Yesterday Becky dropped her cell phone into the dog’s water dish.  The strange thing was that the drowned phone would periodically call our home phone.  When I answered I only heard the sound like unwrapping a Big Mac, as if it was calling for help.

I thought of the drowning of our old sinful person in baptism.  Yet, our old person keeps calling out to us for rescue.  What do we do?  We answer the call for rescue.

Martin Luther was personally acquainted with his “Old Adam” answering sin’s desperate call. However, sin has nothing more to tell us other than the enticing sound of unwrapping a Big Mac.  Therefore, Luther wrote, “It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

Luther reminds us through the words of St. Paul what really occurred in the drowning of our old person, “We were therefore buried with (Christ) through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4)

What did we do with the old drowned phone?  We took it to the AT&T store and got a new phone, leaving the old one behind to be destroyed.  One day that will happen to us.  The old sinful self will be left behind in the resurrection and we shall obtain a new self and we shall truly, “live a new life” minus those pestering calls.