Last week, we heard John’s hymn to the eternal Word, a verse that most of you probably have memorized. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And as John tells us, this Word isn’t a book, or an abstraction. The Word is a flesh-and-blood human being, a man who dwelled among us, who gave us grace and truth: Jesus the Christ.
And today, we see this Divine Word do something curious: he goes to John for baptism just as any ordinary sinner would. So, why would Jesus do this? He wasn’t an ordinary sinner. He needed no forgiveness; in fact, he came to forgive. So, what’s going on here?
First, we should remember who John the Baptist was. A true rebel, he ran afoul of both the Temple establishment and secular authority. John offered a means of grace outside the traditional sacrificial system prescribed in the Torah. This means of grace was new, based on the practice of bathing for ritual purity, but now applied to one’s sinfulness. And it attracted people looking for a fresh start. It attracted those exhausted by the indignities and humiliations of the old realm and searching for the Kingdom of heaven: a Kingdom proclaimed by John.
And then Jesus shows up one day, the King of this new realm. John, of course, is stunned by this. He knows who Jesus is and protests, “I should be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus says something very curious. Here’s my paraphrase of what he says from the Greek. “Don’t worry about that. This is the right thing to do so that all relationships can be made right.”
Jesus is His heavenly Father’s Son. In Matthew’s Gospel, he already knows that—he doesn’t need further divine confirmation of that. But for the sake of the humanity he came to save, he does a public act in obedience to the will of his Abba Father. And in that act, he declares that he is throwing his lot in with a sinful, wayward humanity, once and for all. That is accomplished in this baptism of John’s. Jesus submits to a baptism at the hands of a good, though sinful man, descending into the muddy Jordan waters. In that baptism, he takes on the chaos and the indignities of the human experience. He takes on our limitations, our weaknesses, and even our sinfulness: as St. Paul wrote, “He was made to be sin who knew no sin.” Before he suffered and died for anyone, he took on our sin in these waters. Here, Jesus is truly our Emmanuel. Here, he is truly God with us, as he fully embraces our humanity.
And in doing his Father God’s will, he publicly takes on the mantle of Divine Sonship. His Father declares, “This is my beloved Son,” publicly. Not privately in the dark of night or behind closed walls. This is a stunning revelation of the intention of God toward humanity. God intends solidarity, not distance. Love, not contempt. And mercy, not punishment. Jesus, the only, unique Son of God, takes on everything we are—our weakness, our vulnerability, our sin—so we can be everything he is. Just as he is God’s Son by nature, he comes to adopt us into God’s family, making us likewise sons and daughters of God.
And today, we welcome Judah into that same family. When Judah is baptized here, in a few moments, Jesus will take everything that is his upon himself. Judah can’t be really said to be a sinner, not in any significant sense yet (other than maybe keeping Mom and Dad from getting much sleep!). But here, Jesus will take on all Judah’s sin, from here to eternity. And Jesus will give baby Judah everything that he is: a child of God, beloved by the Father, and worthy of a place with him forever.
But a warning. Know that when Judah is brought up here, he is not just being welcomed into a new family of faith. You are also going to make some powerful enemies for him; enemies that he will fight against his whole life. First is the old, grasping, greedy, sinful, self-centered creature within himself; what Luther calls the “old Adam”. If we’re honest, we all know the old Adam or Eve within us quite well. Second is the world, which promotes a way of life and being that is utterly opposed the Christ. It prioritizes domination, greed, and violence. Any glance at the newspaper shows us that our world is hellbent on going its own way, idolizing itself. And third is the devil himself, who strives to destroy all relationships among human beings themselves and between humans and God. Being baptized is not a pass to easy street. Nor is baptism simply a nice thing to do. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams put it well: "Perhaps baptism really ought to have some health warnings attached to it: 'If you take this step, if you go into these depths, it will be transfiguring, exhilarating, life-giving and very, very dangerous.' To be baptized into Jesus is not to be in what the world thinks of as a safe place. Jesus' first disciples discovered that in the Gospels, and his disciples have gone on discovering it ever since."
But even though baptism can make this world more dangerous for us, it makes our life secure with God. And we are given the help of a huge family of faith, living and dead, to help us navigate this world. This is the family that Peter talks about in our reading from Acts. In God’s family, there are no favorites. No one is better than anyone else. And all the old divisions and walls are utterly relativized in this family of faith. St. Paul writes that among those in Christ, there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female. We dare not apply the world’s standards that view some people better and others as worse. We are all children of God, and we are all loved with a radical love that we do not deserve.
God bless us all, and God bless you, Emily, Ian, Chrissy, and Judah, as you take this step of faith. Thanks be to God. Amen.