The Baptism of Our Lord, Year B

The Baptism of Our Lord

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

On Wednesday of this week, the Church celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany, which is traditionally recognized as the day the wise men visited the Christ Child and brought gifts to him, to recognize him as not only the King of the Jews, but as the one foretold by the prophets. In the Eastern Christian church, that is the day they actually celebrate Christmas: January 6. This is a Holy Day in our Christian calendar that is always the same date, just like Western Christmas always falls on December 25. And so January 6 marks the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of the season of Epiphany.

Epiphany, of course is the revealing of Christ to the world. As Christmas was the birth of the Christ Child, Epiphany reveals the Christ to creation and to all of humanity. Not just to the Jews, but to everyone. We see this play out in the visitation of the Wise Men, who are clearly not Jews. They are Gentiles from the east, and yet they came to see the prophecies fulfilled.

But for Epiphany, the revelation of Christ begins with his baptism by John in the River Jordan…which is what today is all about.

I think however, that as we contemplate Christ’s baptism, we must also contemplate the Sacrament of Baptism itself. So what is Baptism? The Small Catechism:

1 What is baptism?

2 Answer: Baptism is not merely water, but it is water used according to God’s command and connected with God’s Word.

5 What gifts or benefits does Baptism bestow?

6 Answer: It effects forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and grants eternal salvation to all who believe, as the Word and promise of God declare.

7 What is this Word and promise of God?

8 Answer: As recorded in Mark 16:16, our Lord Christ said, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”

Luther explains it in the Large Catechism this way: Baptism is a very different thing from all other water, not by virtue of the natural substance but because here something nobler is added. God himself stakes his honor, his power, and his might on it. Therefore it is not simply a natural water, but a divine, heavenly, holy, and blessed water—praise it in any other terms you can—all by virtue of the Word, which is a heavenly, holy Word which no one can sufficiently extol, for it contains and conveys all the fullness of God. (Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 438.)

Baptism is how we receive the gift of God’s love and grace. When we say that salvation is a free gift of God - and it is - then our Baptism is when we are given that gift. It is our Baptism that joins us into the Body of Christ. It is in Baptism that God claims each of us as His Beloved Child.

St. Paul in his letter to Titus describes baptism as a “washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:5-8)

So now the question becomes, if this is what Baptism is, then why did Jesus go to be baptized? We might even ask, why did Jesus have to be baptized? Well, those are two different questions, and let’s knock out the easy one: Jesus *had* to be baptized to obey the Father’s Will. This is part of the plan. It’s not any more complex than that.

Now, why did Jesus go to be baptized? That one desires a little more time and attention. And thankfully, St. Paul gives us the explanation in our epistle lesson today from Romans 6. Look again at verse 3: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” In Baptism, Paul reminds that we are joined to Christ, and this is key. We just finished celebrating the incarnation - the birth of the Messiah. And we talked about how the incarnation was God coming to be not just with us, but to be one of us. He took on our flesh and lived among us, giving us a perfect example of how God wants us to live.

In this flesh that he took on, he became like us. By being baptized, Jesus participated in the new covenant that he himself fulfilled - the salvation of the world. While not all of us could suffer with him to pay the price for our sins, Jesus showed us the way to be united with him so that his own suffering and death would cover that cost for us…and that way is in Baptism. This is what Paul is talking about when he says “baptized into his death”.

Recall last year that we talked about one way to be released from slavery is for the slave to die. The slave owner has no reason to claim the slave anymore if the slave dies. And so the death of the slave effectively ends the owner’s ownership of the slave. Each Sunday when we confess our sins, how do we start? “We confess that we are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves.” We can’t free ourselves, and never could. But to end that bondage, there needed to be a death. And Christ’s death took care of that, because in Baptism, we are linked to Christ, and his death ended that bondage for all who are baptized and believe.

“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.” This is God’s plan - to bring all of us to “newness of life”. I think we take for granted that God does this. Just as in Genesis God speaks and creates light and later the life of the first creatures on the earth, in Baptism God creates new life. The old way of living (the way we see throughout the Old Testament where people try to live without God or live in opposition to God and find out how miserable such a life is) - the old way of living is removed from us in Baptism. God creates a new life in each of us as we are baptized, and we are freed to live the life God wants us to live. The life He created us to live. This new life, this “new creation” that God has given us is part of why we worship Him on the 8th day, or rather, the first day of the new week. It is the first day of a new creation story.

“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.” This is what Paul is getting at. It isn’t just that we are united with Christ in his death…although that’s a greatly important part of it. We are also united with him in his resurrection. Christ being raised from the dead was God’s sign that death had been defeated. But it is also God’s sign that this is His plan for all of us.

In the Creed we say each week, near the end of the 3rd article, we repeat “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the RESURRECTION OF THE BODY, and the life everlasting.” That’s what we’re talking about. A bodily resurrection for all of humanity. God did it first with His Son, and that was a preview of what’s in store for all of us.

In the last 5 days I’ve had 2 funerals - one for my wife’s mom and one for our brother Tony Wilcox’s mom. In both of those services, we talked about the promise of God that we who believe and are baptized will be with Him eternally. That’s where our hope is. That’s what we look forward to. That’s why we don’t live in fear....because we know how it all ends. God wins! And we know all of this because we are baptized. We are united with Jesus because he was baptized and united himself to all of us in our baptism.

I want to finish with this, also from Luther’s Large Catechism: To put it most simply, the power, effect, benefit, fruit, and purpose of Baptism is to save. No one is baptized in order to become a prince, but as the words say, to “be saved.”

25 To be saved, we know, is nothing else than to be delivered from sin, death and the devil and to enter into the kingdom of Christ and live with him forever.

26 Here you see again how precious and important a thing Baptism should be regarded as being, for in it we obtain such an inexpressible treasure.

As we remember today Christ’s own baptism, I hope we can all appreciate exactly what that means for each of us…what a wonderful gift we have been given in our baptism, and what God is calling us to do with that gift. For it is, indeed, a gift so wonderful that it must be shared and not hoarded. It is a gift that can change the world if we let it. I pray that we would all consider what that might look like in the days ahead. Our world could certainly use some more of God’s love in it. Let’s keep our eyes, ears, and hearts open to an opportunity to share that with the world, and see what God can do through us as we strive to live out our baptism.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.