The Baptism of Our Lord

The Baptism of Our Lord | 01.07.24 | First Lutheran, Houston | Pastor Evan McClanahan |

The Baptism of Our Lord, 2024

The Baptism of Jesus has always been a festival I have found hard to say much about. If I’m being honest. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and Reformation Sunday all have such clear lines of thought and significance. But what about the Baptism of Our Lord? What is its significance? And what are we to make of all the controversy that surrounds baptism? That is, the debates about if we are to baptize infants and what role we have in baptism?

Let’s first consider the scene in the Gospel. We spoke about John the Baptist during Advent. He has burst onto the scene, dramatically inviting all of Judea to be baptized in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Now, John was not the only person who believed the Messiah was coming soon. Some believe that the 70 weeks spoken of in the prophetic book of Daniel indicate that the time of the Messiah’s arrival was immanent. Others had their eye out for prospective messiahs as well and this gave rise to several claiming to be the messiah. That may be why Jesus tells his disciples to not believe others who would make such false claims.

But John was definitely not operating by conventional standards. This was a heartfelt, desperate plea to repentance, not completely unlike the street preacher or revivalist who is looking for change of life among the audience. This was a baptism that was not just ceremonial, but a reflection that the one seeking baptism was a sinner in need of salvation. The point was to be ready for the messiah when he would come, to be not be caught in a state of sin.

 Now what exactly John and Jesus’ previous relationship was, we don’t really know. They definitely were not total strangers. Luke says that John leaps in his mother’s womb when Mary comes near with the newly conceived child in her own womb. If Mary and Elizabeth are first cousins, that would make Jesus and John third cousins. It would be interesting to know if these third cousins saw one another often, or only at Thanksgiving or Christmas or family reunions…when I usually see my third cousins. But one assumes that they knew each other and their respective reputations preceded them.

John would have always known that Jesus was at least a righteous person. And Jesus would have known that John, as a member of the Essene sect, was equally committed to righteousness. To say that Jesus was not John’s target audience for baptism would be an understatement. It was actually an embarrassment for Jesus to subject himself to baptism. After all, he was not a sinner! I assume John did not know fully understand Jesus’ nature as a perfectly sinless man; but he at least knew that none of Jesus’ contemporaries could point to him and name him a sinner.

But Jesus’ entire ministry was for others. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” That is Paul’s way of saying it in 2 Corinthians. So Jesus underwent baptism, not because he was a sinner, but because his journey of sacrificing for others began here. And lest we have any doubts about that, we have the voice of God from heaven declaring, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

So this act of baptism must be pretty important. But is John doing his own thing? Are there any Old Testament precursors to this? Yes, both symbolic and actual. For example, there are examples of washing in the Old Testament for one to be seen as ceremonially clean. According to Leviticus, for a leper to be considered clean, they must “wash their clothes, shave off all their hair and bathe with water; then they will be ceremonially clean.”

Other dramatic acts of water in the Old Testament are interpreted as pointing towards baptism by Peter and Paul. Paul speaks of the Exodus from Egypt through the parting of the Red Sea as a kind of baptism: “I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” Clearly, God was doing a new thing through these Israelites after 430 years in Egypt. The parting of these waters was their initiation, a separation from their old life and on the other side of the sea was their future.

Peter harkens all the way back to Noah’s ark, saying that the waters the flood “correspond to the flood,” and that “baptism now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” So it appears that New Testament writers did look to the Old Testament for inspiration and in these cataclysmic events with water, they saw foreshadows of baptism.

In each case, you have the signal of something new happening, something supernatural happening. Maybe the best summary of this radical change that seems to happen in baptism is a text we use at the beginning of each funeral service, written by Paul in Romans 6: “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.”

Well, our own baptisms seem quite domesticated compared to these incredible tales. But something is happening there, and Jesus himself says to baptize in the “name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” as part of his Great Commission in Matthew 28. And these are not baptisms only of repentance like John’s baptism. These baptisms bring you into God’s family.

But here are my issues with both infant baptism and the believer’s baptism arguments. I agree with my pro-infant baptism friends that something significant is happening at baptism, that God is doing something with this child, that they have been marked in some way by God’s Spirit. But it is not a magic act. That child can reject even the supernatural mark given them in baptism, which logically leads one to ask, “Well, what good is it, if we can so easily shake it off?”

But for my believers’ baptism friends, I ask, “But if baptism is only a public declaration of your faith, why do you need to get baptized at all? If nothing is happening when the water, word, and person are brought together in that specific formula, why not just have the person stand before the congregation and say, “I have dedicated my life to Jesus!”?

Like the Lord’s supper, we have separated the supernatural from the symbol and said these ordinances of the Church are either only sacramental or only symbolic. But they are both: they are public symbols of what God has done for the baptized and the baptized have truly received something from God. Something they can reject, it is true, but something they can also return to.

That, ultimately, is what your baptism is. It is a claim that God has made on you: a claim to which you can return. It’s like your childhood home that your parents never left. No matter where your own life takes you, you could always go back. It’s like a seat at the table that is reserved for you. Even if you leave the table, no one else will take that space. It’s like a degree granted by a university; you may not use that degree, but no one can take it away from you.

In the days of the early church, and perhaps in my grand or great grandchildren’s lives, these kinds of public symbols will hold more value because they will increasingly be seen as markers over and against the majority’s norms. To be baptized truly is, and in a post-Christendom world where less than half of a nation goes to church or defends historic Christian teaching, will be seen perhaps even as dangerous, just as baptism is dangerous in other parts of the world, the Islamic nations, for example.

But for you, one who struggles against their sin, one who, in our more honest moments of moral clarity, should rightly wonder: “Does God love me? Will he abandon me? Is he though with me? Have I finally done too much to leave the possibility of being blessed by him?” When you are in that place, then remember that you are baptized. Remember that it was not just your decision, but the claim that God made on you that is seen at your baptism.

 The power of Jesus’ baptism is that he lived as a sinner for us. The power of our baptism is that we receive the benefits of God living for us. Amen.