Monday 11/3/14

This week’s Monday Morning Bible Breakdown is on the second reading from last night: Romans 6:3-9.

Brothers and sisters:
Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death?
We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death,
so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father,
we too might live in newness of life.

For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his,
we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.
We know that our old self was crucified with him,
so that our sinful body might be done away with,
that we might no longer be in slavery to sin.
For a dead person has been absolved from sin.
If, then, we have died with Christ,
we believe that we shall also live with him.
We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more;
death no longer has power over him.

This is a great passage. It does a phenomenal job of connecting our baptism with death. That seems like a really weird concept at first, but trust me, it makes sense. Try to stay with me here.

Hopefully we all know that the biggest holiday of the Catholic year is Easter. Christmas is nice, but Easter is our holiest day. That’s because the death and resurrection of Christ are the centerpiece of our faith. If Christ did not serve as the Paschal Lamb, our faith would be for nothing. Our religion hinges on the resurrection, and it is reflected all over our faith.

Baptism is not an exception. Instead, baptism is a celebration of death right after birth. In the ancient world, water was a weird thing. People knew that water was necessary. We all know that we need fresh water to drink, but it also allowed crops to be grown, supplied people with cheap protein in the form of fish, and allowed for easy transportation. It helped with sanitation as well. However, it was also a little terrifying. Floods were regular occurrences in the ancient world, since everyone had to live near water. Floods were much more devastating to the people then than they are to us now. If a flood invaded your village, you had more to fear than the water itself. If the crops were destroyed, that meant starvation. As a result, in the ancient near east, water was a symbol of both death and life, depending on where it was. Water in the ocean or river was a symbol for life, but when water went where it wasn’t supposed to go, like over dry land or people, it was a symbol for death.

Originally, baptisms were performed by submerging the baptized in the water. That going under represented death. The emergence from the water represented new life. We have moved away from submerging our candidates for baptism for a number of reasons, not the least of which is practicality, but the symbolism remains. The water represents the death, and then the new life of the baptized.

Once we know this, it unlocks new insights to a very famous and often misunderstood story from the Bible: Noah’s Ark.

I have written before about how there are different genres in the Bible and how not every story is intended to be a historical account, but rather to explain God as best as we can with human language. The story of Noah’s Ark is often seen as strange and troubling. The idea of God drowning the whole world doesn’t really fit with our idea of a loving and forgiving God. When we realize that this whole story is about death and resurrection, though, it takes on wonderful new meaning. The flooding of the world is its effective baptism. The world before the flood was full of sin and suffering. God baptized the world, and afterward it was reborn, clean and free from sin.

Of course, it didn’t stay like that. Just like humans who have been baptized, it fell from its state of grace into a state of sin. It is part of our human nature by virtue of original sin, and none of us are exempt. We all have sinned since our baptism. We do not get baptized every time we sin, though, and neither does the world. One baptism is enough. After that, it is up to us to go to confession to return to a state of grace after we have sinned.

There are stories symbolic of confession in the Bible, as well. Many of the prophets told the people of God to repent. Repentance has two important steps. First, the people had to acknowledge to themselves and admit to God that they had done wrong (confession) and then do certain symbolic and sacrificial acts to atone (penance). When people refused to repent, bad things happened. When they did repent though, as we see in the story of Jonah, good things happen. The same is true for our lives. When we die in a state of grace, we believe we spend less time in purgatory and make our way to heaven more quickly. Dying in a state of sin means more time in purgatory, or, in matters of particularly grave sin, worse.

Not to mention, living in a state of grace just feels better than living in a state of sin.