten by God.

The door to truth

Being begotten of God in baptism, my friends, is the door to truth.

It is hard to acknowledge when one has the truth. We may be embarrassed, or shy about that knowledge, reticent to say: ‘I have the truth,’ but isn’t that who we are as baptized believers, people who bear the truth to all men?

St. John says an interesting thing:

If we accept human testimony,
the testimony of God is surely greater.
Now the testimony of God is this,
that he has testified on behalf of his Son.

Don’t we accept human testimony? We easily offer ascent to the words of parents, spouses, witnesses, teachers, scientists, even government officials and salespeople. We believe that their words are true witness to what they have seen and done, to what they know. Today we see God Himself bear witness, as the heavens open and the Spirit descends on Jesus, we hear His words: —You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.—

The Father and Spirit show their unity with Jesus Christ as God. Do we believe God’s words? If we do, if we know these words to be true, as recorded by the witnesses who stood along the banks of the Jordan, the witness of John’s disciples and the men who would become Jesus’ apostles and disciples, then we must acknowledge that we have the truth — Jesus is God.

Jesus brought God’s truth, and He passed it on to His apostles, the men He commissioned to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They in turn have passed that knowledge to us through an unbroken line of bishops who preserve and teach the Apostolic truth. It is surety, God came to dwell among us and assured us that in following Him we have the truth. God’s sure truth.

Our promise gives us hope

Thus, knowing and relying upon the truth given us, truth we have claimed in our baptism, we are heirs and beneficiaries of Christ’s promises. He has gone to prepare a place for us, where we will dwell with Him forever. Yet, He is not apart from us, simply waiting for us to show up. He lives with us in our earthly sojourn and continually strengthens us in hope.

To make hope real we must claim the regeneration of baptism. We must claim the change that has taken place in us, not simply the explanation that a change has occurred, but the reality of that change. Doing so, we take up the mantle of our regeneration putting that regeneration into practice.

The first step on that path is to say clearly what Jesus Christ knows of us — we are valuable, of worth, to Him. He claims us as He claimed Paul on the road to Damascus, as He claimed Andrew upon coming up out of the Jordan. He calls to us and tells us that He loves us and needs us.

Knowing this and knowing that His promise is true, causes us to change. This is the second step — to live in the knowledge of our regeneration. In every situation we see the same factors, the same evidence others see, yet for us it is different, because all things point to God and reveal God. Even the saddest moments, in which our grief seems inconsolable, are different, because our eye is on heaven. Our perspective has been changed so that hope is always before us.

This my friends is real change and real hope. In our journey we have a taste of the change that awaits us and hope for its fulfillment.

Our promise is a guarantee

The change that awaits us and our hope for its fulfillment comes to life in serving the Lord, serving each other, and calling all to new life in water and the Holy Spirit.

The saints lived this, the smiling saints who saw the joy that awaits them.

When we look to the saints we see heroic, unimaginable deeds, and deaths — no matter how awful — as peaceful and joy-filled experiences. We see the saints that bore witness, the confessors who suffered for their witness and the martyrs who died for theirs. Their eyes were continually focused on the promise they made and the way they had to live that promise. We see saints who ministered to the sick and the dying, contracting horrible diseases, yet who comforted their bothers and sisters because of their promise. We see saints who gave and gave, ministering to the poor, the crippled, prostitutes, the homeless, prisoners, captives, on the battlefield, and in cities that wanted nothing to do with God. Yet they spoke God’s word of comfort and love. They touched and they healed. They saw Jesus Christ in their midst because of their promise. Their promise made real what Isaiah had foretold: He shall bring forth justice to the nations, He establishes justice on the earth; opens the eyes of the blind, brings out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

Because of our baptismal promise there is no cost too high, no witness too difficult, no sacrifice we would be unwilling to make. All, because we are those saints and those saints are us. We know the joy that God has guaranteed for us, we who live out the baptismal promise.

Our promise seals us

We know that we are begotten of God in our baptism. We know that we have the truth of God. We know that our baptism gives us hope, as long as we live out our regeneration. We know that by living our promise we are guaranteed a treasure of inestimable value (Matthew 13:45-46). Thus we are sealed in a new birth by water and the Spirit, living in truth, with hope, and taking action with an eye to eternal life in Christ Jesus. These things seal us, they mark us as people who live the Christian life — the life of Christ among us.

As we stood to state our promises, we asked all to see the seal with which we are sealed. We didn’t do this in a closet or behind closed doors, but in the community, with doors open to all.

We are the people who live this life, who show forth the seal of the Lamb, who bring Christ to the friend, the enemy, and the stranger.

Making our promise real in today’s world

To be begotten by God, to be sealed with Him, means that our lives have become purposeful. The commitment, the purpose to which we are set, is the proclamation of righteousness in God.

Our proclamation is twofold. It takes shape in our doing and in our being. By this I mean that what we do is not done as mere niceness, as something invented by man, but goodness and love as created by God. Our doing takes shape in the way we place the Gospel into action. Anyone can be nice to those who are nice to them. Anyone can love those who love them.

We are different, the sealed bearers of Christ in the world. Because of our baptism we act with goodness and love toward all. We often develop this into a dichotomy. We compare love of friends to love of enemies. But it is more. Certainly we are to love our friends and our enemies, but there is more. The next step is to love the unexpected, the stranger who is neither friend nor enemy. That’s where we can see our earthly ways fighting us. We recoil at the unknown. We hold back from the uncategorized. If one doesn’t fit into the friend or enemy category we crawl back into ourselves and wait. By baptism we are called out of that wait. The wall between us and the friend, enemy, or stranger no longer exists. What exists is our call to connect with all, to live with all and relate with all in a bond of love.

In this doing, in this building of bonds defined by goodness and love, we become. Our doing becomes our being. We are no longer the old man; our presence transformed into the presence of Christ in goodness and love (Romans 6:6).

When our doing translates into His presence we are approaching the perfection we are called to in baptism. Doing as God commands transforms us into the people Christ has called, a righteous and holy people, a people of the truth, living in the Sprit, overflowing with goodness and love.

Trust in God, trust in Me

Making the promise is serious stuff, living the promise is immensely difficult. I imagine that this is what Jesus meant when He spoke of those things that seemed impossible — camels passing through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24). But, there is hope and there is help. We have made the promise and are sealed. We have the truth and sure hope — a guarantee. Now it is time for our doing and our becoming. None of this is done on our own, but first and foremost in prayer. Let us cast ourselves at Jesus’ feet in our prayer and ask that He give us the strength we need for our work.

Jesus asked us to trust in God and to trust also in Him (John 14:1). Trusting in Him we will do all we are called to do, and more. Like the saints, living their baptismal promise, seeing their regeneration in the forefront, we will bring the comfort and freedom of God to all mankind. We will live our baptism. Amen.