Sermon for the Baptism of our Lord

Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord

Augustana, 2012

Click the link for mp3 audio  11 Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord.mp3

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Today we celebrate the baptism of our Lord in the Jordan by John the Baptist.  The Church Year helps to not just organize and regulate our life in Christ but, if we’ll listen, teach us the whole counsel of God.  Today we highlight baptism, of course, but not just our own baptisms.  Today sends us back to the source of our baptisms to find the true meaning and substance of the gift God gives to us in Holy Baptism.  We spoke last week about how in being circumcised Jesus was committed to follow the whole Law of God as revealed by Moses on Sinai including the penalty for sins.  This week the message is clear:  by allowing Himself to be baptized Jesus actually provided Christian baptism with a higher purpose and meaning and set in motion the great reversal that happens at baptism.

To make sense of Jesus’ baptism by John we have to understand a little better what John was doing.  There’s a really nice note here in TLSB that provides some valuable historical context to what John was doing there in the Jordan River valley.  It reads:

Even before John the Baptist appeared, different groups within Judaism likely practiced baptism. Rabbinic literature notably mentions that Gentiles converting to Judaism were expected to undergo circumcision and a proselyte baptism, and to make an offering. These rites marked full acceptance into the community of God’s chosen people. But John insisted that Jews needed to repent and be baptized, implying that they were no better than Gentiles. ^[1]

John the Baptizer was calling the people of Israel to repentance over sin.  There is a kind of absurdity in this.  These people were by and large as holy as they come.  They were the Saturday go to meetin’ kind of crowd.  But they were attracted to John’s preaching because deep down inside they felt unsure of their standing before God.   They had no assurance of salvation.  And John called them to repentance.  This must have sounded like a thunderbolt to them.

We’ve come to learn that contentment is a personality trait.  That those who are not content with the way things are have a different quality to them that in the best cases can lead to innovation and invention and in the worse cases, can lead to depression and a general dissatisfaction with the world around them.  There are those folks who are blissfully content.  This can have a spiritual dimension as well.  These folks think everything’s fine on the God front and, in fact, they are really turned off by the language of confession in our liturgy like “poor miserable sinner.”  If folks like these had gone out to the wilderness to hear John preach, they would have gone just for the spectacle not because they felt any need to get right with God.  They prayed regularly.  They tithed as they should have.  They went to synagogue.  They even went up to Jerusalem for the great feasts every year.  Life was pretty good.  They did not see themselves as people in need of repentance.  It was really difficult for them to see themselves truly needing the forgiveness of sins.  Just as it may be for us to say that not only is it hard to say we need the forgiveness of our sins, if we are truly honest, of ourselves, we can’t even say for sure what is truly sin, much less stop sinning when the occasion to sins presents itself.  We can see sin easily in others.  In ourselves we find only self-justification for our actions.  From God’s Word we learn, “None of [us] is good. All of [us] are full of unbelief, blindness, and ignorance of God and God’s will.” (SA III, 3:32)   And in case there are any of us who think I’m overstating the case, John was famous for having called those folks a “brood of vipers.”

Into this context stepped Jesus.  Jesus went to John to be baptized with a baptism of repentance.  Jesus did not need a baptism of repentance.  He should have been baptizing John.  John the prophet of God said so himself.  By submitting himself to Johns baptism of repentance Jesus was not repenting of His own sin.  He had no sin to repent of.  Instead, Jesus, fully God and perfect man, by being baptized, Jesus took upon Himself the sins of all those who were baptized.  It is significant that Jesus was baptized at the beginning of His ministry.  He was baptized as the one who would carry the sins of the people to the cross and die for them in their place.  Jesus is our substitute.  He is the one who stands in our place before God and received the full punishment for our sins.  Jesus is like the older brother who is constantly getting in trouble for things His younger brothers and sisters do but He does so willingly.  In fact, this is why He came.  If we have no concept of Jesus as our substitute, Jesus’ baptism, His circumcision, even His crucifixion and resurrection have very little meaning to us.  In this way Jesus provides the ultimate meaning for baptism.  When anyone receives baptism in His name, they receive what He earned on the cross for them.  It’s that simple.

Paul sorts all this out for us this morning.  “…all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”  Jesus death and resurrection happened a long time ago in a land far away from here.  How do you get any benefit from that?  Dear Christian, you have baptism.  By being baptized into Christ Jesus you are connected to Jesus and His cross and resurrection.  You participate in it.  You receive the benefits from it.  “Receive the sign of the holy cross both upon your forehead and upon your heart to mark you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified.”  This is what we say.  Baptism links us inseparably with the Christ’s cross.

I think for many years we have looked at baptism as a mere ritual.  We do it because Jesus said to do it.  We have a vague sense that everyone needs to be born again, “So here we are, Lord, like you said.”  That’s an over-characterization to make a point but it rings true.  What we truly need to recover is a deep sense of what it means that God has called us to be His own children in Holy Baptism.  That the Holy Spirit was poured out over us with the water at the font.  That in Holy Baptism, as we confess it in the flood prayer in the new hymnal, just as God washed drowned the sinful world in the Flood, and God drowned Pharaoh and his chariots in the Red Sea, all sin in us has been drowned and dies.  That’s truly profound.  What a comforting promise then to know what God has worked in someone at Holy Baptism when standing at their open grave.  Notice how much baptismal imagery there is in the funeral service.  We bring them in to the font.  Light the paschal candle.  Cover their casket in the white robe of Christ’s righteousness given to them first at holy baptism.  The funeral is but the continuation of the baptismal service.  And on the Last Day, our loved ones who have died in Christ, will rise again and the baptismal service will be completed.  “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”  “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”

What a full throated Christian confession of Holy Baptism!  And the source of all this is Jesus allowing Himself to be baptized.  He whom God made to have no sin, became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of  God.  Jesus our substitute, He swapped places with us, that we might swap places with Him and receive all of the glorious treasure of heaven, that we might hear from God the Father, “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Dear Christian, you are beloved of God.  He is well pleased with you on account of Christ our Lord.  Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

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^[1] Edward A. Engelbrecht, The Lutheran Study Bible (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2009), 1655.

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