The Baptism of Our Lord
January 13, 2008
Text: Matthew 3:13-17
Imagine with me what is might have been like the day Jesus came for baptism. John the Baptizer had been drawing large crowds of people from all parts of the region to hear his message of repentance. From the highest religious leaders down to the common person, they gathered by the hundreds on the shores of the Jordan to hear John’s preaching and eventually to heed his admonition to be baptized.
As we picture this crowd, we can see a man making his way through the crowd. No one really knows who he is, therefore, the crowd does not step aside to let him through nor do they pay any particular attention to him. He is just another face in the crowd.
The man finally makes it to where he is face to face with John. We do not know what their conversation was, but Matthew tells us that John’s reply to Jesus would have been, “I need to be baptized by you.” To John, Jesus was not just another face in the crowd. He is the sinless one who has come to take away the sin of the world.
The problem that we have here is that John’s baptism is a baptism for sinners. The act of descending into the waters of Baptism implies a confession of guilt and a plea for forgiveness in order to make a new beginning. Descending into the water, the candidates for Baptism confess their sin and seek to be rid of the burden of guilt. Then, why is it to this baptism for sinners that Jesus has come?
The irony of this encounter is that Jesus, the sinless one, came to John not to descend into the waters to rid himself of guilt, but to rid sinners of their guilt. Jesus was stepped into the place of sinners, accepting his baptism of suffering and death on behalf of sinners.
Later on in his ministry Jesus would say, “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed.” (Luke 12:50) Jesus’ baptism on the banks of the Jordan River anticipated what would be fulfilled upon his death on the cross.
We have accepted Jesus’ invitation to be baptized. In doing so, we have stepped into the place of sinners, and rightly so, for that is what we are. We blend in with those in a crowd of sinners.
However, our Baptism is not only a place for sinners, but also a place where Jesus, the sinless one, is. Through the water and Spirit of Holy Baptism, Jesus identifies with us. Instead of having the guilt of our sins weigh us down and drown us, Jesus loads the burden of our guilt upon His shoulders. Jesus bore humankind’s sin to the depths of his suffering and death on the cross, so that He now can bear our sin that we might not drown but be raised to newness of life.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the icon of the Baptism of Our Lord shows Jesus lying in a watery tomb. Water represents the underworld, that of Hell, the place we are destined because of our sin.
The Baptism of Jesus is the anticipation of His Death, His going down to the depths of Hell. There, in the house of the Evil One, Jesus combats the strong man and feats him. The powers of sin and death no longer have a hold on us.
Jesus takes the role of the one who suffers for others and transforms our guilt into forgiveness, our condemnation into restoration, our despair into hope, and our death into life. Through his transforming suffering, Jesus turns the underworld around, turns Hell around, knocking down and flinging open the gates of the abyss into which we have fallen time after time after time again.
We are powerless to defeat the strong man, the Evil One. We are powerless over our own sin and death. Yet, Jesus, being the Son of God and having equality with God, takes upon himself all the world’s guilt and sin. Suffering through our sin, Jesus is put to death on the cross. Mysteriously and vicariously, the innocent death of Jesus blots out the guilt of all humankind. The cross of Jesus Christ is God’s promise that we have the entire forgiveness of all our sins and the hope of everlasting life.
The sacrament of Holy Baptism is offered to us as a gift in which we are invited to participate in Jesus’ world-transforming struggle that brings us out of the abyss of Hell, into the glorious company of the saints in heaven. Baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, we die with Christ that we may have newness of life in Him now and forever.
Jesus is not one sinner among many. Rather, He stands before us as the Beloved Son of God. On the one hand, He is the Wholly Other, but by the same token He is our contemporary, who tears open the heavens, destroying our sin and death, that we might enter as the children of God.