The Gospel according to St. Mark begins with the baptism of Jesus. Mark leaves it for his fellow evangelists Matthew and Luke to tell us about Jesus' conception and birth and His growing up. For Mark, the good news of Jesus Christ, begins in the water of the Jordan river.
Jesus' baptism is his epiphany to Israel, his coming out of the obscurity into the spot light, his manifestation to the world with the voice of the Father and the descent of the Holy Spirit. It is, in a very real sense, the beginning of the Gospel, the good news, that salvation, forgiveness, life, and peace have come to us in God's Son.
Before His baptism, Jesus was largely unknown. He lived in obscurity in Nazareth of Galilee. There he was known simply as the "carpenter's son." A handful of shepherds had knelt before Him at his humble birth in Bethlehem. Simeon and Anna had adored him as an infant in the temple at his presentation.
The temple teachers were amazed by his wisdom at the age of twelve. Then, for the next eighteen years, there is nothing to be known, nothing out of the ordinary with Jesus, nothing to distinguish him from any other person. He preached no sermon. He worked no miracle. He grew into manhood like any other boy growing up in Nazareth.
Then one day Jesus came out of darkness to the light. He came to the banks of the Jordan river, in order to be baptized by John. John's baptism was a sinner's baptism, a washing of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. People came from all over to the Jordan to be washed by John. It is to this sinner's bath that Jesus came.
This was part of Jesus' humbling, his becoming obedient to the Law, obedient even to death on a cross. He had no sin to confess, no stain that needed washing. He had no need for repentance. And yet Jesus submitted to John's baptism. More than that, he sought it out, he demanded it, he compelled John to do it. Jesus insisted. This was "proper to fulfill all righteousness."
Jesus came to be the least among us, the servant of all. God reached all the way down to us in his Son. We had hints of this already at Christmas. Here, in Jesus' baptism, we see his humility in a yet brighter light. He lowered himself to be baptized as a sinner. The Lord of lords became the Servant of all. The Sinless One stood with sinners in the water of the Jordan.
Baptism is the great equalizer, I think. As Peter discovered at the house of the gentile Cornelius, God plays no favorites. It matters not whether you are a tiny infant or an adult, a prostitute, publican, or a Pharisee, Jew or Gentile, religious or unreligious, educated or uneducated, wealthy or poor, a Liberal or a NDP.
We as people delight in distinctions, don’t we? We look for ways to elevate ourselves over others. We worry about our status and dignity. Yet we are all baptized alike - with the same simple water, into the same death and resurrection of Jesus.
Imagine taking a bath in someone else's bath water. It's a rather disgusting thought, especially in our time when we are obsessed with the idea of "catching something" from someone else. We are reluctant to share a cup with our fellow Christians, much less share a common bath.
But that's what Jesus did. The Pharisees and religious leaders of his time refused to step into such water. They didn't want to be seen in the same water with prostitutes and sinners. They had no felt need for repentance and washing. But Christ was not ashamed to step into a sinner's bath water.
He stood in the water with the prostitutes and the tax collectors, with the gentile and the outcast. Jesus stood shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with sinners. He was steeped in our sin. He became the adulterer, the drunkard, the liar, the thief, the blasphemer, the murderer, the abortionist. God came down to our level, when we couldn’t get up to his. He was made sin for us who knew no sin, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God.
This is a true story about Mark Busse: he was only 16 yrs. old, when stricken with inoperable lung cancer. His friends shaved their heads to show support for Busse after his hair fell out following chemotherapy. His buddies said that they didn't want him to stand out in the 180 students high school.
Mark Busse, despite his illness, despite his troubles, is a very blessed young man - he has the best kind of friends anyone can have - for they, although they are not sick, although they have no reason in the world to shave their heads and experience some of what Mark experiences - do so anyway. They identify with him. They walk in his shoes. They show him that he is not alone. They perform an act, they give him a sign of their love.
Jesus did not have to be baptized. He did have the sickness we have. He was not a sinner. He had no cause for repentance. He had no need to undergo the baptism of John. Yet he did. Luther called it a "happy exchange." That's what the baptism of Jesus is about. Jesus took up our sin, our guilt, our punishment, our death. And we receive from him his righteousness, his forgiveness, his glory, his life. He was baptized into our sin; we are baptized into his righteousness.
He was baptized into our death and damnation; we are baptized into his life and salvation. He was baptized into the curse of the Law ("cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree"), we are baptized into God's blessing and favor that comes with His perfect obedience.
I've never had the opportunity to see the Jordan river with my own eyes, but I am told it isn't pretty. Jordan river water isn't terribly clean. It never has been. It wasn't the water, but the Word of God that was joined to the water that made it a cleansing water
.And it is the Word of God - the Word made Flesh, Jesus - who joins himself to the water, that makes Baptism a water of life, a water rich in God's grace, a water that works rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
A friend of mine during Bible College years named Bill from Chattanooga, Tennessee. When he became a Christian his desire was to be baptized in the Jordan river. He saved his pennies, and when the college organized a field trip to the Holy land Bill signed up. He realized his dream as he was being baptized in the Jordan River, he came back very happy, and changed person.
Now I don't want to get into the fouled up theology that runs with the idea that Jordan river water is somehow better for Baptism than other water. Water is water. What makes water a Baptism is the Word of God that is connected to it. The sinless Son of God absorbed the pollution of our sin and purified it with his blood. Never had water been so graced by God, as the day the Son of God entered the water and sanctified it.
At the moment of Jesus' baptism, the heavens were torn open. Mark uses the very same word later at Jesus' death on the cross, when the curtain of the holy of holies in the temple was torn from top to bottom. Our sin shuts heaven tight. It cuts us off from God's presence.
We deserve nothing but God’s wrath, and God would be justified for doing that. But God sent his Son to rend the heavens wide, to open the kingdom of heaven. And through Jesus, God has opened heaven.
There is a door for the children of Adam to become God's children, reborn and renewed, and enter into His presence. The fact is God came down to our level, when we couldn’t get up his. That door is the narrow way of Jesus' death and resurrection.
Baptism brings us through that door, joining us with Jesus' death and life. We were buried therefore 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 is life."
In Jesus' baptism, heaven is opened to us. The barrier between us and God is torn down. We have peace with God through Jesus; we have access to God's grace. We may come into his presence with thanksgiving, and enter his courts with praise. Heaven is opened to us, and God descends to meet us. God came down to our level, when we couldn’t get up to his.
Where? In the water, of course. There the Father speaks in testimony. There the Spirit descends and hovers as a dove. The Holy Spirit who once hovered over the waters of creation, now descends the water where the Son is. Baptism is a beginning, a new creation. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has gone, the new has come." A dove signaled the end of the flood to Noah. Again, a dove signals peace. Peace with God. "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The Spirit descends upon Jesus in the water (point to the picture on the bulletin).
There is power in the sacrament that most of us here have taken part in. There is power in doing as Jesus did, and more, there is power in believing in him, and that power is the power of the Spirit, and of the power of the Word.
By it we are made part of Jesus, and he is made a part of us. His life and his death, and his resurrection - become ours - and by it we are able to be a healing part of the lives of others.
The baptism of the Lord, his identification with us as lost and lonely sinners, began his ministry - a ministry in which he took upon himself our yoke and our burden, and returned to us God's love and his concern.
Our baptism into Christ, our acceptance of his healing love and our desire to be as he was, begins our ministry:
Our new year together can be full of the power of God, if we believe in and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour and our brother and if we heed the cry of those around us, if we sit up and take notice of those signals that God sends us, and learn the lessons that they teach and walk as Jesus walked.
The voice from heaven announces His Son to the world, "You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased." Ours is the greater baptism to which Jesus commanded after His death and resurrection: "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you."
And so today we remember Jesus' baptism. The heavens torn open. The dove descending. The voice of the Father. Those things didn't happen for Jesus' benefit, but for ours, that we might delight in our own Baptism and know that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are mightily at work there to save us.
Go in peace
- and may the Spirit of God which filled John and Jesus,
fill your hearts, souls and minds;
- may the power of God which upheld them, strengthen you for each day;
- and may the love of God which directed their every action
be your guiding light and your shining star, to comfort and sustain you.
both now and forevermore.
Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
January 8, 2006