Homily for third Lenten Midweek

[Third in our series of midweek homilies focusing on the readings for the Easter Vigil]

Two weeks ago we rejoiced in Baptism as putting us into the eighth day of a new creation through the Resurrection of Christ. Last week we rejoiced in Baptism as the gift of death and new life. Tonight we see that our Baptism into Christ means exodus. It means leaving behind slavery and embracing freedom; it means leaving behind fear and embracing peace; it means leaving behind sorrow and embracing joy.

Before a person is baptized they are asked to do a strange thing. We ask it of children (who speak through their sponsors). We ask it of adults. It is called the renunciation. Do you renounce Satan? And all his works? And all his ways? This before the profession of faith. Years ago, the renunciation was made facing West, the place of the dying light, and the last act was actually spitting at Satan. Then the person was literally lifted up, faced east toward the rising sun and asked to confess faith in God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What on earth was the point of all that? It was meant to show and confess that in Baptism, Christ sets his people free from their bondage to Satan, to sin, and yes, even to death.

When God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt he prefigured for all time what he planned and intended to do for the whole human race through his Son. The children of Israel lived in Egypt as in exile. They knew it wasn’t home. They were not free. They were forced to work for others. Their lives were tears and hardship and backbreaking labor. But God in his great mercy had not forgotten his people. He sent them his servant Moses. Through the mounting tension of the ten plagues God hammered home to Pharaoh the message: “Let my people go!” Pharaoh’s heart was hard. He did not want to let the children of Israel go free. But finally he could not stand up to the terrible plague brought by the angel of death. He told the children of Israel to go, to get out.

And go they went. Moses led them and he led them in a peculiar way. He led them right up against the shores of the Red Sea. And in the time it had taken Moses to lead them there, Pharaoh had hardened his heart once more and all his armed might was sent to go and bring back the children of Israel, to make them slaves again.

At the shore of the sea, with their enemies closing in behind them, and nothing but water in front of them, God effected a mighty deliverance. His wind, His spirit, blew upon the waters and the waters parted and a way opened up right through the midst of the sea itself. The children of Israel raced into the heart of the sea and walked through towering walls of water on dry ground. When the Egyptians tried to pursue them, the waters collapsed and drowned horse and chariot. When it was all over, God’s children stood on the edge of the sea and looked back in fear and amazement. And then in overwhelming joy. Their slavery was really over! It was ended! God had brought them out with a mighty hand and an oustretched arm. The water had cut them off from the power of their enemies and they were free!

If you want to ever understand the joy of the first Christians over Easter, you must understand it from the perspective of this event. Just listen to one of the hymns we sing: “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness; God hath bro’t His Israel into joy from sadness. Loosed from Pharaoh's bitter yoke, Jacob's son and daughters, led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.” The whole sad story of Israel in the land of Egypt was like the story of the whole human race. We were living in exile, born in a land that was not our true home, enslaved to sin, living in fear, and headed toward death. But into our darkness and sadness, God sent us a Mighty Deliverer. He broke the fetters that held us captive, he crushed Pharaoh Satan, and he led us straight through the waters to be a new people, a redeemed and rescued people. And the waters covered over and crushed our foes: sin, death, and the devil.

Baptism then marks a “cutting off” from the past. The beautiful prayer used in the Baptismal liturgy expresses this so well: “Almighty and everlasting God, who... didst drown obdurant Pharaoh with all his host in the Red Sea and didst safely lead Thy people Israel through the midst thereof, prefiguring thereby this washing of Thy Holy Baptism... look with favor upon this child and bless him in the Spirit with true faith that... being separated from the number of the unbelieving, he may be kept securely in the holy ark of the Christian Church and ever serve Thy name with fervent spirit and joyful hope.”

Baptism cuts us off from our slavery to Satan and to sin and to the “old ways” of unbelief in this world. It frees us from their tyranny! St. Paul put it like this: “Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.” (Rom 6:11-13) He could speak that way because he had just reminded of them of their Baptism in which they had been buried with Christ and given his new life to live as their very own life.

So in your Baptism, my friends, Christ has severed you from the allegiance to Satan to which were bound by Adam’s fall. Christ has led you through the waters to set you free from that old Pharaoh, free from fear, free from bondage, free from sin, and yes, yes, most glorious of all, free from death.

Death was one of those enemies that drowned in the water. Baptism cuts us off from death. It does that by transforming death itself. We always hear “death” and think right away of biological death. But biological death is only the fruit, the symptom of the real thing: spiritual death. Death is separation from Him who is Life. Death is alienation from God. By his embracing of the way of suffering and death, by His going to His Cross, our Lord Jesus Christ has filled even suffering and death with his life and light and love. He has transformed death itself into a passage to life: “Jesus lives and now is death but the gate to life immortal! This shall calm my trembling breath when I pass death’s gloomy portal. Faith shall cry as fails each sense: Jesus is my confidence!” This is the joy of the Church! This is God’s gift to you in your Baptism! You live now cut off from your enemies and headed under God’s protecting hand to the land of promise. Baptized into Christ, you have nothing to fear! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory be to Him forever!