Is it okay to celebrate birthdays? Years ago, musicians sang a hit song about a birthday girl feeling miserable at her own party. We’ve all known of or felt it personally when the birthday star is the one who has the worst time at the party. And lots of people don’t want anyone drawing attention to them getting another year older.
Have you heard of religious groups that condemn birthday parties? Certain quasi-Christian religions claim that God forbids it since the only birthday celebrations mentioned in the Bible are for pagan unbelievers or drunkards like Herod who ended up beheading John the Baptizer. But when those false Christian groups say this, they forget you cannot say God forbids birthdays based on a couple bad examples of them. You need a direct command phrase from God’s Word about all people of all time that says: “Do not celebrate birthdays.”
Since Scripture has no verse like that in it, we would really add falsehood on to God’s Word by forbidding birthdays. When you think of it, God’s Word in many places calls it a miracle and a great gift from the Lord when he brings a new human life into the world. We have every reason to celebrate all God’s good gifts so it’s a fine practice to thank him for that birth every year after it happens.
So, have you ever thought of throwing a party each year on the date of your rebirth? If Jesus is cool with having birthday parties, then today’s Gospel showed us he wants to make a much bigger deal out of the day when your soul was born. He told Nicodemus that just going through a successful birth of your body does not make anyone right with God. Christ said in John 3, “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless someone is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus already knew how human bodies are born, so he wondered: how does God give birth to souls? Jesus said it involves water. In verse 5, he answered: “Amen, Amen, I tell you: Unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God!”
Do we as Lutherans overhype Baptism? If you heard chapels or daily prayers at Shoreland this year, you’d have heard lots of references to Baptism. It seemed like a majority of devotions mentioned it at least once. Here at Water of Life, Baptism hits our ears in well over half the sermons. Believers in Jesus outside of Lutheranism might ask: “You sure talk about that water ritual a lot. Doesn’t that kind of turn Baptism into a false god? Or, at least, won’t it make Baptism a lot less special if everyone knows you’re going to talk about it every time?”
It’s a fair question. And there is a problem if you make sharing your faith boring or predictable or mindless. But Paul wrote to Titus from another angle. In the chapter before today’s Epistle, Paul said: “Keep telling people these things. Continue to encourage and rebuke with full authority. Let no one ignore you.” So, don’t be boring or predictable. But do also repeat certain points of God’s teaching over and over.
In chapter 3, Paul made Baptism one of those repeatable points. Verse 5b says: “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and the renewal by the Holy Spirit.” That word “through” appears twice. In verse 5, God saved us through a washing. Verse 6 said he gave us his Spirit through Jesus Christ our Savior. The point is: Jesus is attached so tightly to this washing that you could say, “Baptism equals Jesus.”
If you think anyone talks about Baptism too much, ask yourself if it’s also possible to talk about Jesus too much. Just as any true Christian would say you must have the man named Jesus to enter the kingdom of God, so Christ also told Nicodemus you need water and the Spirit to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus equals Baptism. He showed that most obviously when he entered that water with us in the Jordan River.
Now, someone could argue: “I believe in the Trinity and grace alone and Jesus’ gift of eternal life. But I don’t think Paul meant the ritual of Baptism here. This never directly uses the word “Baptism.” Paul mentions a ‘washing,’ but couldn’t that be God washing your mind? What if this describes the inner experience of getting converted? Couldn’t this washing be a symbolic way to describe how the Holy Spirit overwhelms your heart with faith? Why do we immediately assume this means literal water getting put on someone’s body?”
It’s true. Paul does not explicitly say, “This washing is Baptism.” But he uses the same word as other water verses. When I last preached for you, we studied Tabitha. Luke used this word in Acts 9 when she died and they washed her body for her funeral. Luke used the same word in Acts 16 when the Philippian jailer washed their wounds after Paul and Silas received a beating. Also, John’s Gospel used this word when he described what Jesus did to his disciples’ feet on Maundy Thursday. You can see anyone who first read Paul’s letter to Titus would NOT think of figurative bathing only in a spiritual sense. This “washing” clearly means literal water put on physical human bodies. The first Christians to read Titus 3 would’ve had to think of the thing Jesus said about water that would make disciples (for example) in Matthew 28.
You may know and believe Baptism is God’s sacred act that carries all his saving power. You might agree and still not care or see why it’s a big deal. Paul explains in verse 3 how ugly our lives would be without Baptism. “For at one time we ourselves were also foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by many kinds of evil desires and pleasures, living in malice and jealousy, being hated and hating one another.”
All those sound way too familiar even after the Holy Spirit has given us faith in Christ. Paul hits a nerve when he mentions being enslaved by many kinds of evil desires and pleasures. We may quickly think of bodily desires and pleasures; drugs, drunkenness, overeating, illicit sex. But don’t forget slavery to mental pleasures; getting compliments, gossip, wallowing in negativity, obsessing over sports or gaming or internet updates. For me personally, the line about “being hated” packs a strong punch. It’s not okay to be an unlikable person. You might not have much control over people liking you. But it does not come from the Holy Spirit if you sculpt a persona as someone who doesn’t care; who turns everything into a debate and always has to win, someone with a sense of humor that only makes jokes by teasing, someone who likes making it known if they’re in a bad mood and however that looks to outsiders does not matter. Paul means things like that when he says: being hated. I struggle with sinfulness like that. Maybe you do too.
Or if your inner evil doesn’t show itself, it may come from the world’s attacks; a broken foot, embarrassment over a bad marriage. Your mom had a concussion. You got bullied at school and your teachers didn’t care or didn’t know how to handle it. Maybe things are going so smoothly that it has you worried about the next huge disaster. Your spouse isn’t really recovering. Your child is hurting and you don’t know how to help. You worry your skin color may make you the target of a violent crime. You hate yourself for stupid mistakes years ago.
For all these and more, how does God respond? He doesn’t say: “Ha, you got what you deserved.” He doesn’t say: “Well, tough it out, soldier.” He doesn’t say, “I’ll fix this half of you, if you clean up your share.” God says: “I pour my whole self into you; not just once in a while or for fractions of your life. I’ll do it abundantly.” Verse 6 promised us the Holy Spirit, “whom he poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior.”
That phrase “poured out” reminds us again of liquid. When God gives you the Holy Spirit, he does not zap you out of nowhere with a feeling. He pours his Spirit into you through Jesus our Savior. That happens whenever you soak up the facts of our Lord’s earthly life. One of those facts is that there was no man named Jesus of Nazareth on earth and then there was. And the planet has not been the same since he appeared. Another fact is that Jesus got baptized himself. And it’s also a fact that he told his Church to create more believers by baptizing.
The whole Trinity poured itself into you at Baptism. Whatever guilt accused you in these verses, God wiped it out by pouring himself into you through water. Whatever dilemma or personal pain hit you earlier, the Spirit of Jesus poured himself in your heart to soothe and strengthen and even enlighten you about your distress. We hear in verse 7 God’s goal is “that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs in keeping with the hope of eternal life.” Not only do you get to inherit a whole resurrected world in the next life, Paul called your Baptismal washing a water of renewal by the Holy Spirit. He used Baptism to make you a new person even now in this life and that changes everything about your hopes for today and the future.