United With Christ

Scripture:       Isaiah 53:4-12            Romans 6:1-11

I Peter 3:13-22             Mark 10:32-45

When my sister and I were no longer infants, but still quite small, my parents wanted to take us on day trips.  So my mom and dad – mostly my dad, actually, would look around for places that a young child might enjoy.  My mom mostly wanted to go to the beach…..Wildwood was her all-purpose day trip.  But anyway, my parents would make plans – either to go to Wildwood if mom got her way, or to go on a day trip someplace closer if dad got his way.  But often, as it happened, neither of them got their way.  As it happens, my sister got car sick.  It wasn’t mild car-sickness either; my sister’s car sickness lasted for years, and was so bad that my parents sometimes would hardly get the car to the end of the driveway, and my sister would start saying “I don’t feel so good.”  (Of course, helpful older brother that I was, I asked my parents why we couldn’t just tie a big garbage bag around my sister’s neck and go on our trip anyway. When I was younger, I was helpful like that.) Week after week our parents would plan, and week after week my sister would get car sick.  Our parents wanted to take us out to Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster – it was an amusement park, with rides and a big monorail around the park - and had tried for years, but I don’t think we got there until I was at least 14 or 15, and my sister was 10 or 11.  While it was a great place for someone 10 or 11 years old, by the time I was 14 or 15, I was a little jaded, a little too old for the place. It was a great place for kids, but by then I was a kid no longer, at least in my own eyes.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus and the disciples are on a road trip to Jerusalem.  Jesus knows what’s at the end of the trip – and it’s not Dutch Wonderland.  But the kids……er, the disciples seem confused about what kind of road trip they’re on, or where it’ll end, or what’ll happen when they get there.

Let us be clear about what kind of road trip Jesus is on, and what’s at the end of it.  Jesus is going to Jerusalem.  He knows that when he gets there, he will be confronting the authorities, the powers that be, both religious and political.  He knows that these authorities will not like what he has to say. In fact, will totally reject what he has to say, root and branch.  And they will express their total rejection of Jesus and his message by arresting him, torturing him, trying him, sentencing him to death, and carrying out that sentence…and that after three days, Jesus would rise again.  Even while Jesus is telling his disciples all this, they are indulging in delusions of grandeur , fighting over who gets to sit next to Jesus on his throne!  Even while Jesus is trying to flash big red warning signs in their faces – WARNING WARNING DANGER DANGER – and telling them that he won’t be with them much longer, the disciples are fighting over who gets to sit in the cool kids’ seats.

The disciples had squabbled over this any number of times, so James and John want to nail down once and for all this matter of who gets to sit with the cool kids near Jesus, so they approach Jesus:  “Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask of you.”  If one of your kids came to you with a request like that, you’d expect trouble, and Jesus did as well…so he asked them, “What is it you want me to do for you?”  And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory.”  Clearly Jesus knows they don’t know what they’re asking, and so he asks them, “Are you able to drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am to be baptized?” And James and John say, “Yeah, sure, we’ve got it covered.”  And so Jesus tells them that they will indeed share his cup and his baptism – will indeed go through what he went through – but that assigning seats in glory wasn’t for him to grant….it would seem that Jesus was not in charge of the seating arrangements.  Of course, the other ten disciples were furious when they heard this – mostly because they hadn’t thought of it first.  But Jesus called them and said, “You know that among the Gentiles, their rulers lord it over them and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But this is not how it will be among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and who ever wants to be first of all must be slave to all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

The Apostle Paul tells us that when we are baptized, we are baptized into Jesus’ death, so that if we suffer a death like that of Jesus, we will also experience a resurrection like that of Jesus.  The image of baptism is not only one of cleansing from sin, but actually one of our sinful nature being drowned in the waters of baptism, so that we come out of the water clothed in Christ. 

We think of baptism as a one-time event, in many traditions something done for us on request of our parents when we’re very young; in other traditions something done when are of sufficient age to understand the baptismal vows.  And indeed, in our tradition and in most traditions, baptism is a one-time event, something not to be repeated – when we leave one congregation to join another congregation, we may reaffirm our baptismal vows, but we don’t get re-baptized all over again.  But while baptism is done only once, I believe it’s not just a ceremony for that one day, but an invitation to begin a journey, a lifelong journey, with Jesus Christ.  Serving. Giving.  Suffering.  Dying.  Rising.  This was the pattern of Jesus’ journey through life, and it is the pattern of the journey through life to which we are invited.   Like the disciples, we tend to focus on the glory – getting to heaven, having the big seats up front near Jesus’ throne.  Our tendency is to want the crown, but to bypass the cross.  But the only way to Easter is through Good Friday.  And so, like Jesus asking the disciples “are you able to drink the cup I am to drink, and to be baptized with the baptism with which I am to be baptized”, the candidates for baptism are asked questions:  Will you encourage these children to renounce the powers of evil and to receive the freedom of new life in Christ?   Will you teach these children to profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?  And then there are promises, not for the child, but for the parents and godparents: Do you promise by the grace of God, to be Christ’s disciple?  Do you promise to grow in the Christian faith?  The parents and godparents cannot fulfill their promises to raise their children in the Christian faith if they their own faith is not active and growing.  And then, because we do not ask parents and children to make this journey alone, the church also promises its love, support, and care to those to be baptized and their parents and godparents.

And so, in baptism, we are in effect strapped by our seatbelts into the car with Jesus, to be with Jesus in our journey in life, just as our parents strapped my sister and I into the car before trying to take us on a day trip.   Being with Jesus can be, at the very same time, the scariest place to be and the safest place to be.  Following Jesus may take us to some very strange places, even some very threatening places.   It may feel at times like we’re in one of those rides where we’re spinning around really fast, and then the floor falls out, and we want to start screaming…and  yet eventually the floor comes back up, the ride slows down and stops, and we get off safe.  And like my sister, our nerve may fail us from time to time, and we may experience some spiritual carsickness along the way, when we just can’t move forward another inch and just need some space to regain our equilibrium.  And yet because we are with Jesus, ultimately we will be ok, as we are joined with Jesus in our dying and in our rising.    

And so baptism is the beginning of a journey.   For those to be baptized and their parents and godparents, are you ready?  Are you ready to begin your trip, a lifelong journey with Jesus?  For this congregation, are you ready to begin a lifelong journey of supporting those to be baptized?  If so, let us begin.  Amen.