For some people, baptism is “just joining the Jesus club.”  Everyone knows what it means to join a club such as Brownies or Boy Scouts,  the Chamber or Kiwanis, the Elks or Elephants. We have all joined clubs and every club has its rules and regulations. Baptism is joining the ‘Jesus club” and we now have to follow the “Jesus rules” as suggested by this particular congregation.

For others, baptism is like “hell insurance.” I’ll never forget Grandma Prudence insisting that her grand daughter was baptized because the family was going on a trip. Grandma didn’t want to have that baby be in a car accident, get killed and go to hell. Baptism is like hell insurance. I remember that day, we made a mistake and didn’t have the baptismal certificate completed. Grandma Prudence insisted that we do so on Monday morning, so they would have a “hell insurance card” before the car trip to Montana to guarantee the baby was baptized.

For others, infant baptism is so unimportant that they refuse to baptize infants. Such interdenominational churches and Baptist churches want to wait until a child is older to be baptized. They want to let the child grow up until they are old enough to “make a decision for themselves.”

I am also aware that members of our congregation grow up, get married, have children, and are part of a good congregation but they refuses to baptize infants. So the young family returns home to Grace to have their baby baptized.

Today, on this “Baptism of Jesus” Sunday, I would like to talk about baptism. But I don’t want to talk about baptism as I normally would talk about it. That is, normally we say that baptism is like adoption in the book of Galatians. Many of us are adoptive parents and we celebrate when we adopt a child into a family. We don’t wait until an infant becomes of age and then ask them whether or not they want to be part of a family. No. If we receive the child as a baby, we adopt them as a baby. And so it is with God. God wants us to be baptized or adopted as a baby. Just as we don’t wait until the child is the “age of decision” to be adopted, nor does the Bible encourage us to wait until the child is older to be baptized. We baptize children for good Biblical reasons. Please remember that we baptize many adults each year, and this is good and as it should be. Adoption is the parent’s action; our little girl when she was adopted did nothing to be adopted but we parents did everything. Adoption was our action, and so it is with God in your baptism. Our daughter made no decision but we the parents made enormous decisions for her. We could talk about “baptism is like adoption” today, but we won’t.

Nor will be talk about baptism as branding. Normally, we talk about an owner of sheep or cattle. The owner brands his herd, putting his mark of ownership on each sheep and each cow. Each sheep and each cow are branded one at a time, with a brand of ownership being like a seal on their body. Baptism is like branding, where the mark of Christ is put on our forehead and we know that we belong to God. A cow does not ask to be branded; a cow is branded by the owner. It is the action of the owner what is important and not the decision of a cow.

Nor are we going to talk about baptism is like washing. Normally, we talk about our sins soiling our inner person. We know that clothing needs to be washed to become clean and we know that we need to be washed of our sins in order to be clean. When a baby poops or urinates the diaper, the baby does not decide to be bathed and clean; the parents do. Babies don’t wash themselves when they are dirty. Parents do. The action and decision is with the parents. Similarly, God washes our hearts and forgives us. We don’t wash ourselves in baptism but God washes us and makes us clean. We normally talk about daily washing, a daily baptism, a cleansing needed by all of us.
For more of Rev. Ed Markquart’s sermon