What Difference Does Baptism Make?

   Sunday I taught the first of a two-part series for children who have either recently been baptized or are considering it.

 

   We began by talking about decisions. Each of the kids talked about a decision they had made that morning - the decision to get up and come to Sunday School, the decision to wear the clothes they were wearing, etc. We then turned in our Bibles to the third chapter of the book of Luke where we read about all the people of Judea and Jerusalem who came down to be baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. We read how John was "preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins," and I told them how I believe repentance means turning away from selfish ways and deciding to go where God wants us to go and become who God created us to be. We talked about what that would look like in our lives. There was lots of talk about being nice to siblings and obeying parents. An especially precocious boy talked about being productive and "contributing to the economy". His dad has an MBA. Then there was the funny moment when the three boys in class who have been baptized were asked if they still sin. They're gaping eyes and mouths gave them away.

 

    Then yesterday at our Tuesday morning men's breakfast the lesson was again on baptism. This time Penny Vann was leading and he was using theologian Jim McClendon's idea of baptism as a "performative sign". By that McClendon meant that like a stop sign tells us to stop, the sign of baptism tells the world that we intend for our lives to belong to God. At baptism we declare ourselves - in the words of the Apostle Paul - "dead to sin and alive in Christ."

 

    Well, the two conversations - one by 10-year-olds and another by 50, 60, 70 and 80-year-olds - were certainly on different levels. But the questions were substantively the same. What is baptism? What does it mean to repent of our sins? Can we be so alive in Christ that the sin in us truly dies?

 

    These questions make me think of a scene in one of the great Texas films of all-time Tender Mercies. Robert Duvall plays a broken down, honky tonk cowboy named Max Sledge (can you think of a better name for a broken down, honky tonk cowboy?). Duvall meets a woman whose love and gentle spirit set him in the right direction. Soon we see him in church being baptized along with his new stepson. On the way back the two ride side by side in Max's pickup. Max looks over and asks his stepson, "Do you feel any different?" "Nope," the boy says. "Do you?" "Not yet," Max answers back.

 

    The key word I think is "yet". Max and his stepson and the boys in my class have all just recently declared who they are going to be. They've just decided. Now all the decisions that follow are to be based upon that first, big decision. They don't feel any different yet - but they have made it known that their intention is to be different.

 

    As I looked around at those men on Tuesday morning, I know they still sin. But I also know they are indeed "different" from what they once were. They're gentler now. They're more loving now. They're sober now. They're no longer consumed with success now. In other words, they've been baptized - dead to sin and alive in Christ.

 

    I remember what some saint somewhere once said, "I ain't what I ought to be. I ain't what I'm gonna be. But thank God I ain't what I was." It's true for the men on Tuesday morning. May it be true for the kids on Sunday also.