One of the promises of the gospel is that life as a Christian is to be life unmedicated by delusion. Like Jesus when he refused the vinegar and gall on the cross, we are being strengthened to refuse the sedative. Life is full of offered sedatives; things to calm us down, things to cheer us up, compliments about our personal coolness, little gifts to make us look the other way and just let things go, addictions to take the edge off.
But in the boldness that comes from the Holy Spirit, and in our finer moments we can draw a line in the sand with the toe of our boot. Friends and acquaintances may mock, but we say what happened to Jesus in the tomb was real and physical and literal, not just a little story. As John Updike says in his poem "Seven Stanzas at Easter," we insist the decomposing molecules were knit back together, the amino acids lit back up and began to fire, the heart that had withered and stopped bumped back into action and began to pump.
Or have we forgotten? When we were baptized we came to the big river that divides one country from the other. By confessing Christ and submitting in faith to immersion in water we crossed the bridge and then we blew it up; our way back to what used to be home and ignorance is now blocked. We know better now. We have no option but to go forward. This is not a matter of our attitude. This is a matter of fact. We went to a new country when we put on Christ and like it or not we cannot go back.
"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." Like Jesus we now live on the road. Our McMansions, our bungalows, our apartments, they're just shacks. Albert Brumley's old song goes, this world is not our home, and we're just passing through. And we never will be able to feel at home in this world any more.
The story is told that in 1519 Hernando Cortes planned an expedition into Mexico to plunder its fabled treasures. He presented his plan to Diego Veláquez, Spanish governor of Cuba, who was so excited that he gave him eleven ships and seven hundred men. Cortes did not tell the men or the governor his whole plan. After months of travel the eleven ships landed in Veracruz. Cortes had the men unload everything from all eleven ships. As they headed into the jungle the men turned back and saw all eleven ships burning! Their reaction was to fight back; surely an enemy had initiated the attack. But Cortes halted the men. This had been his plan all along. It was he who had ordered the ships to all be burned. Cortes did not know what he and his men would find in the new land. What he did know was that by "Burning the Ships" he had completely eliminated their option of going back, and at the same time creating an intensely powerful motivation to succeed.
If we have confessed Christ and gone down into what the old time preachers used to call "the watery grave of baptism," if we have started walking on the road with Jesus that will without fail lead to Jerusalem, try as we might we cannot be unbaptized.
Romans 6:3-5 (New International Version)
Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.
