Romans 6:3-6: do you not know that 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, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

Infant baptisms appear to be quaint and charming.  Paul wants to turn our minds elsewhere: “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.”  When Paul thinks about baptism, he thinks of crosses and death and graves full of dead men’s bones.  If the infant is baptized wearing white, Paul wants us to think of the white robe as a set of grave clothes.

Throughout Scripture, baptisms are dangerous and frightening.  The world’s first baptism occurred at the flood, when water from above and below buried nearly all the human race.  At the Red Sea, Israel was baptized, as they marched through the water that would crash down and drown Pharaoh’s hosts.  As they stood on the edge of the Sea, the Israelites knew they faced death: “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” they demanded of Moses.  After Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar finished flooding Israel and Judah with foreign soldiers, the land of milk and honey was left a valley of dry bones.

You bring Darcy here this morning to die.  You bring her to be buried, and burial seems conclusive.  Does anyone remember the slain who lie in the grave? the Psalmist asks (88:4).  “Will your lovingkindness be declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Abaddon?” (88:11).

Paul says burial is not an end.  We die and are buried through baptism so that “we can also walk in newness of life.”  The Lord does remember whose who are slain and in the grave.  His lovingkindness is declared in Abaddon, and His praises are sung in Sheol.  Because the Father has raised Jesus from the dead, the cross is no longer threatening, and the tomb no longer speaks a final word.  Because of Jesus’ resurrection, those who are placed in the tomb of baptism are raised to walk, to walk in new life.  Because Jesus has been raised, death and burial are no longer an end but a pathway to new life.

This hope of triumph over death and the tomb is not limited to the moment of baptism.  Throughout our lives, God brings us to the waters of death; He leads or pushes us to the edge of the grave.  Threats and dangers are part of following the crucified Messiah.  But God promises today that the story of Darcy’s baptism will be the story of her life.  Through baptism, she shares in Christ’s death and burial, so that she can share in His life.  And every time she encounters death, every time Sheol rises up to swallow her, she can remember her baptism and believe the promise sealed to her in her baptism: The promise that the Lord places us in the grave only to raise us up to walk in newness of life.

As I emphasized in the sermon, this is a power beyond our capacity.  Human beings can memorialize the dead, we can forget the dead, we can use our puny authority to try to ensure that the dead remain dead.  Only God raises the dead, because He is not the God of the dead but of the living, the God of the living again.

Training Darcy to live out her baptism, then, means training her to abandon all hope in herself and to rely altogether on the God of the living.  Teach her to trust in the God who raised Jesus, the God who buried her in the death-waters to lead her into new life.   Teach her to trust the God who not only empties the tomb, but has transformed the tomb into a womb.