The Rosy-Red Water of Baptism

Sermon for Good Friday

+  Isaiah 52:13-53:12  +  John 18:1-19:42  +

On this solemn day, I’d like you to turn your thoughts to Holy Baptism. We’ll be celebrating a Baptism this coming Sunday and we’ll talk about it more then, too. But it’s fitting that we give it some time today, too. Baptism and Good Friday. Washing and dying. Water and blood. They don’t seem to go together, do they? It’s the blood of the Lamb that captures our attention on Good Friday. It’s the gory scene of torn flesh from the floggings, of thorns driven into the head of Christ, of nails and spear and a dead body bandaged in cloths that were once white, but now are stained red with blood as His body is laid in the tomb. Good Friday was a day full of shame and pain and death.

On the other hand, Baptism is characterized by cleanness and life and joy. On that happy day when parents bring their children to the font, or when an unbaptized adult comes forward for that Holy Sacrament, no one is thinking about the bloody mess of Good Friday. If anything, it’s the joy of Easter resurrection that fills our thoughts, not the torture and death of the Passover Lamb.

But what does St. John say in the Book of Revelation about the great multitude in heaven, standing before the throne of God? He writes, These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. A washing in the blood of Christ that cleanses and whitens!

What was it again that John saw streaming from Jesus’ side as he stood there at the foot of the cross? Water and blood. He tells us that immediately blood and water came out. And then he emphasizes it with these words: He who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. He refers back to it again in his Epistle, which we heard last week Wednesday: This is He who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not only by water, but by water and blood. Commenting on those words, Luther once wrote: Thus St. John pictures our dear baptism for us in this way, so that we shall not regard and look only at the clear Water, for, he says, Christ comes “not with water only…but with the water and the blood”. Through such words he desires to admonish us to see with spiritual eyes and see in baptism the beautiful, rosy-red blood of Christ, which flowed and poured from his holy side. And therefore he calls those who have been baptized none other than those who have been bathed and cleansed in this same rosy-red blood of Christ.

Martin Luther rightly made that connection between Good Friday and baptism, just as the Apostle John himself had done, just as you and I must do. Baptism and Good Friday belong together, because it’s the “rosy-red blood” of Christ, the Paschal Lamb, that sanctifies the water so that the water, in turn, can sanctify the one who is washed in it.

“We were, therefore, buried with Christ through baptism into death,” St. Paul wrote. On that happy day when parents bring their children to the font, when you yourself received this Holy Sacrament, the striking picture painted by Holy Scripture is of God taking that child or that adult and whisking him or her away, back through the ages, across the ocean, and hanging the baptized onto the cross of Christ Jesus, and placing the baptized into Joseph’s newly carved tomb, so that, together with Christ, he or she has now been punished for all sin. Together with Christ, the baptized has now paid the wages of sin, which is death, and together with Christ, the baptized has now also been raised from the dead. He is forgiven, justified, and saved from the power of sin, death and the devil.

This is the object of faith, this is what faith clings to: that Christ truly died, not for His sins, but for ours; that He was truly raised from the dead, not for His justification, but for ours, and that we have been baptized into Christ. Your Baptism really happened, just as the events of Good Friday really happened, just as the events of Easter Sunday really happened, and there’s nothing in the world that can change it. No sin can undo it. No tragedy can overturn it. Not even death can affect it. You don’t have to go searching in yourself for some goodness you can rely on in the hour of your death, for some past deeds that might hopefully pry the doors of heaven open long enough for a sinner like you to sneak in. “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” Period.

How can you be sure? Because, “It is finished!” All the blood has been spilt for sin that ever needs to be spilt, spilt by Jesus and applied to you by the power of the Word of God that is in and with the water—water that appears clear to the naked eye, but to the eye of God, appears rosy-red. All the gifts won by Christ on Good Friday are yours through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Amen.