Preaching baptism

My recent, not altogether pleasant exchange with Pr. Paul McCain on an issue concerning which I believe (as I have from the outset) that we are in fundamental agreement caused my personal Old Adam to go into a snit for a while. After all, as far as I could see, my misunderstandings of Pr. McCain were honest mistakes due to his failure to express himself clearly, whereas his misunderstandings of me were the result of his leaping to unjustified conclusions after not carefully enough considering the clarity of my own brilliant rhetoric. Right?

Well, wrong. It took me a day or so to put the Old Adam to death on that one, and get over that nonsense. In fact, both of us would have been well-advised to have read what the other wrote more carefully, and at the same time given heed to the dangers of being misunderstood inherent in certain ways in which we chose to communicate our thoughts. And I should have been less rhetorical and more interrogatory in my attempts to get Pastor McCain to clarify the things I found at least potentially problematic in the way he expressed himself. To be honest, I am grateful that Pastor McCain helped me clarify my own thinking on the way in which we relate the Law to the lives of believers. What the Elert-praising Two Users at Wartburg Seminary call "exhortation" (which they argue is not really either Law or Gospel) is indeed something uniquely addressed to believers, and something which, as Pr. McCain points out, Paul himself does quite a bit of. Would that in the ELCA it were addressed more to people's lives, and less to their politics!

For my part, I've generally addressed this matter by talked about baptism. But talking about baptism needs to be specific- more specific, perhaps, than I have sometimes been. It's fine and dandy to recite

What does such baptizing with water signify?--Answer.

It signifies that the old Adam in us should, by daily contrition and repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil lusts, and, again, a new man daily come forth and arise; who shall live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Where is this written?--Answer.

St. Paul says Romans, chapter 6: We are buried with Christ by Baptism into death, that, like as He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

But it needs to be more specific than that. One of the things I've always enjoyed about Pastor Esget's sermons is how he takes the specific sins discussed in the text and applies them directly to the individual people sitting in front of him (not by name, of course- but by confronting us with our own personal complicity in exactly the kind of thing being discussed). Well, not enjoyed, exactly- there have been many occasions on which I found the experience distinctly less than enjoyable- but appreciated.

But that's Second Use. Pr. McCain uses an expression I first encountered in the Seventies in a CPH book called Getting Into the Formula of Concord: "The Law always accuses- but it does not only accuse." One does, indeed, preach the Third Use- as well as the First and the Second- whenever one preaches the Law to believers. But when it's believers who are being addressed, the Law also guides. It behooves us to see that such guidence is properly understood and applied.

We need to preach more about the ongoing, daily significance of baptism, and perhaps be clearer, more specific, and more comprehensive than we usually are. After all, contrary to what an awful lot of Lutheran laypeople seem to believe, it's not just "fire insurance" for newborns! And the superstitions which have grown up about baptism among Lutherans are sometimes astounding. I'm trying to deal in The Scrupe Group, the Yahoo group I run for Christians struggling with scrupulosity (usually a manifestation of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, in which people are kept in a state of perpetual agony over their failure to be "good enough" for God; Martin Luther suffered from it) with the dangerous implications of the Calvinist (mis)belief that "true" Christians can never fall away. Well, the heresy that runs, "Once baptized, always saved" is a very common one among alleged Lutherans!

The Catechism tells us better. I remember once encountering the phrase, "the baptismal lifestyle" to refer to the daily process of putting to death the Old Self so that the New might arise which is at the heart of the Sacrament's nature and intended use. And baptism is, indeed, something which is intended to be used!

Now, it's fine to talk about the necessity of daily contrition and repentence. Every confirmation kid memorizes those words. But one way of addressing Pr. McCain's concern is to point out that people need help in doing this.

It would be wonderful if more of our people took advantage of the opportunity for private confession and absolution. Even that, however, probably wouldn't be a daily thing. So that sort of leaves the pulpit.

Perhaps the need for connecting baptism and contemporary Christian life- as Pr. McCain does in his sermon- is the best approach we can take from the pulpit in avoiding both sacramental superstition and the practical antinomianism which often comes with it, on one hand, and the Pietistic works-righteousness which afflicts most attempts to talk to Christians about the Christian life on the other.

Two things are clear. First, that distinction must be clearly understood by preacher and hearer alike- and so must the ongoing significance of baptism in the life of a believer!

Perhaps, if our preaching of (or about) sanctification is done in the light of baptism, it will be easier to make clear that it is Christ's righteousness we live out of in our daily struggle with the Old Self, rather than our own efforts at self-improvement. That being the case, the difference between Lutheran, biblical teaching on sanctification and the false teaching of the "WWJD" and Rick Warren types will be easier to see.