Who speaks to you all today saying:
“and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with
whom I am well pleased.’”
Can an infant be saved? Or to put it another way: does the
Baptism of Jesus have anything to do with my baptism or just my life in general?
On one hand this is an easy answer, because if God is spirit
then He can do whatever He wants and who wouldn’t want to save the cute,
innocence we call infancy, no matter what?
We do have a God Who can do whatever He wants, but much to
the disappointment of our super-spirituality, God uses His infinite power to
limit His actions to His Word. To His Word. This does not weaken Him! It makes
Him stronger, because in weakness He is strongest. Though it seems like God is
caged in by His Word, He shows that even in such a cage, He is almighty.
In His Light, we can not find a promise anywhere in His Word
that says infants are innocent or saved in any other way than the one
prescribed by Jesus for adults. In fact, we find just the opposite. We find
that infants need Jesus, for, as He says, “bring the little children to me” and
“except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom”.
God’s Kingdom is received through the regeneration of
baptism and infants can receive that regeneration for they are the only ones
that receive it rightly! If it is the infants who enter the kingdom in the
right way and if that way is to be born again, then we all received the kingdom of God
4 other places in the Bible tell us this is true. On Easter,
Jesus tells His Apostles to baptize all nations. You don’t have much of a
nation if children are not included in the “all” part. So “all” means infants
too.
Second and third, we have already heard. That Jesus
especially invites the infants to Him and that babies need what Baptism offers,
rebirth, because they are sinners as well.
The fourth, and most controversial, is that babies can have
faith. We find this truth in quite a few places, three of which are: when Jesus
says, “…whoever causes one of these
little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a
great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the
sea.” (Mt. 18:6), meaning that if we lead or let children go astray from
the faith, we better watch out.
The second place is when John the Baptist is in his mother’s
womb and leaps when St. Mary comes to visit, who is carrying Jesus in her own
womb (Lk. 1:41-44). St. John
Repent! The apparent lack of mental consciousness does not
equal lack of faith. If an adult can have faith, a child can have faith. If the
able can have faith, then the disabled can have faith. Christ spared not one
second of His human life to show us that each and every stage is worth having,
even the diseased ones.
Your faith does not make baptism, it receives it. If you go about reading and understanding God’s Word purely from the
position that God is almighty and my will must be free, then you will end up in
bondage and without faith.
Dr. Luther writes that “no greater jewel can adorn our body
and soul than baptism, for through it we become completely holy and blessed,
which no other kind of life and no work on earth can acquire”. We will not withhold such a wonderful gift, especially since its not ours
to give, but God’s.
So what does this have to do with your baptism and life on
this planet? Everything! First off, your baptism would mean nothing if Jesus
didn’t create it and if He didn’t get baptized Himself. Where you dirty the
water when you get in, Jesus cleanses the water when He gets in, sanctifying
even this tiny font in Rensselaer ,
IN
Second of all, since every person is worthy of baptism
(being sinners), your whole worldview is changed. Now, a person is a person, no
matter how small. Now, when you look on conception or the aged, you see a
redeemed, valuable child of God and not just something to toss aside if it gets
in your way. This view is unique to Christianity.
God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son,
from conception to death on the cross, in Baptism, in suffering and death, in
order that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but always be wanted,
especially by God, gifted with eternal life.
And, just like how our faith does nothing to baptism,
neither does our thinking do anything to God. It is most important to
understand this point in God’s dealings with men. Not only does God exclusively
work through Jesus, but He also is the only One Who baptizes and He is the only
One Who thinks of others, especially when dealing with mental illnesses.
Jesus is thinking of you. When your mind is wandering in
Church, Jesus is thinking of you. When your brain becomes too feeble to work
properly or think about anything, Jesus will think of you. Because, before you
were born, indeed while you were a clump of cells with a unique DNA code, Jesus
was thinking of you.
Preparing baptismal waters, just for you. Preparing life,
preparing faith, and preparing a world with His Church in it. All so that you
would find the Son the God giving baptism and forgiving sins. Your sins. In the
same water that covers Jesus this day, you were baptized.
In the same water that flowed from His pierced side on the
cross, you were reborn. In the same water over which Jesus said, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be
saved” and “Let the waters be
separated from the waters…”, St. Luke washes her infants.
Can infants be saved? Yes. If they can’t then you can’t
either. Does baptism have anything to do with it? Yes. If we are not washed by
water and Spirit; if we are not reborn; if we are not regenerated into the Body
of Christ, there is no hope.
As St. Paul already preached to you this morning in the
Epistle: “God chose what is foolish in
the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the
strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are
not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in
the presence of God.”
Being in the presence of an infant being brought into the kingdom of God
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