Prayer of Consecration

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.

Jesus, We belong to you.

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Scripture

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Romans 6:1–4 (NIV)           

Consider This

There are two sites in the ancient city of Jerusalem that compete for the prize of being the place of the cross and the empty tomb. If you go there, you will undoubtedly visit both sites. The first is known as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It is a massive cathedral-like building that meanders across the space of what feels like a small city block. Inside the cathedral is the place the authorities say is the place where Jesus was crucified on the cross. Nearby, in the cathedral is the empty tomb. Interestingly, the place feels like neither. Across town, actually outside the gates of the Old City is the other site, known as “The Garden Tomb.” There’s a rocky crag there on which you can trace the contours of a skull (i.e., Golgotha) and nearby there is an ancient cave-like tomb cut into the side of a small hill complete with a large stone next to the mouth of the cave. This has all the “feels” of the place and yet less verification as the authentic site. All this to say, I have been in both empty tombs and both hold enormous gravitas.

Most of the emphasis over all the centuries has gone into the focus on the fact that the tomb is empty. It’s true. The tomb could not hold the risen body of Jesus Christ. He is not there; nor are his bones. In another sense, however, it is not empty. It is quite full. It is filled with the Sin of Adam and all the sins of all the saints from all the ages. As Jesus was crucified on the cross, he took on himself, in his body, the Sin of Adam and the sins of the world past, present, and future. Further, as Jesus’s body was laid in the tomb, the Sin of Adam and all the sins of the world, past, present, and future, were laid there in his body. We, our Sin and our sins, both crucified and buried Jesus. “They” did not kill Jesus. We did. (And of course “we” includes “them” too.) As Jesus rose from the dead, he left the Sin and the sins in the grave, buried, dead, lifeless, forever.

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death . . .

Our Sin and our sins are buried in a tomb outside of the city gates in Old Jerusalem. They are dead, rotten and ever rotting, dead to us, dead to eternity, forever dead and buried. They have no life, no power, no gravity but that we accede to them—which is an utter absurdity and only betrays the reality that we have a very inadequate understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is Paul’s point in the opening salvo of Romans 6.

We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

When Jesus was laid in the tomb, we were laid there with him—our old self, our old life, our Sin, and our sins. When Jesus rose from the dead, we rose with him, our new self, our new life, free from sin and delivered from death.

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

We have many and varied understandings of what Christian baptism is and what it means. Paul gives us the ground zero definitive picture of it here in Romans 6.

Death. Burial. Resurrection.

Right here and right now.

Baptism is not a symbolic rite of passage as we are so prone to believe. It is a literal living participation in the real, physical, and embodied deliverance of Jesus Christ from sin and death into life and love which is freedom.

I fear we have largely missed the point when it comes to baptism. We have majored in the minors while debating over trivialities. Baptism is first and foremost about Jesus’s death, Jesus’s burial, and Jesus’s resurrection. He went to the cross and carried our Sin and our sins. They carried his lifeless body, murdered by Sin and sins, and laid him in the tomb. Our Sin and our sins and our old life were buried in the literal tomb in Jerusalem. Jesus was raised from the dead and as he ran out of that grave, our new life, our freedom from sin, and delivered-from-death life ran out with him. And we are still running free from sin and full of faith in the newness of life today.

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Reflect deeply on this today, because it is going to get a lot deeper tomorrow and the day after that.

Prayer

Our Father, how we thank you for your Son, Jesus, who took on our Sin and our sins in his physical body. He took them, and us with them, into the tomb. And he rose from the dead and took us with him, leaving our Sin and our sins behind in the grave forever. Holy Spirit, bring our own baptism back before our memory—open the eyes of our hearts to see what really happened there. Bring us into the depths of remembrance such that we understand it beyond what we did before—that we were buried with him into death in order that we might be raised with him into life. Give us the vision to see our Sin and our sins left behind in that tomb in Jerusalem forever—they are dead to us and we are dead to them. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.