Officially, last Sunday was ‘Baptism of the Lord.’ But it seems appropriate to speak of the meaning of Baptism into the life and death of Jesus this Sunday. After all, this past week, like few others in our lifetime, will forever be associated with the frailty of life and the horror of death. We’ve witnessed the bottomless anguish of the long-suffering Haitian people. We wonder how much a nation can take. We wonder how such a thing could even happen, and what such a massive catastrophe could mean.

I don’t know the answer to such questions. But I do mean to tell you that because of Baptism, we are bound to the grief of our millions of brothers and sisters in the faith on that little island. And because of Baptism, we are also bound to the source of their undying hope. You see, to speak of Baptism is always to speak of the life and death of Jesus, bound together by the gift of water and Spirit. It is not easy, perhaps, to see evidence of death in the happy circumstances of Baptism at St. Mark’s, but let me offer another view - a time of profound suffering in our own land. In fact, it was a time no less painful, no less marked by overwhelming death, touching every single person in Virginia. And it was caused by no natural catastrophe.

It was mid-Winter 1863, and Virginia was as close to Hell on earth as she would ever be. Her cities had the pallor of death about them, as everyone awaited news from multiple fronts. Open fields, once plentiful with corn, were scarred by earthworks and craters; church yards including those in the Roanoke Valley were pockmarked by shallow, hastily-dug graves. Everywhere, women and children were weeping. Here, where more battles and engagements took place than in all other states combined, the War Between the States in Virginia had swallowed up all that was normal, hopeful, and joyful. And it was here, in the cold of winter, that Private Goodwin of Company A, 13th Virginia Regiment, decided the time was right to follow Jesus into the waters of Baptism.

Goodwin was one of thousands of soldiers assigned to guard Richmond. He’d heard the proclamation of his unit’s chaplain, a man named William Ryland, and had experienced a profound call on his life. Goodwin was convinced that he could no longer put off commitment, convinced of his need to repent of sin. Above all, he found hope in the promise that in Christ, he could become a new creature. He talked with the chaplain, and decided that he would not wait until a by-no-means-certain return home: the time to become one of Jesus’ people was now, before the shooting began again. Their camp was a short distance from the Rapidan River, and Goodwin wanted to go there and wade in, much as Jesus once had done in another muddy stream.

His commanding officers reminded him that there were just two problems: 1) it is chilly this time of year, and the shores of the Rapidan were barriers of icy muck and 2) of even more concern, the river was the dividing line between two hostile armies. Union skirmishers were in every nook and hollow on the far shore, and every few hundred yards there lay a sharpshooter. No Confederate could show himself in daylight on the river. But Goodwin was determined, and having at last won permission, he went together with about fifty Christians from his unit to the riverbank. As Goodwin and Ryland made their way slowly to the water, his fellow soldiers began to sing the old camp meeting tune, “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins; and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.” The commotion drew the attention of Union snipers, who followed through their gunsights with growing puzzlement the meandering course of the pair through the frozen mud. The sound of the singing drew still more Union enlisted, who stood and watched what was unfolding below.

Gradually, then suddenly, the no-man’s land became holy ground. By the third line of the hymn, dozens of men in blue had joined in with those in gray. Pennsylvania farm boys and Pittsylvania tobacco-pullers stood along both banks remembering together, and singing: “Ever since, by faith, I saw the stream thy flowing wounds supply, redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be ‘til I die” (“There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” UMH #622; see *footnote for story cite). Witnesses later said that the singing that day was like that of the angels. I don’t know about that. But I bet it sounded a lot like peace. Two more years of carnage would follow, but that morning the Rapidan was, for a moment, no longer a dividing line. It was a flowing, living sign of a family, brought together by the precious life and atoning death of Jesus Christ.

If you’ve been worshipping here for very long, you’ve heard the peculiar words, “Remember your baptism and be thankful.” That may have seemed odd to those of us baptized many years ago, perhaps when we were very small. Others of us were older, but even so we may have hazy memories of the event. The context may have been Southern Baptist or Roman Catholic, for others some Pentecostal or Methodist - but what does it mean that our ritual of baptism invites us all to remember something we may not all recall clearly, if we recall it, and to be thankful for it?

Since the beginning, worship has been an exercise in memory. The reading of Scripture, every Sunday, is an invitation to remember a story much older than any of us, but one that is made new in the lives of each successive generation. We read Genesis 1, and remember the beginning. The very first words of the Bible offer us a vision of the Holy Spirit, the creative Power of God, moving over the darkened, lifeless waters of the Earth, calling forth Light. For any creatures who believe that the world is a random collision of particles in infinite space, Genesis tells a different story: God was acting in the beginning, spoke our world into being, and called it good. Eons later, God returned to the waters. This time God’s glory was made manifest in the descent of the Spirit, like a dove, upon the One sent to redeem a fallen world.

It is Jesus who invites us to share in Baptism, God’s continuing creative act in the Church. The same Holy Spirit Who hovered over the darkened waters and brought forth life is the Spirit Who descended upon Christ, enabling him to fulfill his mission to reclaim that which God created. So we speak of Baptism as new birth, regeneration, by water and by the Spirit. In life under the waters of baptism, you are invited to do nothing less than to take part in the reordering, the re-creation of the world, making it into that which God intended.

You may think that all sounds rather otherworldly - that all the water in the world can’t change a person set in their ways, unless they drown in it! And if you think that, you’re not far off the truth! Because Baptism is a call to come and die, to put on Christ’s death, and to live a truly new life by the putting away of old ways, the death of the old self and the choice for the new. This year, 2010, someone among us may consider making money by harming others. If so, remember your Baptism. This year, someone among us may consider betraying their marriage. If so, remember your Baptism. Someone may threaten or commit violence against their spouse. Still another may experiment with drugs, and yet another may search for a reason to keep on living. But we have already faced death. Remember who you are, baptized people. Do not dry out! We are the advance team, those sent to proclaim that the God who spoke this world into being is going to have the last word - and no war, no famine, no earthquake will change the Lord’s Epilogue.

So today, early in this newly-minted year, I invite you to remember the vows which joined you to the Church, for those of us who have taken that bold step. If you have not yet waded into the waters, I invite you to consider this public declaration of faith that brings joy on Earth and in Heaven, when another baptized disciple heeds the call of Christ. A call to be part of the people who have died to self, who now strive to live for God. Remember your baptism.

When he remembered his Baptism, Private Goodwin was probably just plain glad nobody took a shot at him. But his Baptism opened up, if only for a moment, the possibility of God’s continued, creative action in the world. What would it have been like if Christians simply declined to shoot at each other from that day forth? Some would call that insubordination, or even treason. But what if Christians, North and South, had chosen not to kill each other, not to exploit each other, not to claim blasphemously to own one other, not to refuse to recognize each other’s humanity as children of God?

Why, if that had happened, there wouldn’t have been a Civil War, we say. People like that would be as if they were from another world! Yes, they would be. And they are. They always have been people of another Kingdom. They are also the people who pray “Thy Kingdom, come on Earth.” Another world? God says, this world - this world, in which the earth at times trembles, but the oceans need not divide us, this world, in which all people may come to the River of Life, and wade in.

So remember your Baptism. Be thankful to God.

* The tale of Private Goodwin’s baptism is found in the memoir of eyewitness J.M. Beadles, printed in Confederate Veteran Magazine, Vol. XXV, 1917. Many - and varied - versions of the story circulate today, but Beadles’ original account may be found on-line at Rootsweb.ancestry.com).