Follow

 There are all kinds of people who have all kinds of ideas on how best to find God. And the thing is, that they'll by and large give you a list of things to do that are typically non Biblical, and they'll tell you 'just do that, and you'll find God.' But the problem with all of that is that very few people have gone to heaven and ever been seen again. That is, very very few people have been to where God is, and have been seen again. 

And those people didn't tend to leave a whole lot of instructions afterwards. If you want to spend a hot minute thinking about it, Lazarus comes back from the dead, is unwrapped, and is released, and then is seen in the story again but doesn't have any more dialogue. That is, his perspective on death isn't shared with any of the readers. The only one who goes to Heaven, to where God is, and returns and talks about it is Jesus Christ himself. 

The way it works, is that if you have a list of things to do in order to get to God, given to you by well meaning people, those things will always pull you towards that list, and you're going to get into troubles when those are things you're not doing. Sure, the list may seem innocuous, but no matter how small the list is, you're going to find yourself smashing through that problem in morality. I'll explain why I mean.

In Star Trek, there's an episode in which the Enterprise crew goes to a paradise planet, where there are no problems, no issues, and no crime. There's only one rule, the rule changes every once in a while, and if you break the rule, the sentence is death. Of course, Wesley breaks the rule by falling into a flowerbed, and is sentenced to death. "Fortunately" Wesley gets beamed back to the Enterprise, and they all move on, leaving those primitive people to their primitive ways. But it does suggest that the essential core morality of the Bible is predictable, really. That is, it doesn't matter how simple the instructions of God would be, you're still not going to do it. 

I want you to know that the story of Genesis, where God only has one rule for humanity, is the story of people not sticking to that one rule, which wasn't particularly difficult - that is, God says to not eat only one kind of fruit, and people did anyway. Whether or not you think that story literally happened, hopefully you will gather that as far as morality goes, it doesn't matter how simple a task or rule would be, eventually you'd run up against breaking it. 

That's why the 'follow me' mentality has to be configured properly. For to follow Jesus doesn't actually mean that you obey a set of dictats, but rather that over the course of a lifetime, you follow where he would lead. And where might that be?

Paul talks about his own preaching, and he says to the people 'I came to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified.' He talks about the cross, about how it is folly to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved, it is the power of God. The cross. The cross. You see, when Jesus is moving about, a generous part of what he wants is for his disciples to literally follow him - to walk where he walks, and to go where he goes. He wants them to follow where he goes in order for them to see what it is that God has in mind for them to do. Yes, he clearly has advice, guidance and so on, but we miss so quickly that his advice is so big as to be laughable - he wants you to pull your eyes out if they lead you to sin, to cut your hands off if they cause you to sin, to give without ever wanting back, all that, and deep down we all know that all of that is true, of course, but when he says 'follow me' he means to follow where he leads, and to see what he does.

He heals the sick, raises the dead, comforts the ill, makes the blind to see and the deaf to hear, multiplies loves and fishes, dies and rises from the dead, and says to you not 'do all this, and you will live,' but instead, 'repent and believe in the Gospel.' That's our work, you know, to repent and believe in the gospel, to see our sin and turn from it, and to believe that our sins can be forgiven. If we follow Christ, we will follow him to the cross, that's where the entire plan of God leads to. God knows that no matter how easy his rules are that we're not going to do them perfectly, so he deigns to call us to follow him so that we can see where Salvation comes from. 

Paul is a teacher and preacher, and he does have things that we should either do or avoid, but he, like all the preachers in scripture, show you your sins not as more things for you to do to find God, but as things that show the grace of God when you come to him for forgiveness. Because that's what the story of the scripture is all about. 

Baptism now saves you

 The notion that baptism now saves you should be a relatively non-controversial take. It should be, but it isn't, shockingly enough. Even though it's scriptural, people still have a hard time with it. Baptism now saves you? But what about, but what about, but what about....

Sure. But the thing about baptism saving you is that you, as the individual Christian, have needs. That is, you need certain things from this experience, and the thing you need most is certainty. When the days get short, and the chips are down, you're going to need something more concrete than just having had the right opinions. Sure, any of us can have the right opinions, and frequently do, but I ask you a question: If everyone wanted peace the way they say they wanted peace, why don't we have peace. Everyone is in favor of feeding the hungry, making sure the sick can be well, supplying clean water, and so on and so on, but all sorts of places have major gaps in their availability of supplies, overall. The desire is there, but the follow through - very lacking. All sorts of things get in the way, things like self interest, like self motivation, and so on, all those things tend to conflict with the desire to actually effect peace, stability, environmental care, etc. We have the right idea, everyone's in theory interested in clean air and water, peace on earth, arms reduction, and so on, where's it at?

This is the problem with the intersection of opinion and reality. That is, you can have all the right ideas in the world, but without any concrete action, it's just that. Opinion. The book of James is notoriously Damning on this prospect, in that it not only talks about faith without works being dead, which it does, but also talks about how if you see someone who is hungry and cold, and you say to him 'go on your way, be warm and well fed,' but do nothing, of what good is your faith? That's us on a big scale, we have all the right opinions, say the right things, but don't quite finish the job. And we have to finish the job, you know. Without that, the opinion isn't worth too much.

If you understand that there is a gulf between your opinions and your actions, and that your actions are not only worth more than your opinions, but by many orders of magnitude, then you can understand that about your faith as well. Sure, you have the right opinions about what should be done, and how your faith should be lived out, but the inadequacy of being able to pull that off is a bit of an issue. You know the commandments, you know the laws of God, you don't do it, and then you read James, who says that your faith without works is dead, and that starts to play havoc with you. After all, how many times have you walked past the poor, sidestepped the hungry, and skipped merrily beyond the ailing? If you as a Christian who believe that the poor should be assisted, the hungry fed and the naked clothed, and then you understand that you are a long way away from having done that, then what on earth do you do with the dissonance in your own lives?

This is why we have baptism. And this is why the statement 'baptism now saves you' is so important for the Christian. That is, if you're hoping to be saved, to move into the transcendent and meet the divine, then you're going to want something a lot more concrete than just having the right opinions, especially given that James (and Christ, really) have told you that you can't just be secure in those opinions without action. If action is required for your salvation, something beyond what you can do or are doing, don't you wish that there was some action that you could find?

Well, let's talk about straws, plastic and oceans. Here in the great nation of Canada, we have largely excised plastic straws from common usage, and we've replaced them with paper straws that don't work. I don't care if they're a good idea, they don't work. Fine fine, but here's the deal: No matter how many plastic straws we ban, the major problem isn't here - it's elsewhere. 

Yes, almost all the plastic waste on earth comes from 10 rivers. And those are all in Asia and Africa. Canada doesn't factor in. Now, that's not an excuse to do nothing, of course, but to solve the problem is going to require action on a larger magnitude than you can do, by someone who isn't you. Essentially, that's the baptism issue. If the issue of your salvation is going to work out, then you're going to have to have someone who isn't you do something orders of magnitude larger than you can do. You not using straws is small, and doesn't seem to do much. But if plastic was cleaned out of the Pearl or Amur rivers, now we're talking. You need someone to work that salvation out for you, but because it's not something you're doing, you need something concrete to show that it is done. Enter baptism. Where God reached into history and washed you clean of your sins. 

Now, I know what anyone would say, which is that getting a quick dunk doesn't seem to do too much, right? We're talking salvation and damnation, shouldn't it be a bigger deal? And the answer is Naaman the Syrian. That great general who had leprosy, and who sought help from God's prophets. He was told to dip himself in the Jordan seven times, and complained about that task. "Aren't there better and grander rivers in our country?" he asked. And the response he got was essentially, 'If God asked you to do something hard, you would have done it, so why buck at an easy thing to do?" An easy thing that is so easy because God does all the work. Sure, it's small, but it has to be, because it has to be so straightforward, to use such common materials, that we have been using the same thing for thousands of years. No matter how much technology advances, or where we live, we're going to need water daily. Same sins, same water, same forgiveness, same grace, same God. 

One Lord, one faith, one baptism. Which now saves you.