Rev.
Adam T. Trambley
May 21,
2017, St. John’s Sharon
We are going to have a baptism this morning (at
10:00am). Peter’s First Letter talks
about baptism in a particular way. He says
that baptism saves us, but not as the removal of dirt from the body, but as an
appeal to God for a good conscience.
Often people talk about baptism as washing away
sin. In some ways, at some times it does
that. That cleansing from sin was the
particular function of the baptism of repentance offered by John the Baptist,
for example, and even today when adults come to be baptized, part of that
process is repenting of any evil in their past and having it washed away. For Peter, forgiveness of any past sin is an
important part of repenting and coming to faith in Jesus. Yet baptism is doing something else,
something even more important. Baptism
is asking God to give us what we need to be able to live a godly life going
forward. Baptism is going into the water
to beg God to give us a good conscience.
We can understand why Peter would see this as
so much more important. Any past sins
can be easily forgiveness by Jesus, but we have to live going forward. Avoiding future failings is much more
important than fretting over previously made mistakes. Baptism for us is a desire to live our life
in relationship with Jesus, following his commandments, and loving our neighbor
as ourselves.
Our desire to live for God is only the first
step, and, although it is the only step we can take, it is not the most
important one. When we make the appeal
for a good conscience in baptism, God answers.
“Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Peter says, “who has gone
into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities and
powers made subject to him.” Since Jesus
has been resurrected from the dead and is more powerful than every other
spiritual power, if we really desire a good conscience, God can give it to
us. Nothing can draw us away from a life
lived for God. We also have this morning
some concrete ways that Jesus provides
the support we need for this life.
Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit is the first
support we receive. In John’s Gospel, we
hear that Jesus is going to send us the Advocate. Other translations say the Paraclete or the
Comfortor. They are all names for the
Holy Spirit. If we love Jesus, the Holy
Spirit will abide in us. We will have
the gifts we need to live a life for God, including knowledge of what we need
to do and the courage to do it. The
fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, all of which allow us to live with a
good conscience.
Another manifestation of the Holy Spirit is in
the church. When we say the creeds or
renew our baptismal promises, we say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy,
catholic church, the communion of saints…”
The Spirit, the church, and the communion of saints are linked for a
reason. The saints of God around us are
one of the ways that the Holy Spirit works in the world, and the church is an
important gift that God gives us support us, strengthen us, sustain us, and
occasionally slap us upside the head when we need it. Through baptism, we are
welcomed into his great household of God.
We become adopted children of God with this whole place filled with our
new brothers and sisters. Like any
family, sometimes there are issues, but by worshipping and serving and loving
together, we can help each other keep our consciences clear.
Part of how God sustains us through the church
is through the Eucharist. We have three
people making their first communion today.
Through the body and blood of Jesus, we are strengthened in faith. We are more deeply united to Jesus and to the
rest of his church around us. We become
present with Jesus at the Last Supper, and are united with him in his passion,
death, and resurrection. If baptism is
an initial crying out to God for a good conscience, communion is a decision
every week to allow God to give us one.
As he said in our Gospel, Jesus did not leave
us orphaned when he went to back to his Father.
He gave us the Holy Spirit, he was created the church for us, and he
united us to himself through his body and blood. Through these gifts, we can have the strength
and direction we need to keep Jesus commandments.
As he talks about baptism, Peter also draws on some peculiar
stories about Noah’s ark. In making the
point that Jesus is powerful enough to save us from evil and give us a good
conscience, Peter writes: “[Jesus] was put to death in the flesh, but made
alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the
spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently
in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is,
eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured,
now saves you.” Peter is saying that after
Jesus died, when the Apostles’ Creed say that he descended into hell, he went
to down to the preach to the disobedient spiritual beings that were the problem
during Noah’s time.
The background of this story comes from Jewish
traditions and writings from around the time of Jesus, plus or minus a few
hundred years. One of those writings was
a book called First Enoch. Enoch was
Methuselah’s father and Noah’s great-grandfather. The Bible says Enoch was so holy that he
walked with God and was taken up to heaven.
First Enoch was probably not written by him, but it was attributed to
him. Early Christians considered it
inspired, but it never made the Bible and was actually lost to us from shortly
after Jesus’ time until a scroll was found in the last century. If you say the movie Noah that came out a few
years ago, it incorporates aspects of this Jewish story, which expands on
Genesis chapter 6.
In one of the Bible’s most bizarre passages,
Genesis 6 says that the “Sons of God,” who were some sort of heavenly,
spiritual beings, came down and married human women. The Bible doesn’t say much
more, but First Enoch talks about how this brought forth all kinds of evil upon
the earth. Then for First Enoch the
great flood happened not just to deal with evil people, but to clean up all the
evil unleashed by these creatures, after which they are shut up in prison.
Now this story may not sound so spiritual to us – at best
it seems like a bad paranormal romance -- but it, when combined with the
serpent in Genesis, was probably a better explanation of the origin of evil than
most pagan myths at the time (which were even more bizarre). This story isn't in the Bible because the
Church, being led by the Holy Spirit, either didn't believe it was true, or
didn't find it helpful for living out our faith. But the people in Peter's time would have
known the story, and it would have been quite important to the people in Asia
Minor where at least some of the people Peter was writing to lived. In Asia Minor, which is modern day Turkey, there
are a lot of mountains, and the people of that area had four flood myths,
besides the story of Noah. One town in
the area, where Noah’s ark was said to have landed, was named after it. So important was Noah to that area, even
among pagans, that the Roman Empire issued coins there with Noah and his wife
on them. (Of course, Caesar's picture was on the back.)
Peter is using this important native story to say
something about Jesus. When Peter says
that Jesus went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, he is simply
saying that after Jesus died and rose, he went and took authority over every
powerful being in the spirit world who was responsible for any of the terrible
evils that have beset humankind. Nothing
evil is as powerful as Jesus. Peter says it again at the end of our passage,
“Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with
angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.” Jesus is where God is, and everything else in
the universe, even those things much stronger than we are, are under his
authority.
Just in case we have any doubts, Peter gives one more
example from the Noah story. Even in the
midst of the evilest generation of all time, God saved Noah. Building the ark was hard work and being on
the ark couldn't have been much fun, either.
But the dangerous water carried Noah to safety. Water also saves us through our baptism, where
God pledges to save us just as he pledged to save Noah. The way that water saves us, Peter tells us,
is that at baptism, we have appealed to God for a clean conscience. We have our salvation in this sacrament where
we are adopted by God into the household of faith, sealed with the Holy Spirit,
and given the power to live with a good conscience going forward. Today, we are
grateful to be able to baptize Cecilia into this great heritage. We will also then welcome Cecilia and Ally
and Mark to the Lord’s table where they will continue to be strengthened by the
Body and Blood of Christ to live out what was begun at their baptisms.
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