One of the
best things I get to do as a pastor--maybe the best thing I get to do--is to do
baptisms. I really love to do baptisms.
I’ve done them for people everywhere from a month old to eighty-four
years old. I’ve done baptisms in filled churches and I’ve done baptisms
where there were just a few people there.
And no matter how many people are there, and no matter what the
circumstances are, a baptism is always a special and wonderful thing. In
fact, I can honestly say that every time I’ve done a baptism, I’ve felt the
presence of God.
Now don’t
take that the wrong way. I don’t mean that to be arrogant statement at
all. God does not show up because of anything I do. In fact, the first time I did a baptism, I
really felt like kind of a fraud. I mean, there I was pouring out some
water and reading some words and then putting a little of that water on
someone’s head, and I thought something was going to happen because of
that? Who did I think I was?
And yet,
somehow, despite all my flaws, and in also despite the fact that in that first
baptism I really was not too sure what I was doing or if I was going to do it
right, I still felt the presence of God. God was there, not because of
me, but in spite of me. God was there
because showing up for a Christian baptism is what God does.
In our Bible reading for today, we learn about Jesus’
baptism. And that was a special and wonderful thing, too. And obviously, God was present there, and
everyone there felt God’s presence. So let’s take a look at it.
John the Baptist was out by the Jordan River. He
was baptizing people. In fact, he had
baptized lots of people before Jesus came to the river. I mean,
obviously: that’s why he was called John
the Baptist. John had attracted quite a
following with his baptisms. He was pretty well-known in the area at the
time. People from all over were coming
to see him.
And you
know, he was kind of a sight to see. If you remember the description of
John the Baptist, he’s a guy who’s living out in the wilderness, wearing
clothes made of camel’s hair, eating locusts. Saying things like, “After
me comes the one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not
worthy to stoop down and untie.” Telling
people they needed to repent and be baptized so their sins could be forgiven.
He was a
sight to see, but people clearly did not just come to see the show.
Somehow, this strange dude with the funny clothes and weird diet was really
effective. In the gospel of Mark, we’re told that “the whole Judean
countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” went out to him, confessed their
sins, and were baptized by John. Even allowing for the possibility that
this is a generalization, that’s still a whole lot of people baptized by John.
And then
Jesus comes out to be baptized by John. And the immediate question that
comes to mind is: why? Why would
Jesus feel that he needed to go out to the Jordan River to be baptized by John?
Remember,
the point of John’s baptism was repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
What sins did Jesus have to repent of?
What sins did Jesus need to be forgiven for? Jesus was the divine
Son of God. Why would Jesus need to be
baptized?
It cannot have been that he was being
baptized for the forgiveness of our sins. That was the point of Jesus’
death on the cross. If being baptized
could’ve gotten forgiveness or our sins, Jesus would not have had to be
crucified. There may have been times Jesus wished it could’ve worked that
way, but apparently it could not. It
appears that Jesus had to die so that our sins could be forgiven. He
could not be baptized so that our sins could be forgiven. There had to be something else going on here.
It was not
simply to follow Jewish ritual and tradition, either. Baptism was not a
particularly important or necessary ritual in Jewish culture. You can
find some roots of it there, in the cleansing rituals that Jewish people had,
but there was no thought that people had to be baptized so their sins could be
forgiven and they could get right with God. So that’s no answer, either.
Some have
suggested that Jesus was baptized by John to demonstrate that he and John were
allies, that Jesus’ ministry was aligned with and was in fact the fulfillment
of John’s ministry. And of course, it does demonstrate that. The thing is, though, that’s only something
that really becomes clear when we look at it from a future perspective.
As we read
the story now, we can see it showing that Jesus’ ministry was the fulfillment
of John’s statement that “after me comes the one more powerful than I” and “I
baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit”. We
can see that now, but there’s no reason to think people saw it then. Remember, at this time, Jesus had not yet
started his ministry. He was nobody
special. There was no big deal made of
it when Jesus came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. Nobody
said, “Wow, Jesus is here!” He was just
one of the crowd, another guy standing in line, one of the many people coming
to John to be baptized.
I looked at
several explanations for Jesus’ baptism as I was preparing this message, and
quite honestly I did not find any of them convincing. I’m not saying they
were a bunch of baloney or anything.
Many of the explanations people suggest may have been a factor in
it. But none of them seem to really
answer the question.
The fact is
that we really don’t know why Jesus decided to be baptized by John. I
think it’s possible that even Jesus did not fully understand it. Did Jesus know what was going to happen when
he went to the Jordan River to be baptized? Did he know that, as Matthew
tells us, heaven would be opened and the Spirit of God would descend like a
dove and alight on him? Did Jesus know
that a voice was going to come from heaven saying “This is my Son, whom I love;
with him I am well pleased”?
He may have
known all that, of course. After all, he was Jesus, the divine Son of
God. He may have known exactly how all this was going to play out.
But I think
it’s at least possible that he did not know. I think it’s possible that
Jesus, himself, did not really know why he needed to go to John and be
baptized. It’s possible that he did not know what was going to happen
when he was baptized. He just knew,
somehow, that it was something he needed to do. It’s possible that he
just knew he needed to do this and he knew that something was going to happen
when he did it. It’s possible that he
knew that somehow, in some way, he knew he was going to feel the presence of
God the Father through this baptism ritual, even if he did not know how that
was going to happen.
And when you
think about it, a lot of times that’s how we approach baptism today, too.
We bring children to be baptized.
Sometimes we wait until they’re teenagers for them to be baptized.
Sometimes we wait until we’re adults to be baptized. Sometimes we baptized by sprinkling,
sometimes by pouring, sometimes by immersion. We baptize at all kinds of
ages and in all kinds of ways.
And yet, we
cannot explain exactly what happens and how it happens when we do that.
I’m the one standing up here doing it, and I cannot explain it. People take some vows, I pour some water into
a basin, I say some words, I put some of the water on someone’s head.
Think about this: suppose you had no
knowledge of what baptism was, and you walked in here and saw me doing that
stuff I just described. You’d probably
wonder what kind of weird people were in this place, right? You’d think
this was a really strange ritual of some sort.
But still,
we do it. We do it, and we expect something to happen as a result of
it. And something does happen as a result. We cannot explain how, exactly, but it does.
As United
Methodists, we believe, as do many other denominations, that baptism is one of
God’s “means of grace”. What does that mean? It means baptism is one of the ways God gives
us grace, and it’s one of the ways we receive grace from God.
In other
words, when we are baptized, God shows up. God’s holy presence is
there. God’s Holy Spirit descends on us,
just like it descended on Jesus at his baptism. Now, I’ve never seen a
dove come down from heaven when I’ve baptized someone. I’ve never heard a voice from heaven,
either. But each of us is a child of God.
Each of us is loved by God. And
each of us has God’s Spirit in our hearts and in our souls. And one of
the ways that happens for us is through baptism.
We may not
fully understand that. But that’s okay.
Nowhere in the Bible does God tell us that we have to understand
everything. The Bible tells us to trust.
The Bible tells us to have faith.
The Bible tells us to love. The
Bible tells us to follow. It does not tell us we always have to
understand.
We may not
understand everything, but we understand enough. We understand, as Jesus
did, that we need to be baptized. We may
not fully understand why. We may not fully understand what happens when
we’re baptized. But we understand that
we need to be. And we understand that when we are, somehow, in some way,
God is going to be present. God’s Holy
Spirit is going to descend on us. And then, even if we don’t see a dove,
and even if we don’t hear a voice, we will know. Somewhere inside us, we will know. We’ll know that we are children of God.
We’ll know that we are loved by God.
We’ll know that God’s Spirit is in our hearts and in our souls. And as long as we do our best to listen to
God’s Spirit and to follow God’s Spirit, God will be well-pleased with us.
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