Baptized into the good kind of slavery

Sermon for Trinity 7

Romans 6:19-23  +  Mark 8:1-9

We celebrated a very special baptism today. In our classes together, Yesenia learned what it means to be baptized, and to live as a baptized Christian, and what to expect from God as a baptized Christian. But those are things we all need to keep hearing, over and over again, no matter how long ago we were baptized. And we find them embedded in today’s Scriptures lessons.

Back at the beginning of Romans 6, which we heard last Sunday, the apostle Paul gave us a little summary of what it means to be baptized. As many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death. Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death. We were all sinners who deserved to die, to be punished eternally for our sins. But instead of punishing us, God the Father punished His Son Jesus for us. He suffered the punishment we deserved. And Baptism is God’s tool for uniting us sinners to the death of His sinless Son, so that His death for our sins becomes our death for our sins. So what does it mean to be baptized? It means to be united to Christ, to be clothed with Christ, to have one’s sins washed away and forgiven, to be adopted into God’s own family as His beloved child, to be brought into the Holy Christian Church, to be made an heir of everlasting life.

But then the apostle Paul goes on in Romans 6, in the words you heard in today’s Epistle, to explain what it means to live as a baptized Christian, to walk in the new life which Christ has given us. And, while it sounds very strange to the ears of non-Christians, Paul has no problem describing the baptized life as a life of slavery, although it’s the good kind of slavery.

Now, maybe you didn’t know there was a good kind of slavery! But there is. St. Paul described it to you in today’s Epistle. He wasn’t talking about human slavery at all. He was talking about something much bigger, about a slavery that lasts into eternity. The fact is, there are only two ways to live: as slaves to sin, which is the worst kind of slavery, or as slaves to God. That’s hard for some people to hear. They like to think of themselves as free, slaves of no one, serving no one. Doing whatever they want, because they’re “free.” But we’re not free when we’re born. As Jesus Himself once said, Whoever practices sin is a slave to sin. We’re born into the slavery of sin, and most people continue to live under that slavery. Their life on earth reflects it, separated from God, and from His Word, refusing to worship Him as He commands, failing to trust in Him, and living however they want, all the while failing to realize that they’re actually trapped in the sin that they practice, in a kind of slavery that they don’t even recognize. And it won’t end well. As Paul writes, when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

But the Christian Gospel tells us how serious God was about buying us out of that slavery, how He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to suffer and die for us, to redeem us from the slavery to sin and death. He offers us Baptism as the means by which He washes us out of that slavery to sin and into His family. And then, although he calls it a “slavery” into which we’ve been baptized, he explains how good it is, to live no longer as slaves to sin and to shameful thoughts and shameful deeds, but as slaves to righteousness, slaves to goodness, slaves to God.

In other words, the baptized are called to live, not for themselves, but for God, even as Christ lived on earth, not for Himself, but for us. To live as baptized Christians, in the good kind of slavery, means living to do God’s will, as He reveals it in the Bible, not to do your own will. It means to be concerned with God’s words, His teaching, His commandments, to order your life, not so that you can have the happiest, wealthiest, healthiest, most comfortable life here on earth, but to order your life as one whose life no longer belong to you, but to God. Because it does belong to Him. Because He has redeemed us from the slavery to sin and has made us slaves to Him.

And what can God’s baptized slaves expect from Him? Not abuse. Not mistreatment. Not punishment. Not indifference. After all, Jesus received the punishment for our sins, and those who believe in Him are no longer under God’s wrath and condemnation, but are precious and dear to Him. What can we expect from God? Well, St. Paul tells us in the Epistle. Now that you have been freed from sin and made slaves to God, you have your fruit leading to holiness, and the end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. That’s the first thing God’s baptized slaves can expect from Him: the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. That’s not something we even have to wait for. Jesus says that whoever believes in Him has eternal life and has already crossed over from death to life. What we can expect in the future, though, is that, for the Christian, death becomes nothing more than a sleep, because, at the last day, there will be a resurrection of our bodies and eternal life and joy and peace in the heavenly mansions that Jesus is preparing for His slaves, whom He also calls His brothers, and His sisters, and His friends.

Today’s Gospel may, at first, seem unrelated to all this, but actually it’s a wonderful example of what the baptized can expect from our God. It gives us a little glimpse of who our Master is, the One to whom we’ve joined ourselves, the One in whose slavery we, the baptized, now live. And when we examine this God, in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ, what we see is a God of great love and compassion and goodness. That’s what we can expect from Him. We can expect from Jesus the kind of love and compassion and providence that He showed to the 4,000 people in today’s Gospel.

Now, some months earlier, Jesus had miraculously fed an even larger crowd of over 5,000 people. But the accounts are quite different, and they teach different things. The feeding of the 5,000 took place after only one day that the people spent with Jesus. And we’re told that they spent that day with Him mainly to see all the miracles He would do. They were there for the spectacle. And they weren’t too far from town. They could have gone back and eaten something, but Jesus wanted to teach them a lesson, to show them who He really was, namely, the Son of God, the “Bread” that had come down from heaven to give life to the world. But those crowds showed, at the end of the day, and on the next day, that they really weren’t interested in Jesus’ teaching, or in having Him for a Savior.

With the 4,000 in today’s Gospel, it’s different. These people hadn’t followed Jesus out into the wilderness to see a spectacle, or to get some material thing from Jesus. They didn’t need convincing about who Jesus was. These people had spent three days out in the wilderness with Jesus and would have stayed longer. These people wanted to be taught by Him, because they recognized Him as the great Teacher sent from God the Father, who was promising them the forgiveness of their sins and the free gift of eternal life through God’s mercy, not through their own toil and labor.

When Jesus looks out in our Gospel at the 4,000 people who had traveled far from their homes and had spent the last three days with Him, listening to Him and thankful for His teaching, His heart went out to them. As He told His disciples, I have compassion for the multitude, because they have already stayed with me for three days, and they have nothing to eat. And if I send them away to their homes without eating, they will faint along the way, for some of them have come a long distance. What kind of slave master is this, who cares so deeply about His slaves, who notices their hunger even before they do and who is unwilling to let them faint along the way as they return to their homes? What, is Jesus unaware that these people are sinners? No, He knows their sins, better than they do. But these sinners have come to Him for help. And He will never turn away any who come to Him for help. He will never abandon His own.

This is what the baptized can expect from our God. Dependable care and genuine compassion, yes, for our spiritual needs, for our souls, but also for our bodily needs as we make our way through the rest of this earthly life.

And what does He do about the people’s problem? He doesn’t just care for them. He takes care of them. His disciples have seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. So Jesus blesses them and divides them up and gives them to His disciples to start handing out to the thousands who are gathered there. Seven loaves turned into enough to feed them all, with enough leftover pieces to fill seven baskets.

Dependable care. Genuine compassion. And lifelong providence. These are what baptized Christians, slaves of God, can expect from Him. The providence will rarely be as miraculous as the feeding of the 4,000. But the saying, “The Lord will provide,” is absolutely accurate, in every single need you will encounter in this life, from food and clothing, to family and companionship, to the ministry of Word and Sacrament, whereby the Lord continues to provide for our souls. In His own way, in His own time, according to our needs, the Lord will provide for His people.

That doesn’t mean this life will be without its crosses, though. Jesus has been entirely upfront with us about the burdens and hardships the baptized will have to bear. As He said, If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. If we Christians bear the name of Christ, we should expect to be treated in this world as Christ was treated. But even as we bear the mistreatment of the world, we also have this comfort: In the world you will have trouble. But take heart; I have overcome the world.

This, dear Christians, this is the God into whose slavery you have been baptized, the good kind of slavery in which your Owner loves you and cares for you and has proven it by giving His Son into death, so that you might belong to Him, not for your harm, but for your good. And if you belong to Him here, in this life, then you have His promise that you will belong to Him for all eternity, and neither death nor the devil will be able to pull you out of His service. So stay close to Him! Stay close to His Word and Sacraments, so that you can both know how to serve Him and receive the strength to do it. Ask Him for whatever you need in this life! And trust that your God, in whose name you have been baptized, at whose pleasure you serve, will always, always care for you, and will always, always provide. Amen.