Baptism, Lent, and the gift of life in Christ: A sermon for the Sunday before Lent

‘From one degree of glory to another’: Baptism, Lent, and the gift of life in Christ

At the Parish Eucharist & Holy Baptism on the Sunday before Lent, 2022

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

How might we describe what we do here on Sundays in our parish church? 

How might we describe how we seek to live out the Christian faith, Monday to Saturday? 

I think most of us would instinctively choose quite modest words to describe both.  

We might talk of our Sunday worship as a means of growing in faith, hope, and love; we might talk of seeking in daily life to love God and neighbour.

In our first reading this morning, however, from Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle employs more dramatic language to describe Christian worship and the Christian life:

“all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit”.

The Apostle declares that Christian worship and Christian life is a matter of gazing upon the glory of God, of us being transformed into Christ’s image as we do so, and that this is the work of God the Holy Spirit within us.

It may, at first, seem rather removed from our experience Sunday by Sunday, rather removed from our ordinary, daily experience.  Which is why it is good that we have today the Sacrament of Holy Baptism celebrated in our midst, as Harry comes to be Christened.

For in the Sacrament of Baptism - the beginning of the Christian life - we see how the Apostle Paul’s words really do describe the experience of Christian worship and Christian daily living. 

Think of the words we heard about Baptism at the outset of this service: “Here we are washed by the Holy Spirit and made clean. Here we are clothed with Christ”.

In the prayer over the water,  we will pray that the water would be sanctified by the Holy Spirit “so that he who is baptized in it may be made one with Christ in his death and resurrection”.

And after Harry receives Baptism, we as the Church will say, “We therefore receive and welcome you as a member of the body of Christ, as a child of the one heavenly Father, and as an inheritor with us of the kingdom of God”.

As Saint Paul says, “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit”.

Little wonder, then, that one of the great teachers in the early Church, John Chrysostom, applied this very passage of Scripture to the Sacrament of Baptism and said that in Baptism we “receive a sort of splendour”.  

The splendour of being united to Christ, sharing in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, renewed as a child of God.  

This is the gift God will graciously, freely bestow on Harry as he is baptized; the gift God graciously, freely bestowed on each of us at our Baptism.

The gift of God given in the Sacrament of Baptism can never be lost.  It is God’s gift and God is eternally faithful.  That is why in the Creed we normally profess at the Eucharist we say that “We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins”.  

We, yes, are unfaithful.  God is not.  The gift given in Baptism forever remains.  Throughout his life, Harry will always be a child of God.  Throughout our lives, no matter what our failures, you and I, because of our Baptism, forever remain the children of God.

This gift, however, is freely and graciously given to us by God so that it will mature, grow, and bear fruit.  So that, returning to the words of Saint Paul, “seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, [we might be] transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another”.

That is why Baptism begins a life lived in the communion and fellowship of the Church.  For it is here in the Church that we enter into those practices which renew and sustain us in the gift bestowed in Baptism.

Here we pray, calling God ‘Our Father’, seeking God’s purposes for us and for the world.

Here we read the Scriptures, the proclamation of God’s saving purposes in Jesus of Nazareth in the story of the people of Israel in the Old Testament and in the life of the Church in the New Testament.

Here we confess our sins and are forgiven, the absolution we hear in the liturgy assuring us that the gift given in our Baptism is renewed and restored.

Here we share in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, spiritually feeding on Christ under the forms of Bread and Wine, renewing our participation in Him.

Here we are recalled week by week to the commandment to love our neighbour - a love that must extend to the people of Ukraine as they face great evil and grave injustice.

We need these practices to renew within us the gift bestowed in the Sacrament Baptism.  Why? Because after Baptism we sin in thought, word, and deed; in things done and left undone; in failing to love God and neighbour.  This mars the image of Christ in us, it seeks to pull us away from our participation in the life of Christ.

We need prayer, Scripture, confession and absolution, and the Eucharist to bring us back to the foundational gift bestowed in Baptism.

We need these so that, in the words of the Apostle, “seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, [we might be] transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

Each year in the Church’s life we also have a particular focus for our worship, prayer, and daily living when we enter into the season of Lent.  

This coming Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, is the first day of Lent, the beginning of the forty days of prayer, self-examination, and abstinence which, year by year, calls us back to the gift and identity given to us in Holy Baptism.

And it does so in preparation for Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter Day, the yearly celebration of the Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection, the saving events at the very heart of the Christian faith, the saving events proclaimed in the Scriptures and in which we share through the Sacraments.

Harry’s Baptism today, then, wonderfully sets before us on this Sunday before Lent the gift given to each of us in our Baptism; the gift that is renewed through prayer and Eucharist, lived out through love of God and neighbour; the gift that we are called to renew through the season of Lent and its disciplines; the gift that flows from the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the communion of the Holy Spirit.

Giving thanks on this day for Harry’s Baptism and our own Baptism, let us prepare to enter into Lent, to be renewed in the Christian life, for “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit”.