Sermon-Sunday, July 16th

Mark 6:14-29 and Ephesians 1:3-14
Brothers and sisters,
grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today we have a baptism. So, I suppose it is appropriate that our Gospel lesson for today involves John the baptist, or John the baptizer as he is known in some circles. Of course it would have been easier to preach on this if it had been a moment in John’s life when he was actually baptizing people or preaching or something different from the story that we have in today’s Gospel lesson, which is of course the story of when John the baptizer was killed.
And I will confess, when I first read this lesson, my immediate reaction was to think "I’m not going to preach on the Gospel lesson this week." But as I read this lesson and studied it, and read what other people who are much smarter than I am had to say about it, I realized that there was much more going on here than simply a beheading.
For one thing, John had to know that Herod’s wife Herodias wanted John dead since he was basically telling Herod that he shouldn’t be married to Herodias. John had to know that Herod’s wife was threatened by him and had a grudge against him. By telling Herod that it was unlawful for him to marry his brother’s wife, John was threatening Herodias’ livelihood.
I suppose that it’s not very feminist of me to say that, but it’s true. Being married to Herod, afforded Herodias a life of luxury that she would not otherwise be able to enjoy, and John was a threat to that. So Herodias had John killed.
And this was just one example of the dangers that come with being a prophetic voice. John was always facing resistance and opposition. And yet in the face of this opposition, he continued to be that voice of one crying out in the wilderness. And his voice was effective. His voice was so effective that even Herod, whom John had spent much of his time denouncing was perplexed by much of what John said and he even liked to listen to what John said.
John was a man of great faith. He stood defiantly in the face of the opposition that eventually ended up killing him. And from what we see in the Gospel lesson, John offered no resistance when the time came for his beheading. He simply went. That kind of courage can only come from faith. But where does that kind of faith come from?
The answer is literally right in front of you. Look at the font. That is where that kind of faith comes from. Faith comes in baptism. In baptism you are marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit for all eternity.
In our second lesson for today, Paul writes that we have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless. That is what we are seeing in the baptism of Katelynn Rene Folvag today.
In the waters of baptism, our Lord is making His claim on Katelynn. He is making His claim on her to be holy and righteous before God, the claim that He made before the foundations of the world. This is the very same claim that our Lord makes on each and every one of you in your baptism. That’s it, it’s done you are His, live with it.
Earlier this week when I was going over the baptismal instruction for the parents and sponsors, I came across something where it described the Lutheran view of baptism and why Lutherans baptize infants. It said, Lutherans don’t baptize babies in case they die, rather we baptize babies in case they live.
As Katelynn lives in her baptism, our Lord will continue to come to her in His word as she is exposed to God’s word through the nurturing and sustaining of her baptism by Katelynn’s family, her sponsors and all of us in this parish and the entire body of Christ. Our Lord will continue to come to Katelynn in the sacraments and in fellowship with other members of the baptized body of Christ. Our Lord comes to Katelynn the same way He comes to you.
Our Lord comes to us as we live in our baptism and we are filled with a trust in God, a trust that God has chosen us before the foundations of the world and that God will indeed never let us go. This is the kind of faith that sustains us in the event that we live.
Some have called this perspective "The long view" of the life of faith which essentially refers to the trust that whatever sufferings or hardships we endure in this life, our earthly life, our physical or material life, that in the end they will prove to be small and insignificant in the light of God’s plans for us in eternity.
In the beloved hymn "A mighty fortress is our God," Martin Luther illustrates this perspective in a very powerful way where he writes "Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child or spouse, though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day. The kingdom’s ours forever." In the light of the eternal kingdom of God, even death is powerless.
In fact in speaking of the cross and the resurrection, Martin Luther writes "It is indeed a divine work that he wrought, and it is not surprising that he made the evil of death into the greatest blessing." By taking our sin with Him to the cross, Christ Jesus literally takes death and flips it upside down and turns it into a blessing.
This promise, this "long view" of the life of faith is why John the baptizer was able to exhibit such tremendous faith. It was because in his baptism, he had been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit and he was filled with the faith that he had been chosen by God. He knew that he had been made holy and blameless in the love of Christ. And because of that, he knew that he didn’t have to fear anything, not even death.
Now, in baptism, we have this same security. We may not face the same challenges that John faced. When we proclaim the name of Jesus we are not violating the law so we need not fear imprisonment, at least not here in the U.S.
But make no mistake about it, there is opposition to the Gospel in our culture. Through John’s great faith that we see displayed in the Gospel lesson and the reminder that God has claimed us as His own in the second lesson for today, we are reminded just how utterly dependent we are on our Lord. This sense of being utterly dependent on something bigger than ourselves flies in the face of the spirit of individualism and autonomy that our western culture embraces so passionately.
In the midst of this spirit of individualism, there is also a spirit that tells us that we must be self-sufficient, that we must take care of ourselves, that we must carry our own weight. In light of this claim that God has acted on our behalf; from a worldly perspective we are driven to ask "What can we do to pay God back?"
The answer of course is nothing. By that I mean, we could do everything within our power to pay it back and it would still amount to nothing because there is no repayment for the debt that could never be repaid.
Our calling is not to try to pay the debt back but to live in the freedom and the peace of knowing that the debt has been paid and than nothing not even a death as brutal as that of John the baptizer can change that.
In baptism we are marked with the cross of Christ, and sealed by the Holy Spirit for ever. In baptism God promises to remain true and faithful to us. There were hardships and challenges for John the baptizer, there were for Martin Luther and there are for us also. But in the midst of all the challenges, God’s promise to be faithful remains forever, our status as beloved children of God remains forever. In the waters of baptism, through the blood of Christ, God’s kingdom is ours forever and that is where faith comes from.
Amen