The Jerusalem Experiment

Sunday evening seventeen people from the Fusion Community fell back into the waters of baptism. Prior to receiving the Sacrament, each told a story. Seventeen stories, seventeen testimonies to the fact that our God is a God who weaves salvation, like a skilled hand and a frayed thread, across tattered circumstances and impossible odds. Seventeen saints stood thigh-deep, looking back at shore and into the filled eyes of faithful friends and family who have shared bits and pieces of the journey from blind disobedience to a burning desire for Christ.

As each hungry soul bent their knees and were buried under the black waters of Parker’s Lake, I thought about Peter. In Luke 5 Peter is mending his nets after an unsuccessful night of fishing the angry waves of Galilee. No fish. No provision. Only aching bones and a sleepless night. Suddenly, a wild-eyed Rabbi implores Peter to go back into boat, shove off the shore, and try again. The nets drop. And as a myriad of fish are hoisted from the floor of the sea, the boat begins to break apart. There had to have been a million questions roaring like a pack of lions in between Peter’s ears. I mean, he had just returned from fishing the same waters…all night!

We live life hovering just above the surface of the sea, scratching as the waves like a wicked itch on the back of our leg. Most of us sift through the black waters of our addictions believing that if we simply persist, we’ll eventually pull something salvific from the depths.

Jesus whispers from beyond waves something like,”Truly, Truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

Sunday evening, seventeen people ceased their scratching and confessed that through the cross God had shown them a different way. They let go. First their legs, then hips, elbows, necks, and when the tops of their heads disappeared from view, that was it. They were buried.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death…

Death is the anthem of our culture, the flickering point on the horizon of existence that all our lives are inevitably rushing toward. Amid the glow of the fading sunset Sunday night, death could have easily been asserted as the final word.

But faith can’t stay buried. Faith possesses a buoyancy that cannot help but cut back up through water like a steak knife across a warm stick of butter. Faith rises from the dead. Faith announces to the sun that even if it must wrap like a coward behind the curvature of the earth at the close of each day, faith’s flames terrify the night into an all-out retreat.

…in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.”

As each saturated body rose from the water, it proclaimed an enduring testimony against both the coming night and the hidden sin in the hearts of those who stood as witnesses along the shoreline, a testimony to the reality that, in the end, Christ is victorious. Light has scattered the darkness. Death has succumbed to life.

As Peter watched the catch of fish rise from the waters, something inside him died, jarring loose years of shame and guilt. He cried out, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

But Peter didn’t stay dead. He rose from the waters, left everything, and followed Jesus.