A New Way

A sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 12
July 27, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR

Readings: Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)

How many baptisms have you seen happen in this room, right back there at that font? If you think about it, I bet you can see the whole thing in your head. The candidate comes forward; if they are a child, they are accompanied by parents and Godparents. They renounce evil and promise to follow Christ ahead of anything else in this world. They make vows. Water is poured. Prayers are said. Three handfuls of water in the Name of the Trinity. Oil blessed by the bishop. A candle representing the light of Christ shining brightly within us. 

Holy Baptism is a moving rite to witness and participate in. But the very nature of a sacrament is that all of these tangible and seen things point beyond themselves, to a grace intangible and unseen except by faith. Beyond what we see with our physical eyes, there is so much more going on beneath the surface that we can only see through the eyes of faith. Our reading today from the letter to the Colossians delves into this unseen part of baptism: 

“In Christ also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross.”

In baptism, we see, hear, smell, touch water, oil, prayers. We do not see with our physical eyes as we are buried with Christ and raised to new life in him through the power of God. We do not see the forgiveness of sins, the wiping clean of the original sin with which we were all born. We do not see what Colossians calls a spiritual circumcision–or the regeneration of the soul, putting us forever on a path of grace, marking us as Christ’s own forever, sealing us by the Holy Spirit, claiming us as members of the family of God. We can only see through faith how the cross, the rude tree of Calvary and the blood that was shed there for us–how that cross and the sacrifice of our Lord has made this new life of grace possible. 

We walk as yet by faith, clinging to the hope of the unseen. We cling to that hope because we have been given promises by God–God, who can never break a promise. So when we say that baptism makes us a child of God, marked as Christ’s own, sealed by the Holy Spirit, made a new creation with a regenerated soul, put on a path of grace, restored to newness of life: Believe the good news! 

Of course, baptism is just the beginning. Through baptism, we have all been set on a new path, and we’re gonna have to walk it. I’m not just talking about confirmation class. I’m talking about how we live everyday in the world. Baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection should change how we live; it should transform the very way we see our world. We have been set on a new way. God help us walk in it. 

There’s a bishop in our Church that likes to ask this question: If this church closed tomorrow, would the community notice? If this church closed tomorrow, what would be missing from our lives in Hot Springs? If this church closed tomorrow, would anyone care? There’s an old church in Brinkley, Arkansas, that was deconsecrated and turned into a hair salon. Would anyone care as this building was deconsecrated and became something different? 

It’s a good question to consider. But I’d like to make it more personal, because after all, this church is not just a building; it’s a collection of people trying to follow Jesus. So let me pose the question this way: Can people tell we are Christians by how we live in this world? If we left town, would people notice? 

For a long time, Christianity has been considered the cultural norm in the United States. Fewer and fewer people are Christian, though. Church attendance across denominations is declining. In some cases, there is outright antagonism against the Church. More and more, Christianity is not a cultural norm–it is not something you can just assume about a person. More and more, it is becoming a deliberate choice. A lifestyle. A decision we make to live a certain way. And to that I say: Thanks be to God.

What does this life look like? Look at our baptismal covenant. The Christian life is a life that believes in God, that depends on God, that puts all of our hope in God. The Christian life is one rooted in daily prayer and weekly worship. It is not occasional or something we do when it’s convenient. It must be our central, defining reality. The Christian forgives easily, even when it hurts. The Christian reaches out to others, knowing that we will meet Jesus Christ in them. The Christian proclaims the good news of God’s love by word and deed. The Christian strives for justice and peace among everyone, and respects the dignity of every person–even if they look different, think different, smell different, vote different, it doesn’t matter. As Archbishop Williams says in our summer book club book: The Christian is one who takes responsibility for God in the world.   

If we take these promises seriously, we will find that it is a radical way to live in this world–in this world that is broken and divided and lashing out and hurting. We will find that we can be agents of healing. And yes, people will notice when we show up. People will notice the good work of the people of God. And they will be changed by it. 

My prayer today and always is that God would give us all the grace to live fully into our baptisms, pointing the world to a God who loves them more than they can ever imagine. And if we live this baptized Christian life right, those outside these walls will learn what God’s love looks like from us. The question will not only be, how many baptisms have we seen in this room? The question will become, how many times have you seen this community impacted for good because someone from this church was serious about living out their baptism in the world?