2336AFC063023 – Dead in the water
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Romans 6:3 – 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Romans 6:11 – 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 10:39-40 – 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 40 “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
Psalm 89:1 – 1 I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever;
with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.
2 Kings 4:8-10 – 8 One day Elisha was passing through Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived, who urged him to have a meal. So whenever he passed that way, he would stop there for a meal. 9 She said to her husband, “Look, I am sure that this man who regularly passes our way is a holy man of God. 10 Let us make a small roof chamber with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that he can stay there whenever he comes to us.”
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace and Peace to each of you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus the Christ, in the Power of the Holy Spirit. This coming Sunday has two themes in the readings. One mentions death, the other mentions life. We can start with the quotes from The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans because it mentions both, and also ties into our title. This Scripture addresses Baptism – the first of the Initiation Sacraments. Baptism is the beginning of our life as a child of God. We have often pointed out here that only the baptized are children of God – reborn into life “by water and the spirit.” (See John 3:5-6) We have cited the prologue to the Gospel of The Apostle John in chapter 1 John 1:11-13 – 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (My emphasis added) “But what about people who aren’t Baptized? Aren’t they God’s children, too?”
Narrowly speaking, no because it is only through rebirth by water and the Holy Spirit that we are the adopted daughters and sons of God. In the broadest sense, since all humans are created in the likeness and image of God, they might be called God’s children, but more specifically they are the creatures of God’s creation whom God wishes to save through remission of sin in Christ Jesus. If one passes up that opportunity, there is still the possibility of benefiting from the irrepressible Grace of God who “does not look on the outward person but on the heart.” In the final analysis, God chooses and he alone decides. For purposes of these lessons, a child of God is a person who has been Baptized into the Body of Christ “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
So, how can The Apostle Paul say we are Baptized into his death? It was his Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension that made that possible. Since “the wage of sin is 
death,” Jesus paid that in full at Calvary for “whosoever believes in him.” Therefore by his death, we receive Life – his Life – and are joined to his Body, the Church. As described by The Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1:1-4 – 3 His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4 Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. Because why? YOLO-F?
Because only the divine, saving power of Christ can free us from the effects of sin. There is 
salvation in no one else. “What about people who have not known Christ and have not been Baptized?” As before, God decides. Based on the life they lead and the innate desire to find God, HE will make that decision at the end of days. That’s the Absolutely Perfect Plan, and he made it for everyone, so everyone has an equal shot. Baptism is a spiritual bath that justifies, purifies, and sanctifies. It is in this way, through “springs of living water,” that we are cleansed and prepared for Life in the Kingdom. We are Baptized with the Baptism of Jesus (which he did for “the sake of all righteousness”), and have new life in the Body of Christ because we are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Isn’t that APP completely amazing?!?
Now we can move on to what Jesus said in our passage from the Gospel of Matthew. 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those 
who lose their life for my sake will find it. 40 “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Some may have read (perhaps in these pages), “If you’re looking for your “true self” inside yourself, that may be all you will find.” What if we looked inside our inner-self and found Jesus there? He wouldn’t be there unless we welcomed him, and whenever we welcome him, we welcome the One who sent him. Selah. If we claim our lives as our own, how can they belong to God? Moreover, “ya gotta serve somebody,” so if we are self-serving, that’s exactly what Satan has always wanted from we earthlings – to be selfish enough to try to grasp Eternity in our own grubby little fingers. That path of selfishness always leads to exclusion from the Joys of being part of the Body of Christ. (↔ Music Link) We in the Body of Christ are not millions of separate earthlings wondering and wandering around looking for meaning. We Are One Body, (↔ Music Link) and we do not ever stand alone, and THAT is because of God’s Mercy, his Steadfast Love.
That is something that is experientially real – unlike so much of what we see proffered for our consumption in the “news” from MSMOs, sports presentations, dramas and other cinematic presentations. Everything can be made to look real – talking dogs, deep-fake people, Internet “influencers,” even religious fervor for televangelists. With all that goings-on, sometimes we (here he goes again!) forget; we forget that God is Real, God is community, and we are called to be a continuous presence in that community of reality. We are created to love and worship God and to love and stand in solidarity with our Brothers and Sisters in Christ. They – we – are no longer merely earthlings, no longer creatures of Creation. We are sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters of the Messiah, we are given the Holy Spirit at the moment of our adoption, and the scourge of sin and death is washed from our souls. We see that in this passage about Jeremiah’s visits to the Shunammite woman and her husband.
Jeremiah was a remarkable man; I think of him as a “heroic Prophet.” He did everything he could to warn God’s people that they were on a collision course with disaster, and even when that disaster landed full-force, he continued to preach what God planted in his heart. He was beloved by many and hated by many more. The couple from Shunem were among those who cared about him. They decided to help him, and that is in the spirit of what God expects from all of us – just help each other rather than beat up, ostracize, hate, and kill each other. In short, we are created to DO THE RIGHT THING ALWAYS. (↔ CQQL! Learning Link) That is another core principal of the APP. To do that, we must always strive for holiness by reaching up to God as far as possible and then accept the fact that he will make up the rest of the distance on our behalf. “God will Take Care of You” (↔ Music Link) That’s not just a saccharin sentiment, it’s an actual fact. It is because of this fact that we can sing with the Psalmist, “I will sing of your steadfast love, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.
That brings up another matter to be addressed. We are a community in God, but we are not always a community in Church. We have our “preferred pew;” we Catholics might stand and kneel, and sit but might not sing, and we surely don’t clap hands to the music. Now maybe you’re from a Parish, or even a conservative non-Catholic congregation, that doesn’t celebrate the Lord full-throatedly. Nonetheless, we need to be worshipping as a community and not as an aggregation of well-informed critics of those around us. Yes, that means gossipers. We’ve passed through the waters along with Moses and the Israelites, along with Jesus and the Jordan, with Jesus on the Lake of Galilee, and again on the hill of Calvary. The Water and the Blood and the Spirit testify. Just as in the Old Testament 
serious matters and decisions required the witness (Gr: Martureó) of three persons, we learn in (Learning Link ↔) 1 John 5:6-8 – 6 This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. 7 There are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree. Again, we see the concept of community. When we try to “buck the system” by insisting on doing salvation our own way, we might end up in a similar situation like Saul of Tarsus experienced on the road to Damascus. “Hey! You! Why are you persecuting me with your disobedience?” That sort of selfishness is easily overlooked when we are overly-certain of our standing in the Kingdom. We need to be “Standing In The Need of Prayer” (↔ Music Link) first – in the community of the Body of Christ through the Baptism in the Water and the Blood and the Spirit where we are dead to sin in the Waters of Rebirth and made alive in the Living Water by passing through the River of Life that flows from the Word.
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
