Note: We are changing the way we post videos, so I will wait until that is completed before I post the video of this sermon. I will post the manuscript (which always differs a little from what it actually said) below.

Next Sunday after church, we’re all going to Mark and Diana Osborn’s house for lunch. After we eat and hang out for a while, we will baptize more than a half-dozen people. In obedience to Jesus’s instructions, we will take each of these people into the pool and dunk them under the water, and we’ll do it in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

When you think about it, that is a strange thing to do. “You want to begin a new life? That’s fantastic! Let’s stick your head under water.”

In the past, I have often officiated baptisms in very public places – on the beach, at the community pool, or in a lake with speedboats and jet skis zooming by. That was intentional. Even now I encourage people to invite friends and relatives to their baptism, but when people who know nothing about baptism see me “push” someone under water, what must they think?

When we baptized people at the city pool, we were required to hire certified lifeguards. I wonder what they thought as they watched us do this strange thing? I’m a little surprised that none of them jumped in to save the poor woman the crazy guy was holding under water.

(If you’re one of the people getting baptized next week: I don’t really “push” people and I definitely don’t hold them under water. I help them under the water, then lift them back up … after the bubbles stop rising. Not really. Baptism is perfectly safe, though it makes people wonderfully dangerous.)

Why did Jesus tell his disciples to do this to people? When I was a boy, a few of us formed a club – there used to be such things in those days: The Blood-Brothers; the Tribe; the Wild Ones. Club members had a secret sign – a handshake or a code word – to identify them. Was baptism some kind of secret sign among those who had joined the insurgency of love? Whenever they met someone who might be part of the insurgency, did they say enigmatically: “Have you come through the water?”

When I speak or teach or even just talk about baptism, it is not uncommon for someone to say: “But you don’t have to be baptized to be saved.” I’m not sure what these folks mean by “be saved” – probably something like, “go to heaven when you die,”– but I’ll grant them their point gladly. Still, I wonder what they’re worried about.

If they’re worried that I might be teaching that water baptism is a soul-saving add-on to the work of Christ, they can relax. I’m not. But if they are trying to say that baptism is an if-you-feel-like-it-but-it-really-doesn’t-matter kind of thing, I’m worried about them. If they think Jesus’s instructions are only important when they are about getting into heaven, do they just ignore what he said about love, truthfulness, forgiveness, and self-denial?

We baptize because Jesus commanded it. The early church was completely convinced of this. When St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, was asked what his hearers should do about Jesus, he told them: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). When Philip the evangelist was preaching “the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” people were “baptized, both men and women…” (Acts 8:12). When the first Gentiles came to Christ in Acts 10, Peter “commanded that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:48). When Saul (soon to be Paul) believed in Messiah Jesus, the first thing he did was get baptized. The first convert in Europe, a woman named Lydia, came to faith at a Bible study. We read, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message” and “she and the members of her house were baptized…” (Acts 16:14-15). The early followers of Jesus did not see baptism as an if-you-feel-like-it-but-it-really-doesn’t-matter kind of thing. They knew it was important.

But why was it important? What did it mean? When, after his resurrection, Jesus met his people on the mountain in Galilee, how did they understand what he said to them? This is Matthew 28:18-20: “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’”

We tend to think that Jesus was sending the disciples out on a mission trip, but that is a late Western idea read back into the text. If Jesus was telling the disciples to head down to the docks and book passage on the first cruise ship to the mission field, they either did not understand him or they were downright insubordinate.

Then what is going on here? To understand that, we need to put this passage into context. Remember that Jesus was crucified and on the third day was raised from the dead. Over the next 40 days, he met with his disciples and talked to them about the Kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). God’s kingdom – the establishment of God’s rule on earth – was the subject of a forty-day study program, which is why the disciples asked if Jesus was going to restore the kingdom at that very time (Acts 1:6). So, when Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” they understood what he said in a kingdom of God context.

When we read those words, our minds probably don’t go where the apostles’ minds went: Daniel 7. When Jesus announced that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him, the words of the prophet Daniel echoed loudly in their minds. Daniel wrote about one “like a son of man” (Jesus’s favorite self-designation) who was led into the presence of the Ancient of Days, where (and this is what the disciples understood Jesus to be talking about): “… to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:14).

Remember Jesus had been instructing his disciples for the last forty days – for the last three years, really – in the Kingdom of God. We may miss the point when he announces he has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. The disciples did not.

Now, here is some important background. When Jesus was born, Herod the Great was king of Israel. Herod had been appointed governor of Galilee when he was just 25 years old. Later, because he fought valiantly for Caesar in the Roman Wars, the Senate conferred on him the title King of the Jews. In 37 B.C., he went to Rome to be crowned by the Emperor Augustus. His coronation didn’t take place in the land of the Jews but in the seat of power, in Rome.

What happened to Herod was not unique. Other vassal kings had done the same thing. They went to Rome to receive a kingdom, and authority to rule was given them. Here’s what we miss, but the early church understood: Jesus did the same thing. After his resurrection, he went to heaven, the seat of power, and was crowned king. He is the rightful King of the earth, but his coronation took place in heaven. In theological parlance, his return to heaven and his coronation are called “The Ascension.” We use the term in the same way history books do when they say, “King John ascended to the throne in 1203.”

After Herod was crowned king, he returned from Rome to Israel to take up his rule. And Jesus will return from heaven to earth to take up his rule. This is what the biblical writers understood had happened and would happen. They knew two things: (1) it would be some time before Jesus returned (though they didn’t know how long); and (2) he had already been crowned king. That was what St. Peter was talking about on the Day of Pentecost, when he said: “For David [King David] did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.’” (Acts 2:34-36).

In his first letter, Peter wrote that Jesus “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.” (1 Peter 3:22). St. Paul says that God “seated him [Jesus] at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church…” (Ephesians 1:20-22a). This is what we miss but the early disciples understood. They regarded Jesus as the reigning king of the world, which is why they were accused of turning “the world upside down” and of “acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus” (Acts 17:7).

In Matthew 28:18-20, King Jesus is telling his key leaders what to do to prepare for his return and coming rule. The Great Commission (as it is called) launches the Great Campaign, in which the followers of King Jesus work from within the kingdoms of the world to prepare for the return of the king. They do not do so by armed rebellion or political activism, but by recruiting and training members of The Insurgency – that is, citizens of the Kingdom of God. That is what making disciples is all about.

Disciples are recruits, loyal to King Jesus, and living as his agents in the world. But they are not only recruits; they are trainees, apprentices, learners. They are learning how to live for God in the Jesus way. And they start by being baptized.

Jesus doesn’t tell us to give new recruits a secret handshake but a baptism because baptism is full of meaning. In baptism, the person is buried under the water. That means something. He dies. His old life is resolutely left behind. He begins a new life, now as Jesus’s person. Baptism is a decisive, intentional break with the God-less or God-lite life. It marks the transition of our loyalties to King Jesus.

Baptism is a public “Yes” to Jesus. The church has for nearly two millennium referred to baptism as a sacrament. The Latin word sacramentum referred to the oath a Roman soldier took when he joined the military. He swore to be obedient unto death. Our baptism is a sacramentum: We decisively join Jesus, regardless of the cost.

In baptism, a person leaves the old life behind just as Israel left Egypt behind when they crossed the Red Sea. St. Paul says the Israelites were baptized into Moses (1 Cor. 10:2) in the Red Sea. They were joined to him. After the deliverance at the Red Sea, their destiny was all tied up with his. The same is true when we are baptized into Jesus: our destiny is all tied up with his.

Baptism reminds us that we are inseparable from Jesus. This is the heart of baptism. In Romans 6, when Paul speaks of baptism, he says in verse 4 that we were “buried with” (note the word with) “him” (Jesus); in verse 5 we were “united with him” (twice); in verse 6, we were “crucified with him”; in verse 8, we “died with him.”

If that is not impressive enough, listen to this. “I have been crucified with Christ,” Gal. 2:20; “We died with him,” 2 Tim. 2:11; were “buried with him,” in Colossians 2:12; “made alive with him,” in both Colossians 2:13 and Ephesians 2:5; and “raised with him,” Ephesians 2:6. My baptism speaks of the union of my life with Jesus’s life and, if you are also united to Jesus, my baptism speaks of the union of my life with yours.

Prior to John the Baptist and Jesus, the kind of baptism with which we are familiar was only performed on Gentile converts to Judaism. A Gentile man would take off all his clothes, go under the baptismal waters and come out naked as he was on the day he was born. It was said that he had been reborn as a Jew. Our baptism means that we have been reborn into Jesus’s family. We are his people now. We have a new identity.

In the Catholic Church, a child is given his Christian name at baptism because baptism is about identity. So, St. Paul could say, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor. 5:17).

Jesus instructed his followers to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is much more than saying a formula over people when you dunk them. The Greek word βαπτίζω means “to immerse.” It was used, for example, of a sunken ship; it was immersed.

We don’t just dunk people in water. “Baptizing them in [or into] the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” means immersing them in the life and character of God – which is to say, in the reality of who and what God is. This is the church’s principal job. Jesus wanted his apostles to teach people how to live their lives in God’s presence, just as he had taught them. A baptized person comes out of the water, but he or she never comes out of the God-bathed life.^[1] They live a baptized life.

Jesus wanted his leaders to bring people (their work, their play, their family, their relationships, their leisure, their trouble – everything) into the environment of God’s life and presence. A fish spends its life surrounded by water. The baptized person spends life surrounded by God. There is nothing in a Jesus follower’s life of which he or she can say, “This doesn’t have anything to do with God.” Everything has to do with God.

This is very different from religion, as popularly conceived. Disciples – recruits, apprentices, whatever you want to call them – are learning to live in (and count on) God’s presence at work, at home, with others, when alone, in sickness, in health, and all the time. Unless they learn this, unless they are baptized into the name, immersed in the reality of God’s life, discipleship to Jesus will simply not succeed.

Churches often try to make disciples by teaching them (this is verse 20) everything Jesus taught. There are two problems with that: One, that’s not what Jesus said. He told his leaders to teach the recruits to keep (in some versions, observe or obey) everything he taught. Just reading the Bible, even learning the Bible, even memorizing the Bible, misses the point if people aren’t keeping King Jesus’s instructions.

The second problem, which is even more foundational, is that obeying Jesus’s commands is only possible when we are living as Jesus lived: immersed in the reality of the present and powerful God. Baptism in water expresses our desire to live that way—the Jesus way. It is our response to God’s invitation to live our lives immersed in his presence.

Maybe you were baptized long ago and you’re thinking: “Nobody told me any of this stuff.” Well, you’ve been told now. Start living this way today: an agent of the Insurgency of Love. Ask for God’s support; he’ll give it.

If you were baptized as a believer in Jesus – you weren’t just an unbeliever getting wet – you don’t need to be baptized again. You need to re-up. Tell Jesus: “From now on … from now on, I will be your person. I want to learn how to live from you. I want to learn to live with you, as an agent of your kingdom, an operative in the insurgency. I want to learn how to live in the presence of God and not go out.

If you have not been baptized, are you ready to join up? Are you ready to confess Jesus as your Lord the king? Are you ready to join him and his people?

Whether you are a member of the insurgency or not, know this: The revolution has begun. No one could have foreseen where it would start—on a cross. It was there that King Jesus disarmed the rulers and authorities and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). And who can envision where it will end? In joy unspeakable that is full of glory. In a new heaven and new earth, where righteousness dwells. In a perfected and mature humanity, enfolded in the presence of the most joyful Being in the universe, the Blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the destiny of those who belong to Jesus.

[1] Dallas Willard’s term. See Divine Conspiracy, chapter 3.