How many times can you die?

This is not a rhetorical question.  How many times can you die?  Most of us get one.  One time to die. (Modern medicine has made some advances on this number, but nothing reliable.)

One time.  I've already had mine.  It happened about a month after I was born when my parents made the drive from Baltimore to Bath, PA to their home church for my baptism.  It was cold with snow on the day I died.  All my grandparents were there, along with an older brother and a couple of aunts and cousins.  I wore a white dress, the same one my brother wore.  My grandmother made it.

The pastor poured the water over my head and baptized me......into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I died with Christ so to live with Christ on that day when God's glory is made manifest to the whole world.  St. Paul says I died to sin by which he meant that sin could no longer claim me as one of its own.  Now I belonged to Christ and the Holy Spirit was about to really get to work in my life.

It was the starting point for my second life.  Buried deep within the heart of God, I was (and continue to be) slowly shaped by the love of a creator God who gave me my first breath, forgave (and continues to forgive) all the numbskull and even nasty things I've done and thought, showed me the face of my neighbor and pressed me forward to create a community with them.  From this generous God I was taught generosity and challenged again and again when my heart proved to be two sizes too small.

That's why my parents took me to that baptismal font....to die to the deadly life that awaited me and to be formed into the life of the Creator.  It was the life they experienced; they wanted it for me. It meant putting aside the kind of life that I would see around me.  It meant listening for Jesus' voice since the voices around me were deafening.  It meant pruning those places in me that hampered my growth into God's vision of a beloved child.

Now those of you who are reading this know that I am far from perfect; most days I'm far from medium.  But on all days I belong to Jesus and Jesus shapes and molds me into the new life of glory that awaits me. Along the way confession is my constant companion and forgiveness my salvation.

All sound a little radical to you?  A little 'over the top'?  A little like those crazy disciples tramping behind Jesus in all those stories?

It is.  It was meant to be.  Life as a disciple is more questions than answers.  It is constantly being aware of the great needs of our neighbors knowing that solutions we offer are temporary.  It is to expect that we will stumble regularly, and sometimes quite badly, and yet we call on the name of the Lord and wait and watch for his guidance.  We accept the weight of our own sin and bask in the wonder of God's gracious forgiveness.  We live the resurrection in each day - some days we are better at it than others.  We are Christ's and we live in him....

...and it is joy.

All of this is to say, there is nothing for you to fear.  You have already died.
You belong to Christ.

Today consider simply allowing Jesus to live in and through you.  Wait. Watch. Listen.
Quiet the voices that do not know Jesus and do not know the power of his love.
Begin to truly live  the life you were given long ago in those waters of baptism.  You...beloved child of God, disciple of the living Lord.