The Promises of God, Fulfilled (Baptism of Our Lord)

The New Revised Standard Version The Baptism of Jesus

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And 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. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

I love this Sunday every year. I love the invitation to look back on how God has been faithful to us. I love that we’re offered a chance to remember that God’s promises were made to us at our birth and have always been there for us. I love that we proclaim that God loves us and receives us and we mark this occasion with baptism. For many of us, this moment occured a long time ago, perhaps even as an infant.

I love that our tradition affirms that even before we are able to make the promises to God ourselves, God promises to provide for our lives through grace, mercy, forgiveness, and lovingkindness. I love that it is nothing that we do, but rather that baptism is a sign of all that God does for us, before our decision, in our decision, after and throughout our whole lives.

God is so very good.

And I love that this Sunday each year invites us to remember the baptism of Christ as the event from which all of these good promises radiate. The promises of God did not begin with Christ’s baptism, they have been there since before the Creation, as we heard in the passage from John’s gospel last week. But it is this moment, this baptism of Christ at the Jordan, that we see those promises in their fleshy glory, in Christ’s humanity being washed and received as the Beloved of God.

What’s all of this excitement about?

The Incarnation — God in flesh

For us to really grasp the significance of Jesus’ baptism story, we have to wrestle with the concept of Incarnation. This is a rich theological concept, but simply put, we hear it in the opening of John’s Gospel: The Word was made flesh and dwelled among us.

Incarnation is the beautiful good news that God, the creator of all things, the ultimate presence of love in which all things are held together — God becomes human. Flesh. Blood. Like you and me. Breathing, sweating, sleeping, eating, stretching, feeling, crying, hungering, thirsting, embracing other humans, walking around on feet that step on rocks or trip, a body that feels the rain on its skin, the chill in the cold winter air. God becomes flesh.

So easily, we think of God as so Other than us. Zeus, Jupiter, Apollo. So entirely Other to us. Big distant old man in the sky.

These models of God are profoundly UnChristian. The God we witness in Jesus Christ, the God we worship in our life together here is a flesh and blood human who is also fully God. Fully God, fully human.

This is important because the Incarnation brings God close. God is with us. Emmanuel.

Historical, flesh and blood Jesus

Prepared and anointed for ministry — ritually washed to affirm his calling in ministry

And, this flesh and blood God, in the person of Jesus Christ, needs. God needs. Like we need.

Jesus is already filled with the Spirit, with the calling of God to do his ministry and mission on earth. Remember, like we proclaim in our own baptisms, the promises of God are already there for Jesus when he steps into the river. Picture it like they are already out in the water, ahead of him as he enters.

But Jesus at the same time needs insomuch as he needs the affirmation and anointing of these gifts. His humanity calls for the gifts to be named and affirmed.

Like us.

Think about the kid who just really likes to run and shoot hoops who is told by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about that this kid is a natural at basketball. Or the talkative teenager who loves to argue and think and speak up — being told by someone with authority that they might actually make a great lawyer with the gifts they have.

Th

I was the kid who just really liked being at church. I liked singing hymns, I liked reading the Bible and hearing the stories of Jesus. I liked youth group and mission trips and lock-ins and being with other kids and adults at the church. I liked the way the church carpet smelled and the way the light came in through the stained glass windows. I liked the practice of taking communion, even when the wafers and juice didn’t taste good.

The calling to ministry was there for me. But I didn’t know it. I just liked church.

It was outside voices that encouraged me to follow the path into ministry that opened up the realization that this was a true calling. It was the affirmation and anointing that God does, through God’s church, that helped me realize and step into my calling as a Minister of Word and Sacrament.

The call was there, and it was the act of the Spirit work in others to bring it to fruit.

So let me ask you — what gifts do you possess? What has the Spirit anointed you, affirmed you to do in the world? What is your calling?

Maybe you’ve figured this out a long time ago and spent a lifetime pursuing it, in your career, in your service of others and in the loving for your neighbor and the poor around you. It’s the thing you wake up knowing you’re meant to do.

Or maybe, perhaps, this sense of calling is foggy at times. I’ve had many seasons in life where the path seems obscured, the way forward blurred by my own self-doubt and sin. To recognize this obscurity is not a bad thing — it is to recognize that we are often in need to reminding.

We forget. I love the English novelist and theological writer G.K. Chesterton’s words on this: ““We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.”

Today is a day for us to remember. To recognize that we forget what we’re called to, to acknowledge this and then to come back to our baptism and the promises God makes to us in it and remember.

Remembering our own baptism

Not simply divinity, but fleshy humanity in Christ.

As we are called to remember our baptism we are reminded as well that it is in our baptism and our surrender to the way of Jesus that we become bound up in Christ. We become a part of Christ’s life — put more plainly — Christ is in us and renews us for the work Christ has for us to be about in the world.

Like us.

To remember our baptism and its promises is to participate in the reconciliation of all things, including ourselves, to Christ’s way. We are reminded in the Second Letter to the Corinthian church of this great truth:

The New Revised Standard Version The Ministry of Reconciliation

17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Remembering our own baptism

“So that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God.”

The plain truth we must hold to in this remembering of our baptism is that we are made righteous before God, affirmed, beloved, upheld, and called.

You. You. Each of you. Me. Us. As we reaffirm our baptism, we embrace this truth of belovedness. Whether you feel it or not — remember, we forget — we are the beloved of God as we are in Christ.

In a few moments, we will have a chance to affirm the calling of the beloved which sits upon a specific group of folks in our congregation. Today, we have the opportunity to ordain and install into the ministry of this church new officers for the work of Ruling Elders and Deacons. God has called these people to serve our congregation and its mission in the world specifically. And as we affirm these people’s gifts and calling, it serves as yet another reminder of our own gifts and calling. For many of you in the room, you have been ordained and called to the work of service in the church in the past. Hold to this and remember.

For others of you, your calling is out in the world and we affirm that calling all the same — it is a calling by God to be a teacher, a financial advisor, a food server, a parent, a writer. All of these callings offer us the opportunity to live into the fullness of being God’s beloved. And so we affirm these callings as well, focusing on the particular here in our context, but always acknowledging the multiplicity of ways God engages each of us and our particular gifts.

Finally, we remember our baptism as a called community, the church, collective, here at St. James Presbyterian in Bellingham, WA. While we each have individual gifts, we are all members of a called and baptized body. We affirm that baptism is the marker of membership in our community and celebrate this which we share. We affirm that we have been called together, on this day, to worship not as individuals, but as one. We affirm that we are a community that welcomes the stranger, the outsider, the lonely, the brokenhearted and we will live out our being beloved by loving those in need.

So, dearly beloved. remember the promises of God for you. Remember them, hold them close and return to them in their grounding nature. Hold fast to them and hold fast to one another.

We pray all of this in Christ’s name, as we say… (Prayer)

Explain Ordination and Remembering Baptism

In a moment, I will invite our candidates for ministry forward to lead them through their ordination vows. In this, we all have a chance to reaffirm the faith of our baptism.

“The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grownup person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

Hear God’s word of blessing for your ministry and calling, affirmed and reaffirmed in the waters of baptism.

And after the service, I ask that, as you desire, you come forward before you leave the sanctuary and come to the baptismal font. Come, dip your fingers in the water, and touch them to your forehead or to your hands. Remember your baptism. Pray and savor the goodness of God’s promises for you.

Let’s continue our worship by standing together to sing hymn #150 in the purple Glory to Go Hymnal, “As With Men of Gladness Old.”

Ordination

Book of Common Worship

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Ordination and Installation: pg. 106.

the love of God,

and the communion of the Holy Spirit

be with you all.

Gathering Prayer

Almighty and eternal God, by your grace

you have called us to this time and place

to be your servant people

as we follow our servant Lord.

Make your Holy Spirit move within and among us,

that together we may live a new life

in the crucified and risen Christ.

Bind us together in faith,

so that as we receive all spiritual gifts

needed to fulfill our calling,

we may support one another in common ministry;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Statement of Ordination

We are called into the church of Jesus Christ

by baptism,

and marked as Christ’s own by the Holy Spirit.

This is our common calling,

to be disciples of Jesus Christ

and servants of our servant Lord.

Within the community of the church,

some are called to particular seric