So, 

Welcome! 

With the weather, we are never sure who is going to be in the sanctuary on any given Sunday when we meet and who is going to worship with us online, but you can be sure, no matter how you join us, we are delighted that you are here!

In fact, we have heard about the many place’s folks are watching us from and we are so excited to hear about new places. 

And if you haven’t heard, we are also making available a church mug for those of you watching from afar, with the understanding that you will take a selfie of you and your new mug and share it with us on social media. Be sure to tag the church if you would!

Five mugs are already in the mail to Upstate NY, all over Pennsylvania and North Carolina. So be sure to go to our website otisvillepres.org, and scroll over to news and the first news article explains how to get a mug.

Social media has its faults, but for sure this is such a blessing!

Now as to the sermon, today again we are talking baptism. 

Two Sunday’s ago we talked about remembering your baptism, if not the details of your baptism, at least remember that you are baptized, set apart, sealed, as one of Jesus followers.

And then last week we noted that baptism is a first step of faith, just like that first step of faith the Israelites took into the dry bed of the Red Sea. 

They didn’t understand or see how God was already there protecting them and guiding them with an angel and the cloud, a failure to see, that effects all of God’s children before their faith has grown and matured.

Then the waters parted and they stepped by faith into the adventure, into the journey that would take them to the Promised Land.

Now, today, we are taking a moment to listen to the Apostle Paul as he writes to his audience in Rome, and beyond it to us, about the meaning and power of baptism.

Baptism, he reminds us, is both symbolically and in reality, an emersion into Jesus’s death and then his resurrection! Into the water and then up out of it!

Way back a long time ago when you were baptized, or perhaps when your child was baptized, what caught your attention?

Was it the water? The baptismal font? 

Perhaps it was the way the baptism was performed when the person as an adult was lowered under the water, or the child was dipped in the font, or the way the water was poured over the infant’s head or the way the sign of the cross was made on the infant’s head in water?

Maybe it what the clergyperson said, or what you or the sponsors or the congregation were asked, to reconfirm your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and to confirm that it was your intention to raise the child in the Christian faith.
Or was it something else?

Did you see in the baptism the power of the resurrection being declared once again? 

That the water is both a symbol of death and life. 

That water can take life when it rages and when you are trapped in it, but that is also the place where life begins in the womb and the sustenance that without, we cannot live? Water is essential!

Baptism in water is in a moment both the end of life before faith, and a resurrection to life in faith, where we, or our parents on our behalf, start us on the journey across the Red Sea into the Promised Land.

As Paul makes clear, after baptism death no longer holds us back from being God’s people, because death has been conquered as we rise from the watery grave.

We are free and can follow the master where he leads. Death cannot hold us back. It has been defeated as we rise from it. 

Baptism is the beginning. 

And to be clear, God is in that baptism, leading us to the point where we were or are baptized, just as God led his chosen people to the Red Sea.

Beyond baptism as God’s people, we are free to live, to serve, to rejoice as Jesus’ disciples. Nothing holds us back!

Not even the sin that so often tries to cling to us. We can shake it off and see the glory of God’s kingdom, with all of creation rejoicing…
Every people, every language, every color, every experience all crafted to show off the amazing diversity and all-encompassing glory of God!

Baptism is the starter’s pistol, signifying that the race has begun to live this life faithfully in every way, every day.

The other day I was watching a clip with the late night host Trevor Noah as he interviewed his grandmother in Soweto in South Africa. 

He asked her age and she confirmed she was 91 years and 8 months’ old. 

Then he asked what she was doing at 91 and 8 months. And she said she was just enjoying the blessing of being 91 and 8 months old.

Nothing else is required. 

Simply understand that you are baptized. 

That you belong to Jesus.

And join the journey, the adventure, of being part of the family of God.

Welcome to the community of the baptized, the people of God.

Amen.