The Baptism of Our Lord - Year A January 9, 2011

The Baptism of Our Lord  He Qi

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. ¹⁴John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ ¹⁵But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’ Then he consented. ¹⁶And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved,^* with whom I am well pleased.’

Matthew 3:13-17

     In Matthew’s Christmas story,    from the visit of the wisemen who did not find the king they were looking for in a palace, to the forced travels of Jesus and his family, we are reminded that Jesus came not to be identified with the great and powerful of the world but with the weak and vulnerable.

     After Jesus family returned from Egypt we don’t hear about him again in Matthew until he is an adult and shows up on the banks of the Jordon to be baptized by John.

     John the Baptist knew that he was on the threshold of a new time.  He knew that God was sending someone soon who world usher in the glorious kingdom of God.  From the way he preached, it appears that John was expecting God’s Messiah to judge and punish evildoers.    The Romans, who had treated his people so harshly, were certainly going to get what was coming to them.  But according to John God’s people, the Jews were also not exempt from judgment.  God’s own people had been lax about following God’s commandments and living in faithfulness and justice.   John warned his own people to examine their lives before they pointed their fingers at others.  He asked “are you prepared to face God? Have you been living in a manner fit for the Kingdom of God?”  John warned the people to repent, to turn their lives back toward God, to live moral, upright just lives to that they would be fit for the Kingdom.  As a sign of their repentance John offered a public ritual—baptism.  Through baptism, people were ritually cleansed from their sins and publicly declared their intention to live new lives, lives in accordance with God’s will

     Jesus, whom John recognizes to be the Messiah who will usher in the Kingdom of God, shows up to be baptized.  John, who was expecting the Messiah to be wiping out Romans and terrifying Jews into repentance, is expected to baptize Jesus the Messiah.
     And at first, John doesn’t want anything to do with it.  John baptizing the Messiah is not part of the scenario John has mapped out in his idea of how it should go.  Later on, while sitting in prison John is going to show that he  still hasn’t quite wrapped his mind around the kind of Messiah Jesus is when he asks Jesus “So are you the one or not?  Should I be looking for someone else?”

     Jesus presses on despite John’s reluctance.  “This will fulfill all righteousness” This is all part of God’s plan.  This may not be the way you planned it, but this is the way God is going to do it.

     One thing we can learn from this is how John, who was very much in tune with God and God’s will, who was a good and righteous man, still ended up being surprised by God.  Even John had to change some of his preconceptions of how God acts in the world.  Now if someone who was as righteous and in tune with God as John the Baptist can get it wrong, it behooves us to not be overly arrogant with our own certainty about how, why and what God does and will do with and in his world.

     Matthew, more than any other Gospel writer, shows how Jesus fulfills Old Testament prophecies.  But he shows how Jesus often redefines the meaning of God’s promises and purposes in surprising ways.  John was expecting Jesus to come in power and judgment.  Instead he does the one thing John never expected –Jesus, the Son of God, submits to John for baptism.  The one person, who does not need to repent, submits to a baptism of repentance.

     But lest there be any doubt and some think “well he couldn’t really be the son of God or he would never be here getting baptized”, there is an Epiphany at Jesus’ baptism.  There is a revelation for Jesus who sees the heavens opened to him ad the Spirit of God descending upon him.  There is also a revelation for anyone with ears willing to listen.  “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” This is my son, the one who stands among sinners.  The one born in a stable, the one forced to flee an evil king.  This is he; you don’t need to look anywhere else, he’s right here, among you.

     This event like the events surrounding Jesus’ birth, are a foretaste of the great absurdity to come—that the Son of God will suffer and die a humiliating death on a cross in order to accomplish the salvation of humanity.  These unlikely events accomplish the salvation of humanity.  These unlikely events occur, we learn, because Jesus lives doing the will of God.  God’s will- the salvation of all humanity is revealed in Jesus and declared in the Gospel and it is grasped not by logic but by faith.  Jesus lives fulfilling prophecy in unpredictable ways.

     During the Season of Epiphany we celebrate the revelation of the presence of God in our lives.  Matthew invites us to be open to find God in unexpected places.  John, who spent his whole ministry preparing for the Messiah, never thought he’d find the Messiah standing in line, waiting his turn to be baptized.  The people, coming to be peptized never dreamed the Messiah would be standing right there among them.  And not everyone recognized the voice from heaven revealing God’s son.  Some probably just wrote it off as thunder.

      If there is anything you can expect from God, it is to expect the unexpected.  The star of Epiphany that leads to Bethlehem lights the way for us to see what God is doing in our lives, to break through our preconceived notions of the way things ought to be, to see that all things are possible.

     And so our Epiphany challenge is to look for the revelation of God’s work in our lives, to see how God is calling us to reach out in love and compassion to others, to see how God is opening our eyes to see something in a new way, to cast aside an old bad habit, to see God’s presence among us God is here, in the thick of life, in the midst of ordinariness, in community in love and service among the least of these.  Amen.