Sermon Notes from January 9th
In 1521, Martin Luther was sequestered in Wartburg Castle in the Thuringian region of Germany. He was absorbed in the revolutionary work of translating the Hebrew and Greek of the bible into the vernacular High German of the local churches. His own writings reveal profound distress and disruption - it was aching work, and Luther was convinced that the devil himself was scheming against him. Throughout the castle, he could be heard shouting “I AM BAPTIZED! I AM BAPTIZED!” Against the forces of whatever evil he believed to be at work, he raised his own baptism as the only necessary and powerful defense.
The Gospel text from Luke this morning offers us just one of the four Gospel recollections of Jesus’ own baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. The gospels are always very deliberate - there isn’t a word or phrase or chapter that does not tell us something immediately important about Jesus. The fact that this story is included in each of the four gospel texts insists on our attention to the riches of its mystery. -- But there are some questions here. Baptism, as we are often taught, is what removes from human beings the stain of sin. It is, according to the Book of Common Prayer, “the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.” But if Jesus is the Son of God, and if Jesus was, as the Letter to the Hebrews proclaims, like us in every way but sin, why would Jesus need to be baptized at all? What sin could be taken away from one who is sinless? What unity could be more intimate than being God’s own son?
In the telling of this story in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus comes to John the Baptist and is initially refused - “I need to be baptized by you” John exclaims, “and yet you come to me?” Jesus insists, declaring, “let it be so now. For it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” To fulfill all righteousness. The phrase in the Bible suggests that this means both to show obedience to God and to fulfill the prophecy of the Old Testament’s hope for the coming Messiah. Underlying everything, this language of fulfillment and righteousness indicates that something is to be made complete. Something in this act is the summation of the hope of the cosmos that has longed for redemption. Something here is perfected, consummated - rendered immaculate, integral, and true. Something here is made whole.
In this baptism of Jesus, God - the sweet and perfect divine in Christ - stands in the waters of the earth that he created. In this baptism, humanity - the human person of Christ - becomes wreathed in majesty. The water that was once the medium of God’s judgment and purification in the story of Noah is consecrated in Christ, the One through whom our own judgment and purification are mediated in mercy……..
St. Maximus of Turin, in his sermon on the baptism of Christ from the late 4th century, writes that, “Christ is baptized not that he may be sanctified by the waters, but that he himself may sanctify the waters.” What a magnificent idea. There is no individual sin, here, to be reconciled, or personal unity with God to be sought, but as Christ himself steps into the waters, all of Creation is borne between his shoulders. It is here that the Holy Trinity is manifested completely - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is Genesis imagery here: remember at the story of creation: the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. Here again, the Spirit hovers over the waters. At the Creation, something new was brought into being and here again: there is something new, something created.
Here we see nothing less than the complete and total revelation of the triune God inaugurating the public ministry of Jesus. Before his miracles, before his teaching, before his calling of the apostles and his feeding of thousands, before his Passion, it is this baptism through which the Father confides, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
How revelatory that Jesus begins his public ministry by stepping into the place of sinners. Notice that there is a crowd, there, at the Jordan River. The gospels tell us that he is one of many. John has been speaking to a group: preaching and baptizing. Jesus was there among others who - had they not known him - likely thought he was just like them. Just a man and a sinner, a person like them with a heart grown ill from absence and decay. He stands with them, enters into the water with them, and so anticipates the Cross itself. In this act of standing in the very place of sinners, Christ gives eternity a foretaste of his Passion, death, and Resurrection. He is here already the Lamb of God, the Passover who is sacrificed for us.
It is through our own baptism that we come to recognize the magnitude of salvation. We know, intimately, what it is to suffer and yearn and lose and decay. We know what it is to be dragged into the desert of our own spirit, to stare temptation in the face - to see the devils among us so agile and strong alongside the humiliation of our weakness. But Jesus, too, was a traveller of the desert.
As Christ consecrated all waters of baptism, our own baptismal seal as his own forever unites us to him, and each burden is rendered light when we bring it to his river. St. Paul in his letter to the Romans writes, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
Just as Jesus’ baptism heralded the conversion and transformation of all of creation, our baptism calls to us as children of God to let our own hearts be knit into this holy work of redemption. Martin Luther in that castle did not yell, “I WAS BAPTIZED.” He yelled, “I AM BAPTIZED.” Baptism is a continuing state of being! It is a radical affirmation of the completeness of God’s care, and if we are living it - praying in it, swimming in it, holding it close - it will show us who we are.
We are asked by the whole Church, “will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers? Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord? Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself, strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” And we answer, “I will, with God’s help.” May Jesus’ baptism remind us of the power of this promise.
Against the rot of pride and fear, let your heart cry - I am baptized. Against temptation in the desert - against insidious lusts for power, safety, or stability - I am baptized. Against indifference, cruelty, ignorance, loneliness - I am baptized. Set aside whatever it is that has kept you from trusting in God’s sweetness, and come down into the river at his bidding. It is Jesus himself who showed us how.
Preached by Mother Brit Frazier
The Baptism of the Lord 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia