As we enter the season of Lent, we are reminded at the outset of our baptism. Baptism is not something we normally think about much, I suppose, but during Lent, we are plunged into its deepest reality. Baptism, our dying and rising with Christ, is both the starting-point and the goal of our Lenten journey. As we move forward in reflection and repentance toward the beating heart of our faith, i.e., the passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are reminded that our whole lives, as Luther said, are rooted in repentance, renewal and reconciliation. The first reading speaks about the covenant God established with Noah after the flood; the second reading, identifying the flood as a prefiguring of baptism, describes baptism’s effects; and the gospel reading from Mark is a compressed narrative of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, starting with his own baptism by John. We could say that Jesus’ story, a story of his own baptism, temptation, and message of the need for repentance in the face of the coming of God’s kingdom, parallels our life of faith that also begins with baptism that strengthens us to meet life’s temptations, and in Christ, through our repentance and faith, and with the promise of new life in God’s kingdom, to overcome them.

It is important, therefore, that we pause, at least momentarily, to reflect on the meaning of baptism. The church teaches—and Luther is a prime example of this—that baptism is our dying and rising with Christ. In baptism we are incorporated into Christ’s death and resurrection. Sharing in Christ’s death and rising with him in his resurrection is what it means, first and above of all, to be “in Christ.” Furthermore, Luther maintained that the baptismal life, from font to grave, is a daily dying and rising, that our progress in faith is always a return to baptism. Therefore, according to Luther’s Small Catechism: Baptism means that “the old creature in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily contrition and repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

But it is just at this point that we encounter a problem. While it is easy to accept the redemptive renewal aspect of baptism, as in the story of Noah where he and his family were saved in the ark from the death-dealing waters of the flood, it is difficult to accept that in the flood-waters of baptism we also die. To speak about baptism as the inauguration and anticipation of a new life is one thing, but to say that in baptism the old person in us dies is quite another, yet it is the essential condition of our renewal. We have no trouble at all talking about life; we have great difficulty thinking about death, even the death of the old Adam in us that is subject to sin and corruption.

In the ancient world, stories about a great flood and God’s decision to destroy the world by it abounded. The OT too is well aware of God’s destructive action toward the enemies of God’s people. But what is distinctive here in the story about Noah, is that the drama between God and his people reaches its climax in God’s judgment on them. It is on them, on God’s own chosen people especially, that God’s judgment falls. When God executes his judgment, what has been comes to an end. In benign terms, Israel’s being called out from among the other peoples of the earth as their ancestor Abraham was, involves first of all, their renunciation of what they had been and could have been in order that they might become a new people in a new land with a new identity, a new purpose and a new God. Always with God’s people, it is a matter of living with the promise of the Holy One who, according to the book of Revelation, at history’s end, sitting on throne declares, “See, I am making all things new.”

Until then, however, until the final judgment, we are engaged in a great struggle between life and death, God and the devil, sin and righteousness, between the former time and the coming time, between the old Adam and the new person that emerges out of the waters of baptism.

Let me illustrate this struggle by saying a few words about grace. Luther talked about the difficulty he had—he of all people--surrendering himself to God’s grace. This is the way he put it: “Even when [faith] is taught in the best possible way, it is difficult enough to learn it well….We cannot…think anything except that, if I have lived a holy life and done many great works, God will be gracious to me....The heart is always ready to boast of itself before God and say: ‘After all, I have preached so long and lived so well and done so much, surely God will take this into account….’ When you come before God, leave all that boasting at home and remember to appeal from justice to grace. But let anybody try this and he will see and experience how exceedingly hard and bitter a thing it is for someone who all his life has been mired in his work righteousness, to pull himself out of it and with all his heart rise up through faith….I myself have now been preaching and cultivating it through reading and writing for almost 20 years and still I feel the old clinging dirt of wanting to deal so with God that I may contribute something, so that he will have to give me his grace in exchange for my holiness. Still I cannot get it into my head that I should surrender myself completely to sheer grace; yet this is what I should do and must do.”

Surrendering oneself to God’s grace--easier said than done; and yet it is precisely that struggle that baptism plunges us into head-first. Why is our surrender to grace (about which we talk so much but understand so little) so difficult as to be nearly impossible? It is so hard because the old Adam, the old self needs to be killed each day of our baptismal existence. He continues to rage and so to work as much harm as possible in us, causing us to doubt and forget, causing us to put our faith in ourselves, to be self-centered, self-indulgent and spiritually lazy, faithless and ungrateful. The old Adam in us has been mortally wounded, yet desperately still clings to us. Our only hope for life and salvation is that he dies.

The old, fatally-wounded but still-raging old Adam is the reason God’s judgment falls on us in particular. The on-going struggle between sin and forgiveness, God and the devil, life and death happens within and among us especially, providing the backdrop for Paul’s famous complaint and admission—an admission that should be our own: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me…..Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Paul’s question is our question. Who indeed will rescue us? Our answer should be Paul’s as well, who concluded by appealing to the only One who can resolve the struggle between life and death. “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

The resolution of this struggle between life and death that is made effective through Jesus’ resurrection was prefigured by God’s covenant with Noah and thus with his people and with all living things, that “never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” Jesus’ triumph over death is the confirmation and ultimate fulfillment of God’s pledge to Noah that God intends to be the God of life and not the God of death. The destruction of the old Adam in us, and therefore God’s righteous judgment upon all human presumption and pride, is a necessary precondition to our glorious rebirth as the redeemed and renewed people of God. Redemption presupposes repentance as renewal presupposes renunciation as resurrection presupposes death. Don’t decry the struggle of faith you are engaged in—it is your salvation. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.”

-Amen-