Baptism Into Death

Two weeks ago yesterday afternoon, a small levee broke several miles away from my mom's house.  She happened to be on the phone with my sister when the surge of water arrived.  In the span of 15 minutes, she went from watching a typical high-water situation, with waves lapping at the street's edge, to having more than a foot of water inside her house.  The phone went dead.  Within minutes, a county dump truck came around to evacuate her and her neighbors on that little cul-de-sac.  Neighbor friends let her stay at their house as she came to terms with this unprecedented event.

My imagination is drawn to picture what it must have been like for that 12-18 hours before the water receded from the house.  The darkness.  The smell.  Cold, nasty water invading the house I grew up in, soaking the sofa, damaging documents, warping the wood.  Night falls, and in my mind I sit on the kitchen counter.  All is still.  The surface of the water is impenetrable, filled with silt and farm chemicals from the soybean field behind the house.  Corn stalks have floated into the yard outside, covering the grass with a foot of farm refuse.

Fast forward a few days.  Mom's co-workers (unaffected personally by the flooding) flood in themselves, squeegeeing the silt out the door, pulling up nasty carpet, tearing out soaking drywall and insulation.  By pitchfork and backhoe they clear the corn stalks out of the yard.  They help her (a pack rat like me) throw things away that she'd rather be able to keep.

Soon the lower four feet of drywall is gone throughout the house.  You can stoop down and see from one corner of the house to the other, something that hasn't been possible since the house was built 33 years ago.  There's still dried flood residue on stuff, but things are tons cleaner than they were just days before.

Then her church comes in.  More cleaning.  They pull out the water heater and replace it with a new one.  They test various appliances, again helping her decide what to keep, what to pitch.  They promise to help put new drywall up, whenever the wall is dry enough to cover again.

She's dried her most important papers (and will never again put them in a bottom drawer).  She's filled out the Red Cross and FEMA paperwork.  She's had her well water tested, and looks forward to being able to drink it again.  In fact, in general, she's started to look forward again.  We all notice that, though we dearly wish it hadn't happened, once all the repairs have finished, the house should be in better shape than it might have been without the flood.

I am reminded of all this when I hear today's epistle text.  Baptism into death.  That dark, dank, death-filled floodwater surrounding and filling the house, then pulling back, and the life-giving Father providing the resources to clean, renew, and rebuild.  You died in Christ when you were baptized.  With Him, you entered the dark, death-filled tomb.  We can imagine today that long Saturday of sealed-in-stone silence, with the smell of death.  Then you, with Christ, were raised to new life.  New Life!  New opportunities.  Clean air to breathe, a clean spirit with which to serve.  All of that is memorialized in the flesh and blood, the bread and wine, of this table.

And just as it will take time for Mom's walls to be re-covered, for all the dust to settle, so it takes us months, years, even our entire life, for God's remodeling and renovating work to continue.  But as we open the doors of the “rooms” of our lives to be filled with the wind of the Holy Spirit, we are made new, and alive, again.

For this is what the Lord himself said, and I pass it on to you just as I received it. On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."  In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant between God and you, sealed by the shedding of my blood. Do this in remembrance of me as often as you drink it."  For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are announcing the Lord's death until he comes again.

Offering Meditation:
My mother has benefited immensely from the generosity of others recently.  As people poured into her house to help, working long hours, doing difficult, dirty work, she has had to accept that help.  She doesn't like that.  She likes to be independent, to be in control.  She likes being the one offering the help to others.  But God knows that life is too big for any of us to handle alone.  May this passing of the plates be a reminder to you of the ways we are called to share with, and help, each other.  And may you be equally, joyfully generous, in both giving and receiving, in both common and crisis times.