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The Baptism of Our Lord, 01/13/2019
Sermon on Luke 3:15-22, by Andrew Smith
Luke 3:15-22 [English Standard Version, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.]
15 As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, 16 John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
18 So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people. 19 But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother’s wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, 20 added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison.
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is the Sunday after the Epiphany, which we celebrated last Sunday. The reading for that day is the arrival of the Magi from the East who bring their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and are delighted to find Jesus and worship Him. The importance of that for us is that Jesus was not just a Jewish Messiah, but the Savior and Redeemer of the whole world, non-Jews included. And the whole season of the Epiphany then is kind of like a symphony that plays on that recurring theme. Next week we will hear of Jesus’ first miracle in Cana to manifest His glory to the world. The week after next, the account of Jesus preaching in his hometown of Nazareth where He announces to them and to the world, in the words of Isaiah, that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him to proclaim the good news and the year of the Lord’s favor. But today, the Sunday after the Epiphany, is always the Baptism of Jesus. What is significance of that event?
Let’s make sure we have the facts straight. Jesus was not a sinner. He did not need to repent of any sin. The other people John was baptizing were sinners and did need to repent. I’ve said recently in a couple of places that repentance needs to be the default setting for Christians. That is true. I think that’s certainly the sense I get of Luther the more I read him. Repentance is the default setting for Christians but not the Christ. That’s why John is so taken aback by Jesus’ insistence on getting baptized. Baptism was already a thing by the time John came on the scene. It’s partly how Gentiles became converts to Judaism. John’s preaching of repentance in the wilderness is so radical because he’s preaching repentance to the descendants of Abraham! And here comes Abraham’s number one descendant, Jesus the Christ to get baptized, “in order to fulfill all righteousness” Matthew tells us. No matter how you look at it, the whole scene is rather amazing. Jesus did not need to be baptized; that’s clear. But He does get baptized. What does this mean?
I am certain that Jesus’ is using this act of submission to connect Himself to us through baptism so that we are connected to His death and resurrection for us. Paul certainly makes that case in Romans 6. “Do you not know that 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.” That’s why that passage is worth repeating liturgically today and it’s why we will repeat it again tomorrow at our brother Rick Lee’s memorial service as we do here at all funerals. If we die in Christ, and we do, then we shall be raised like Christ was. It is the clear proclamation that death does not have the power it looks like it does. It didn’t for our Lord and it will not for all those who are baptized like He was.
The practical implications for all of this are enormous. Baptism cannot be just some naming ceremony in the church. It is a dying and rising, and mind you not a symbolic dying and rising but a drowning and resurrection to new life, a rebirth. Back in the last century there was a great deal of talk about being born again as a Christian, and they almost got it right. The only thing they missed was connecting it to the place where God gives rebirth in His Triune name, Holy Baptism. Baptism is about being reborn. It’s the washing of regeneration says Paul to Titus. Let’s be perfectly clear. We don’t put the emphasis we do on Baptism because Luther or any church father did. We see baptism for what it is because Jesus did. That’s why He was baptized at the beginning of His ministry here in Matthew 3 and in the same Gospel at the end of His earthly ministry He told His disciples to make more disciples by baptizing and teaching them everything. Baptism is not merely some one-time event. It has ongoing implications reaching through our whole lives and into eternity. We never should say we “were” baptized but rather the Christian says, “I am baptized.” Baptism is a pure gift and announcement of God’s grace to us. And is that ever good news.
And so then we are a corporation of the baptized, a body of baptized ones, the body of Christ, who was baptized, and because we are baptized part of the Body of Christ. Our most important identity then, our highest calling is one who is baptized. All that we are as a congregation stems from that identity given us by Christ through baptism. And so typically when we gather we invoke God’s name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, because that was the name given us in baptism. We are here for no other reason but because we are the baptized ones, the body of Christ. By the way, that’s why it’s kind of unthinkable to not be here when the rest of the body gathers. It’s why we suffer when all the members of the body are not here, for that is what church membership is about, being a member, a body part of the body of Christ.
“12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” That Scripture from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is often talked about as though it was just a clever word picture from the genius of Paul. Oh look, isn’t that smart. We’re all part of this spiritual body. Except that means to disconnect it from baptism, from ours and the Lord’s even though baptism is clearly the link as it’s mentioned in the very next verse. “12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” This should be something of a wakeup call for us all. I know it is for me. Paul continues in his letter. “For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” (1 Co 12:14–21)
No Christian congregation is merely a spiritual club that like-minded people can join if they learn the secret greeting, pay their dues, and subscribe to the magazine. We are the Body of Christ in this place. Our corporate identity is not in a tax ID number or an IRS non-profit code. We are the baptized body of Christ. We are not a church because we have committees and boards, as important as they are. We are the baptized body of Christ. We don’t serve in the church or give an offering because we like what’s happening in the organization or not because we don’t. We give cheerfully and abundantly, and serve without hesitation because that’s what Jesus did for us. We are the baptized body of Christ. We avoid gossip and talk that tears one another down and we promote forgiveness and unity because we cannot say to another, I have no need of you. We are the baptized body of Christ. The liturgy we speak comes from our service book because we are part of a larger body than our own congregation. Our congregation, along with others in our church body, and all Christian churches make up the baptized body of Christ. We pray for one another and for our officers and our leaders regularly, if not daily, because we are the baptized body of Christ. We treasure our church and our membership in it as a gift of God, as a function of His will, not our own. We are the baptized body of Christ.
This week I stumbled across this quote from Martin Franzmann, a leading Lutheran voice from the last century: “We serve a church the glory of whose history is the fact that its course has always been a firm, determined confessional march; a church that never has had much taste for the mincing minuets of concession and compromise. Those mincing minuets are marvelous things to watch; they look so hard and yet they are so easy. But the hard thing is to march: to be good, not clever; to be faithful, not brilliant; to be honest, not urbane; to be the rough wool blanket that keeps the faithful warm, not the flapping scarf of changeable silk that men admire. No one has promised us that confessing the truth will make us happy, but we shall be blessed—of this we may be sure.”
Christ Jesus went down into the Jordan to unite Himself to all those who go down into the water with Him. In Baptism He calls us His own who were once not His people. In Baptism our Lord shines brightly in the darkness of the world. At the beginning of His ministry, He gets baptized to make His glory plain for us to behold so that we can see it when it is more hidden in the blood and sweat of His cross and when we carry ours. In His baptism He enlightens us to shine with His glory that all may know what He has done for the world. And all of that He accomplished for us gets applied to us here, week in and week out. And so we treasure this place, not because of the past or because of personalities but because this is where we hear the voice of our Savior who was baptized for us, that we may hear God speak to us a word we cannot hear anyplace else, “You are my beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.