"Jesus' Baptism and Ours"
Matthew 3:13-17
We’ve celebrated Christmas and made our journey with the magi to Bethlehem to worship the baby Jesus. Today we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. We’ve jumped forward around 30 years in time in the gospel story, and we encounter John the Baptist again.
Imagine it. John, out in the wilderness, preaching repentance and baptizing people in the river Jordan. When Jesus shows up and asks John to baptize him, John doesn’t think Jesus needs to be ritually washed of sin. And he doesn’t think he’s worthy of baptizing Jesus.
But Jesus answers, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness."
Did you hear that? Jesus is saying, “It is proper for us to fulfill all righteousness in this way.” He needs John to say yes.
Now, this is not the way John had envisioned things happening, in the in-breaking of the Kingdom of Heaven. But Jesus was saying he needed John to say yes to God’s plan, “in order to fulfill all righteousness.”
I think Matthew is giving us another clue about a major theme in his gospel: that Jesus has a very different understanding of “righteousness” than the conventional religious leaders of his day.
In the nativity story we heard a few weeks ago, Matthew tells us that Joseph, who was a righteous man, was planning to send Mary away quietly when he found out she was pregnant. But an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, for the child she was carrying was conceived by the Holy Spirit. All this, the angel said, was taking place to fulfill what God had spoken through the prophets.
Throughout his ministry, Jesus was frequently criticized by the scribes and Pharisees for his lack of "righteousness." When he hung out with marginalized people, the good religious people were scandalized that Jesus was eating and drinking with sinners. When he broke Sabbath laws, the religious authorities criticized him. And yet later in Matthew we hear Jesus saying, "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."[1]
When John proclaimed that the Kingdom of Heaven was breaking into the world, he had it right. In the Incarnation, God came into the world in the person of Jesus to live among us, full of grace and truth-- as one of us.
When Jesus had been baptized and was coming up out of the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and resting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” the Holy Spirit descended upon him, a voice from heaven says, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”
Maybe you don’t remember, but at your
baptism, that voice named and claimed you.
We need to remember our baptism.
So, turn to your neighbor, and remind them. Tell them, “You are God’s child... God’s beloved. God loves you and claims you. [We take a few moments for people turn to their
neighbors, even move around the sanctuary, to remind each other that they’re
beloved children of God.]
There’s something else we need to
remember: at our baptism, God gave each
of us the gift of the Spirit. So, let’s
turn to one another and remind one another:
You’ve got the Spirit, because God gave it to you when you were
baptized. [Again, we take a few moments for people to remind one another.]
Okay, so what does all this
mean?
Without the rest of Jesus’ life, his
baptism isn’t something we can comprehend.
We can only comprehend the purpose of Jesus’ baptism when we look at the
days and years that followed that day in the Jordan. It’s when we see Jesus taking his place with
hurting people that his baptism starts to make sense. Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan foreshadowed his
baptism on the cross. Baptism was Jesus’
commissioning for ministry.
During the week before his death,
Jesus was challenged by the leaders of the temple: “By what authority do you do these things?”
Jesus answers by referring to his
baptism: “Was the baptism of John from
heaven-- or not?” In other words, I
was baptized. That’s how all this
started.” It was in the waters of
baptism that Jesus heard the Spirit calling him to speak the truth and to live with grace.
Baptisms, like all beginnings, find
their meaning after the event. Beginning
is usually fairly easy. Finishing is
usually harder.
Starry-eyed young couples who are in love come
to the pastor, and very often, they’re focused on having the perfect wedding. It’s part of the pastor’s job to remind them
that the wedding is just the beginning.
It’s the living out of the promises they make that’s the hard part... the part that will make all the difference
ten or fifty years from that day.
Baptism is the beginning of a
journey. We’re handed a map, but we have
to take the trip. It takes our whole
life to finish our baptisms to fulfill what was started when we were
baptized.
In baptism, God proclaims God's
grace and love for us. God claims us and
marks us as God’s own. We have a new
identity as members of the body of Christ.
The good news of our baptism is that
God adopts us as God's own. God reaches
for us and claims us as God's chosen ones.
We are baptized-- not because we
have come to God but because God has first come to us. So we are baptized and begin a lifelong
pilgrimage with God... a lifelong
process of conversion and nurture which begins at the font and doesn't end
until death-- until we are at last
tucked safely into the everlasting arms of the God who first reached for us in
baptism.
God keeps on reaching out for us
throughout our lives. God isn't finished
with any of us yet. Every day we live
out our baptism. Every day we need to
respond to God's gracious gifts in our lives, open ourselves again to God's
work in our lives, and say YES in all
the big and little things we do and promises we keep throughout the day.
A major part of God's daily saving
work in our lives is God's gift of the Holy Spirit. Just as God's creating Spirit hovered over the
waters in the very beginning, the Holy Spirit works in us, leads us day by day, and tugs at our lives
until we are more and more fully turned toward God.
This continuing conversion
experience is more strong and more evident on some days than on others. But the
Spirit is busy in us every day, prompting us, calling forth the gifts with
which God endowed us, and continually calling us into service.
I believe the Spirit has been busy
working in us and our leaders as we’ve worked the past few years articulate a
new mission statement and core values for a new time at Littlefield and will
continue to prompt us to work on ways to implement a new vision for the coming
years.
On this Baptism of the Lord Sunday, we
are reminded of Jesus' baptism and our own.
We are reminded who we are and whose we are.
At your baptism, the same Spirit
came down upon you as came down upon Jesus at his baptism. The same Father said to you, "you are my beloved child." The same Father has continued ever since to
hold you and to work to empower you for God's work. In our baptism, we
We are God’s beloved children, and
we are called to be part of a “beloved community” that will transform the world,
as Christ’s light shines through us into the darkness and shadows of a hurting
world.
At our BAPTISM, each of us is called
to be a disciple, called to discern what
God desires for our lives and to do God's will.
You and I are disciples of Jesus,
called to minister in his name. We are all part of the priesthood of believers. In fact, in the Presbyterian Church, we take
this calling so seriously that we ordain our officers for service. The questions we ask at a service of
ordination and installation of elders and deacons-- the questions you'll hear in a few
minutes-- are the same questions asked
of a Minister of the Word and Sacrament, except one.
How easy it is, in the midst of this life, to forget who you
are... and whose you are. So the church is here to remind each of
us-- that God has named us and claimed
us, seeks us and loves us, and calls us to serve as partners in ministry to
work together “to fulfill all righteousness.”
So let us go out and be the ministers
God has called us to be. Use the gifts
God has given you as a sign of the outbreaking of the kingdom of God. Take on new challenges in your ministry. Rely on the Holy Spirit to lead and empower
and uphold you. As you go out into the world, be the minister God calls you to be.
May it be so. Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
January 8, 2017
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