The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee



Proper 7, Year A, 2008, June 22, 2008, St. James’ Church Sewanee & Christ Church Tracy City

“Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4b).

For years I have read Garry Trudeau’s comic strip Doonesbury, the sort of strip that’s controversial enough to appear on the editorial page of some newspapers. One of the stock gags on the strip is the character “B.D.”, a football player and then later a soldier who always appears (inexplicably) wearing a helmet. Not much was ever said about the helmet. I was shocked in 2004 when the “B.D.” character went to serve a tour in Iraq, was wounded and lost a leg. More unsettling in the comic world was that “B.D.” lost his helmet at the same time. Suddenly we could see his face. When he’s recovering in the hospital later his daughter comes to visit him, and she says something like, “You’re not wearing your helmet”. He looks at her and says, “Oh yeah, the helmet. What was that all about?”

Remember, “B.D.’s” been wearing this helmet in the comic strip for over thirty years. What kind of defensiveness or fear lies behind that kind of behavior? Now he’s been through a major trauma, suffered losses and begun a transition that is still being played out in the comic strip. But he’s also been able to leave the helmet behind. Now we can see his face. He’s started a new life.

“What was that all about?” Well, we might wonder. What makes human beings so peculiar, so addicted to forms of behavior that distort who we are and obscure the image of God that is within us? We can be stuck in an old way of life that diminishes us; stuck without seeming to have chosen the life that holds us captive. We are crazy enough to keep doing the same old thing without expecting the same old result. This is what Paul the Apostle calls the “old self” (Rom. 6:6), the “old Adam” from the Book of Genesis who chooses the wrong thing, and who through us continues to make the same bad choices that lead to mischief and death.

Sin has a long genealogy, and a lot of supporters, so we should not be surprised that “the old self” is alive and well within each one of us. Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote “I, terrified,/heard, in myself, locked creaky rooms/that one should not peep into through a keyhole” (“Lessons”). The “old self”, the “old Adam”, is never too far away.

But if we can believe the Gospel (and our comic strip), it is possible to live a new life. Paul talks about “newness of life”, where the identity of Christ has been so formed in us that it is Christ who lives within us, the “new Adam” who vanquishes the old. The old self has to die to sin, and that death is traumatic; a bit like our “B.D.” character who goes through the trauma of battle and comes out a new and better person. If there are “locked, creaky rooms” within us, there is also the liberation that comes when Christ claims us for his own, and we gain a new identity and a new life.

It’s Paul’s claim that each of us who has been baptized into Christ Jesus has died to sin, and that this means we have passed through death to the old way of life into new resurrection life. Today, each of us has an opportunity to renew those baptismal vows, and to claim the identity that Christ has given each of us through his sacrificial death. Some folks today are renewing those vows and receiving the laying on of hands: a reminder to each of us of the power of God to give new life. God is claiming them and us in Christ Jesus. Are we crazy enough to stay in the “locked, creaky rooms” of the old life, of the old self? Or are we willing to strike out in a new direction, to claim a new identity and a new life? Our confirmands this morning are leading the way: claimed by God and claiming the new life in Christ.

The Rt. Rev’d John Bauerschmidt, Bishop of Tennessee

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