Promises, Promises

by E. Louise Williams

I promise we
will be friends forever.

I promise my love and
faithfulness...until
death parts us.

We promise to care
for this child.

That fifth-grade girl views herself differently because she has a friend she can count on. Wives and husbands make choices and act in certain ways because of their marriage covenant. The life of that little baby in a Chinese orphanage and her new parents are changed forever by the commitments they make in the adoption process.

Our lives are different because of the promises we make. Our lives are different because of the promises made to us.

The promises made at our baptism shape our lives into something very different. Water and the word connect with faith, and our lives are never the same again.

The promises of baptism are first and foremost God’s promises. God, who is rich in mercy and love is the first to speak and act in baptism. In fact, it is only because of God’s promise of great mercy and boundless love that we can dare to respond to God’s invitation.

The Holy Scripture and Lutheran teachings describe God’s baptismal promises with a rich variety of images and phrases. Those promises have been summarized this way:

In holy baptism the triune God delivers us from the forces of evil, puts our sinful self to death, gives us new birth, adopts us as children, and makes us members of the body of Christ, the church. (ELW, p. 225, quoting Principle 14 from The Use of the Means of Grace — A statement on the practice of word and sacrament)

This is what God promises — and does in baptism. God does not remove us from the world and the evil in it; rather, God breaks evil’s hold on us and delivers us from evil’s power. God frees us from sin and death by joining us to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

These promises of God are rooted in Christ’s death and resurrection. Jesus Christ came face to face with evil, took on the sin of the whole world, went with death all the way to the tomb, and came out the other side as winner, victor. In baptism, God gives us everything that is Christ’s. This means that whenever and wherever we face evil, confront sin, or encounter death, like Martin Luther, we can respond, "I am baptized! You have no power over me. I belong to Christ, in whom I have been baptized." That is living the baptismal promises.

Death and resurrection
Dying to sin and rising to new life are an integral part of baptism. In some places the one baptized is actually immersed in the water, acting out the drowning of the old person, the burial of the sinful self with Christ. From the water and word of baptism, a new person comes forth — reborn, recreated in Christ Jesus. Often, that new life is symbolized by a white baptismal garment, a reminder that those baptized are joined to Christ, clothed with Christ. The promise of God here is: Your sinful self will die, and you will have new birth.

Baptism happens only once, but the dying and rising happen again and again. Every time we confess our sin and receive God’s forgiveness, we die to sin and rise to new life. Sometimes the dying is welcome — when we want to leave behind something that we have done or failed to do and when we want to bury the shame and guilt we feel as a result. Then we are eager for our old sinful self to die, and we are ready for a fresh start, a new beginning. At other times, though, the dying is hard — when we want to hold on to some pet sin, harbor some resentment or hatred, cling to some destructive behavior, or continue in some unredeemed way of living. Then we feel the pain. We resist. We struggle against God’s unrelenting love that would put to death all in us that is not of God so that we can live the resurrected life more fully.

In order to live our baptismal promises, something has to die. Especially when the dying of our sinful self is hard, we do well to remember that we are joined to Jesus Christ who knows something about death, who has gone there before us, and who still stands with us in the death that is a prelude to new birth.

My beloved
We come out of the baptismal waters as God’s adopted children. Perhaps you remember the story of Jesus’ baptism. As Jesus came out of the water, a voice came from heaven saying, "You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased." In baptism, we are joined with Jesus so that God’s promise to Jesus is the same promise to us: "You are my daughter. You are my son. You are my beloved. I am so pleased with you." Imagine what it is like to have God look on us with such love.

My niece Jennifer just finished her master’s degree and will be married this spring. I remember the day she was baptized when she was just a few weeks old. I have a picture of my younger brother David, her father, holding her. It was late in the day, and we’d all taken our turn holding the baby. Finally David got to hold her. He just looked at her with such pleasure, delighting in her, wanting all the best for her. In that moment, I had a glimpse of what it must be for God to hold one of us, a beloved, precious child in whom God is so well pleased.

Sometimes it is hard to hang on to that baptismal identity as God’s daughter or son. When we are down on ourselves, we might wonder how God could possibly love us or want to include us in the family. We might question God’s promises when things go badly for us. Surely, we think, God would not allow this sort of thing to happen to a beloved daughter or son.

No matter how we feel about ourselves or what the circumstances of our life are, God’s baptismal promises are true and lasting. In our baptismal rite, the newly baptized is addressed by name with these words: "Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever." God loves us for Christ’s sake and will not let us go.

Companions on the journey
Baptism is not a solitary thing. It’s not just between individuals and God. Baptism sets us always in the midst of the people of God, the body of Christ, the church. They are there welcoming us at our baptism and inviting us into the mission we share… in giving thanks and praise to God and bearing God’s creative and redeeming word to all the world. They make promises, too, to nurture us in the faith, to pray for us and to show us how to live as Christians in the world.

In this way the body of Christ, the church, becomes our companion on the journey, sharing bread and wine with us at the communion table, speaking words of encouragement and challenge, helping us when we have need, and receiving the gifts that we bring.

Sometimes they rub us the wrong way and unintentionally (or even intentionally) sin against us, and we against them. Then we remember that we are baptized and so are they, all of us marked by the cross of Christ and living in the forgiveness of sins, each of us a beloved daughter or son of God — no matter what. And living the promises of baptism, we can begin again.

It’s clear that in baptism God is the primary promiser and the primary actor. God’s people — that is, the congregation gathered and sometimes parents and sponsors — join in with their promises to help those baptized know more completely the heights and depths of God’s mercy and love and to help them live more fully the new life in Christ.

Those who are being baptized are asked to make promises, too, to profess (their) faith in Christ Jesus, reject sin, and confess the faith of the church. Very often, though, they are too young to understand or to speak. Even when the candidates for baptism are older, the congregation gathered is invited to speak the promises with them. These are things we help one another to do — renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God…the powers of this world that rebel against God… the ways of sin that draw (us) from God. We promise to turn away from those things and to turn to the Triune God who promises us so much.

In our baptismal service, the promise to turn to God takes the form of the Apostles’ Creed. The word "creed" comes from the first word of that profession of faith in Latin — credo — I believe. At root, that Latin word means, "I give my heart." We promise to give our heart to God who in baptism says to us, "I give my heart to you. I believe in you." And we can never be the same again.

A sign
Sometimes it is helpful to have some tangible symbol to remind us of the promises we make and the promised made to us. Friends exchange bracelets. Spouses wear wedding rings. A family portrait says that this adopted daughter is one of us. Every time we make the sign of the cross or touch the water in the baptismal font, we remember our baptismal promises. We might remember our baptism, too, every time we walk in the rain or take a shower or wash our face or light a candle. These things we can see and feel remind us to keep our baptismal promises, but even more they remind us of the promises God has made to us in baptism — promises that will not be broken.

You belong to Christ, in whom you have been baptized. Alleluia.

E. Louise Williams, executive director emeritus of the Lutheran Deaconess Association, is president of DIAKONIA World Federation of Diaconal Associations and Communities and adjunct assistant professor of theology at Valparaiso University. She is a frequent speaker and retreat leader.