January 13, 2008 – The Baptism of Our Lord
Matthew 3:13-17
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Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last year, or at least the last two weeks, you’re aware of the presidential campaign drama that’s sweeping our country and has a good number of Americans on the edge of their seats. Oh, the drama! Big surprise in Iowa as Obama unseats Clinton as the frontrunner among the Democrats! Huckabee surges to the head of the Republican pack! More drama in New Hampshire as McCain claims the lead among Republicans and Clinton rebounds among Democrats! Did Hillary’s tears really make the difference? If Romney loses Michigan, is he out of the race? What’s going to happen next?! Stay tuned.
Young people are turning out in record numbers in this campaign, for both major political parties. They apparently sense that there’s some hope to be found here. A 30-year-old librarian named Julie told one reporter that she’s never voted in an election before, because she’s never found a politician worth listening to. But she found herself drawn to a political rally last week by a friend who told her, “This candidate really is different.” And so she went, because, as she put it, “I’m just looking for someone I can believe in.” It sounds as though Julie, as she looks to the future in these confusing and often just plain weird times, is looking for some light, some illumination.
Ironic, isn’t it, that alongside this huge, booming and noisy political campaign, we find ourselves in the midst of the quiet season that the church calls Epiphany, the season of light, of illumination? This is the season in which the identity of Jesus will be increasingly revealed for anyone who wishes to see and hear.
What began as a very private announcement, first to Mary and then to Joseph and then to the shepherds, is in our Gospel story being made to a much wider audience. And that audience will only continue to expand. From now until Easter morning the Gospel stories we’ll hear in church will all have to do with further epiphanies, further revelations of who Jesus is and what he has come to do.
This season is like a stone that is dropped into water and sets off a series of concentric circles that get bigger and bigger until the whole surface is involved, engaged as a witness to that first action of the stone. That’s the season we find ourselves in in Epiphany, and we find ourselves there with believers of all times and places, drawn into relationship with God and with each other, drawn into those circles that emanate out from the birth of Christ.
In our story this morning we’re far removed from the manger. In fact, we’ve fast-forwarded about 30 years in Jesus’ life. He simply appears and joins the throngs of people who are coming to be baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. John immediately recognizes Jesus as the main event, the one for whom he has been only the opening act. So he protests, says he isn’t worthy to baptize Jesus, that it really should be the other way around. But Jesus assures him that this isn’t about worthiness, that it’s about fulfilling God’s word. John consents, and Jesus is baptized.
And Jesus is baptized, not to repent of sin, because he is without sin; he is baptized in order to engage and begin his unique mission. This is the One who will assume the mission originally entrusted by God to the nation of Israel, as we hear in our First Lesson this morning, the mission to “bring justice to the nations,” to “open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon.” (Isaiah 42) The New Testament tells us that this Jesus is the One who would bear the sins and brokenness of all of humanity, who would give his life as a ransom for many through the shedding of his blood on our behalf (Mark 10:45) In order to represent humanity, Jesus must first identify with humanity, and his baptism is where he begins that process of identifying with us.
Jesus tells John that he must be baptized in order to produce righteousness. “Righteousness” is one of those big, churchy words that we use a lot in this sanctuary and find often throughout Scripture, but never use in our everyday lives. When is the last time someone asked you how you were doing and you said, “I’m righteous, thanks, and how about you?” Never happens. By the way, if you ever get tired of automatic conversation you might try saying just that and see what kind of reaction you get.
Righteousness means to be in right relationship with God, to live in covenant with God. In one of his New Testament letters, Saint Paul tells us that when it comes to human beings, no one is righteous, not one (Romans 3:10, from Ecclesiastes 7:20). He’s not saying that we don’t do anything right; he’s saying that ever since original sin entered into the human condition in the Garden of Eden, our life with God and therefore with each other has been fundamentally out of kilter. He goes on to say that Jesus has become our righteousness (Romans 5:18), that Jesus came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves: put things right with God. Righteousness is the gift that we have been given in Jesus’ baptism. It’s the ability to see our lives not as our own personal possessions, to be used however we wish; but as gifts of God, to be used as God sees fit.
Righteousness is God’s gift to us, and it is a gift that can come as quite a surprise. About six years ago we baptized a young woman here at Advent, a person who wasn’t a member but a friend of a member. She was about 18 years old and had discovered in casual conversation with her family that she had never been baptized. They just never got around to it. Since she was leaving this area and moving to Washington, D.C., she thought that she would take care of that formality, tie up that loose end. So we gathered here at the font one Sunday morning. She stood here, hands folded respectfully, going through the motions.
But when the water was applied to her forehead, and she heard the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” to her great surprise she began to weep. And they were tears of joy. And those great tears just kept tumbling down her cheeks throughout the baptism. When the service was over, I found her in the narthex, and we stood and looked at each other, and she said the only thing she could say: “Wow!”
And the Spirit descends, and the Spirit claims and fills. And the Spirit claims and fills all who come. All. As Saint Peter says in our reading from Acts, God shows no partiality; the Holy Spirit that brings righteousness is given to all who come.
We might take that for granted today, but it was big news when Saint Peter first announced it to the early Church. Following the death and Resurrection of Jesus, the apostles, those who had actually been with Jesus and shared in his ministry, thought that you had to be Jewish, that you had to be of a certain time and place, one of the Chosen People, in order to bear witness to the glory and goodness of the Lord. But Peter is saying in our Second Lesson that No, God has shown him that God gives himself in Christ through the witness of the Holy Spirit to all people, in all times and places. Jesus is bounded by time and place, but the Spirit is not, and that Spirit is what brings witness to the power and love of God.
And so the work of expanding the recognition of who Jesus is and what he came to do flows out to you and me, in our time and place. And it is an important message to bear. As Peter says, everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness through his name. And not forgiveness only but restoration of right relationship with God, which is righteousness.
So how will you live out your gift of righteousness and thereby bear witness to Christ? Who will experience the righteousness of God through your words of forgiveness, whether you want to say them or not? You might in fact not want to say those words of forgiveness – you might be dealing with hardness of heart – but God might want those words said, and through you.
Who will experience the righteousness of God through your very carefully chosen words of confrontation?
Who will experience the words of God through your words that bring hope?
This is how we participate in the baptism of Jesus. Because Jesus submitted himself to baptism and gave himself for us, we were renewed, regenerated, called back to the life that God intended for us at the beginning of creation, when God surveyed all that he had made and declared it “very good.” (Genesis 1:31) That’s the life God wants for us, that’s the life to which he calls us; and it’s possible because of the miracle of Jesus’ baptism.
The miracle of Jesus’ baptism is in what he took on as he emerged from the Jordan River, and the heavens opened and the Spirit descended. What he took on was us. We became his life’s work. And through us will his glory be revealed as we live into our calling to be today’s epiphany of Christ. Amen.
