Sermons for the Month
It Begins with a Baptism
DATE: January 13, 2002
TEXT: Matthew 3:13-17“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN
Every year I experience as so abrupt this movement from Christmas to Epiphany. After weeks and weeks of anticipating and focusing on and celebrating our Lord Jesus as the child lying swaddled up in the manger, suddenly in a week's time he is a grown man. So we're reminded right away, just in case we'd forgotten, that Christmas is not about what a sweet and precious baby Jesus was - the Lord makes lots of those, after all -- but that the Good News of the infant whom we worship and adore is Good News because of the man he became. Today is the beginning of a new chapter in the story, as Jesus "goes public" - begins his ministry of teaching, healing, forgiving; as he begins to set free those who have been imprisoned by illness, disability, guilt, or doubt, or fear; and today, not incidentally, He embarks on what will eventually be a collision course with a cross. It all begins with a baptism, which is in itself not so odd. When we think "baptism," we do think "beginning," whether it's the Sacrament of Baptism which initiates a Christian into this life of discipleship, or "baptism" in secular usage such as a "baptism of fire" which might await someone as he or she begins a new position or makes some other "new beginning" along life's path. But this particular Baptism is very odd. The baptism which John was preaching and practicing was one of the ritual washings of Judaism, in which there were prescribed various sorts of purifying baths for someone who had become "unclean" according to the Mosaic law such as a person who had had contact with a dead body or with a discharge of certain bodily fluids, either your own or someone else's. There were also cleansing baths as a part of the process by which a Gentile could become a Jew, a washing away of one's former unclean and unredeemed self and beginning a new life within the covenant people of God. John baptized as a symbol of repentance and purification for those Jews who in John's prophetic view of it, had strayed so far from God's ways that they were just as in need of cleansing and a new beginning as any pagan Gentile unbeliever. No wonder John was flabbergasted when Jesus got into the line! Luke's Gospel tells us that John and Jesus was cousins; and although Scripture tells us nothing else about their relationship during childhood and youth, Luke does give us the story of how John before his birth jumped for joy in his mother's womb to be in the presence of the Christ also as an unborn child. It must have seemed ridiculous if not positively blasphemous to John to think of regarding Jesus, the righteous Son of God, as someone who needed to repent and be washed clean and reconciled to God. But Jesus insisted. "John," he said, "this is the way it has to be, this is the way it has to start in order to fulfill all righteousness." Now what does he mean by that? The other folks in that line, waiting for John to wash them in the river water, were concerned each with his or her own righteousness, motivated by the awareness of the ways in which their lives had gone off course, the ways in which their words and actions had made a mess of things, and the frustrating rut of their own thoughts and attitudes. And appropriately so, as they sought God's forgiveness and strength to make a fresh start. But when Jesus waded into that water, something different was happening, something unprecedented and something decisive. As the holy and righteous Son of God, already in perfect union with God the Father in the embrace of the Holy Spirit, Jesus' concern was entirely for us, and for the ultimate and eternal righteousness that He would grant to us. And the first step that he took was to stand in solidarity with us. If you come from a labor union background, you or your parents or grandparents, perhaps you know the rallying anthem, "Solidarity Forever…for the union makes us strong," and so American workers in the 20th century stood together to gain higher wages and better working conditions. Back in the 80's, the "Solidarity" movement of Polish workers kept alive in that Soviet satellite country the dream of freedom and human dignity in the midst of circumstances that led others to despair. "Solidarity" means that as we stand together, in the union of 2 or more human beings, there is a strength and a courage and a power greater than any one of us or even any collection of us acting on our own. Today Jesus stands shoulder-to-shoulder with people who perhaps formerly had been indifferent to God; with those whose lives were a tangled mess; with those who had been snubbed by respectable, "righteous" folks; those who had come out into the wilderness just yearning for a new beginning, unburdened by the past. Well, if a union of human beings in solidarity can have great power, we can only imagine what can happen as a result of Jesus, the Son of God and Redeemer of the world, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with you and with me, in our weakness, in our weariness, in our confusion, in our guilt. Imagine Jesus right in there with us in the ongoing frustration that, as St. Paul well expressed it, "I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil that I do not want to do, that is what I do!" Imagine Jesus in complete solidarity with us in our sorrow and remorse, in our yearnings for another chance, in our hope for new possibilities. Well, in fact we don't have to just "imagine" it, we can count on it! And we can be transformed by it, by virtue of our own baptism. Christian baptism, according to Jesus' own promise, is his joining in solidarity with the individual man or woman, girl or boy, even to the tiniest child. And from that moment on, in the words of St. Paul, "as many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ!" In other words, (mine, not Paul's) Jesus is all over you like an … expensive suit. In fact, in baptism Jesus becomes so much a part of the baptized person that it's as if what has happened with Jesus also has happened already for you and for me, again as Paul so eloquently puts it, "we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." For Jesus' solidarity with us doesn't just mean that he is with us in the darkness and despair, although that's a truly wonderful and essential beginning. The Good News gets even better. As he joins himself to us, we are lifted up, we are drawn into the very heart, the very life of God. When Jesus establishes a continuing connection with us, he shares with us what belongs to Him - his eternal victory over sin and death that means life for us on the other side of the grave; and in the here and now, he makes available to us his own righteousness, his own peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; he shares with us his own capacity to love and to give and to forgive. Martin Luther said that our baptism is an ongoing process that's only completed in our death. As long as we're alive and breathing in this world, we're a work in progress, whether we enjoy 80 or 90 or 100 years of discipleship after our baptismal day, or a matter of mere moments. Luther said, we have to return to the "home base" of our baptism every day, where we can confess our failures and our faults, have the slate washed clean for a new beginning, and where we are re-charged for another day of living and growing and loving and serving. Joined together forever with Jesus, we too are God's beloved sons and daughters; it pleases Him to take us as we are, and love us into more than we ever knew we could be. During Advent and Christmas we prayed that our hearts would be prepared to receive the Christ, that He might come and make his home in our lives. And now he is here; and perhaps the room we have to offer Him is still rather cluttered and grubby, and not what we'd like it to be. Perhaps it looks more like a dirty old stable than like a palace fit for our King. But all he asks is that the door be left open a crack, so that He can come in; so that He can stand with us and love us, can forgive us and heal us; can send the waters rushing through and swishing out the garbage; so that he might lift us up and be for us our Savior, our Teacher, our Brother, and our Very Best Friend. AMEN