sermon

Sermon from Matthew 3: 13-17 and Isaiah 42: 1-9

John the Baptist never did play to society’s comfortable sensibilities. He doesn’t ascribe to easy middle class values. No, the Baptist sweated it out with the people down by the muddy banks of the Jordon. He was captivated in a trance from God, an ecstasy of prophetic vision. His sermons were barnburners. He talked about winnowing forks, separating wheat from chaff, unquenchable fires and so forth. The people were alarmed when John preached, scared straight into repentance. They came to him to be baptized, hoping to be saved from the storm clouds of the apocalypse, from the highly charged atmosphere that surrounded them. Baptism may have been the most intense point of contact between the cosmic forces of good and evil. Drown the demons and get on the right side of God. People were wailing, bodies thrashed around in the water. Baptism wasn’t tame, sentimental or pedestrian. It was a spiritual rite of passage you hoped to survive.

Yet, this fiery preacher himself was shocked as Jesus came along and made his request. Jesus requested that he be baptized by John. There was something about this Jesus that caught even John, in all his zealousness, off guard. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

John, who proclaimed Jesus with such power and authority, now felt so unworthy to baptize him. He felt a sense of powerlessness and defenselessness as he looked down at Jesus’ head resting in the crux of his arm. This was too much to fathom. How small and insignificant he felt, yet how loved and respected also, that such a man as he would chosen to baptize the very Messiah of God. John, the preacher of repentance, had to reevaluate and repent himself. Even his most fiery pronouncements turned on themselves in light of the vulnerability of Jesus who lay in his arms. These pronouncements devoured themselves and left ashes on the tongue of the Baptist as he immersed the Son of God under the water and lifted him out. Jesus was doing the unexpected. Or rather, he was allowing the unexpected to happen, to come to life. He allowed John to baptize him. The powerful end times figure made himself vulnerable for the sake of all righteousness.

We Lutherans who use a baptismal font may have a harder time grasping the baptism of Jesus than traditions that baptize in a river. I have a friend who grew up in a fundamentalist rural church. He was baptized in a river one cold spring afternoon after church. The two pastors were standing waist-deep in the middle of the river. My friend waded out towards them. The current was cold and he could feel it pressing against his legs as he made his way to the preachers, trying to keep his balance. It was a lonely journey to the pastors, with the congregation standing on the banks behind him, and the pastors in front. He made it to them and they took his hand and stood on either side of him. They said a prayer and my friend surrendered himself to their care and lay back in their arms and allowed them take him under the water. He was plunged underneath the cold water and was lifted out to the shouts of Amen and Halleluiah! He waded back to the shoreline and was greeted by the hugs and kisses of sisters and brothers and given a towel to drape over his shoulders.

My friend noted the trust he had to give to the pastors as he was baptized, to allow himself to lay back in their arms and take him under the water. He also noted the very ‘earthiness’ of his baptism. He felt the water, the mud, the sun and the cold air. He saw the trees and rocks. All this connected baptism with the beauty and untamed elements of God’s creation. It made him feel more vulnerable and also more alive and aware of God’s world.

My friend had to give himself to another to be baptized, and so did Jesus. Jesus fulfills all righteousness with his baptism through his self-giving and solidarity with humanity. “Calvin wrote that Jesus ‘undertook baptism with us that the faithful might be more surely persuaded that they are engrafted into his body, buried with him in baptism, that they might rise again to newness of life.’” (89 Allison, New Proclamation 01-02). Thus Calvin shows Jesus’ solidarity with us through baptism. Jesus gave himself in baptism not for himself, or for John’s sake, but for all of us, to bind himself with us, to make our salvation his own cause.
This reveals Jesus’ vulnerability as he gives himself over into the arms of another. The vulnerability that he showed as he laid back into John’s arms is a foreshadowing of the kind of radical self-giving he demonstrated on the cross. Jesus’ giving himself into the hands of another characterizes both the beginning and the end of his ministry. He fell into the strong arms of John in his baptism at the beginning, and he fell into the arms of the Roman authorities at the end. This self-giving at the beginning and end of his ministry are like bookends in the story of our salvation.

Through baptism we are given to the One who gave himself to us. We are marked by the cross of Christ, sealed with the Spirit, and become children of God. We are adopted into God’s family and made daughters and sons of God, beloved women and men. In the waters of baptism, we die and rise to new life in Christ (Romans 6:4). We become a new creation. In baptism we have a new identity, we belong to him who loved us and gave himself for us. This new identity is a blessed gift from God.

And with the gift comes discipleship. The adoption into God’s family is also a calling. The new life in Christ is an initiation into the ministry of the kingdom. It is our calling to live out the radical vulnerability and self-giving ministry of Christ for the sake of the other. This is a joyful but difficult call. It’s so much easier to remain anonymous in a comfortable middle class neighborhood, easing our way into a nice retirement where we blend in easily with the world. It’s easier to stay on the sidelines of life, letting others risk their reputation, even their lives, for the sake of the kingdom. Sometimes we’re afraid of the consequences of acting out on behalf of God’s kingdom, so we withdraw. We worry what others might think of us, or what will become of us.

This is all easier than to step out on a limb and feel the sharp edges of our individuality, to hear our name before God, and risk something for the sake of Jesus. When we take this call seriously it is powerful. Jesus was unsettled. And his self-giving unsettles us and our values today. He had a passion and thirst for justice, for the new rule of God’s kingdom. This passion made him vulnerable to the forces that opposed him. Yet, in spite of the danger he gave himself completely for the sake of the kingdom, for those most vulnerable, for the poor, sick, lonely, and deranged. His vulnerable was for the sake of the vulnerable, and in this way he showed solidarity with them. This uncompromising compassion for those most neglected lead to his ultimate act of self-giving on the cross. The early church perceived Jesus to be the one described in the servant songs of Isaiah, “He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth” (Isaiah 42:3). Jesus was and still is “a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness” (6-7).

Jesus showed solidarity with us in his baptism. And Jesus gives himself to us again and again, falling into our arms and embracing us. Our own pain and loneliness is matched and overwhelmed by the love of the one who gives himself to us, “a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench,” (42:3). The ever self-giving Christ who is present among us today in faith gives us the courage to work in mission anew. It’s a difficult call, but it’s a joyful call because we know we’re not alone. In baptism we are claimed by him who loved us. The self-giving love that shook John now shakes us.

Jesus’ self-giving through his baptism demonstrates the things that are yet to come. This radical self-giving marks the beginning of the new age and points to its fullness when justice will be established. As we carry Jesus’ mission into the world, we give ourselves for the sake of our neighbor as Jesus gave himself to us. We teach, heal, unsettle, and however falteringly, point to God’s kingdom come, when we will praise God as the former things have passed and new things have come into existence. Amen.