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Sermon for Epiphany 1A: The Baptism of our Lord

January 13, 2002 (8AM)

Today is the First Sunday after the Epiphany—a Sunday that, in our lectionary cycle, is always celebrated as the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. Today our scriptures and prayers are all centered around the time that Jesus came to John the Baptist at the River Jordan, and Jesus was revealed, shown forth, epiphanized as the Son of God, God’s Beloved, the one who, as Peter would put it later in the Book of Acts, “was anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power, to go about doing good and healing all those who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” Today we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus as a sign of Jesus’ unity with God.

But Jesus’ Baptism is a sign of Jesus’ unity with us—it’s a sign of his solidarity with the very depths of the human condition.

All four Gospels record the revelation of God and the Spirit in Jesus at his baptism. But each of the four Gospels tells the story in a slightly different way, with different details and different nuances; and these differences can bring out different dimensions of the baptismal symbolism.

Matthew, for instance, whose version of the Baptism is the one we read today, is the only one to record this little bit of dialogue between John the Baptist and Jesus when Jesus first presents himself to be baptized in the Jordan. At first, John doesn’t want to allow Jesus to be baptized. “I need to be baptized by you,” John says, “and do you come to me?” But Jesus insists: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

The source of John the Baptist’s reticence is not hard to fathom. John has said repeatedly that his baptism is for repentance, that he washes with water as a sign of preparation for the forgiveness of sins. John’s baptism is for sinners, it’s for people who have strayed from God’s Way, who are estranged from God and alienated from God’s purposes for them. But of all the people in the world, of all the human beings in history, Jesus is the one person who doesn’t need John’s baptism: Jesus, as the tradition says, is without sin; Jesus is the one who is not estranged from God, who is not alienated from God’s purpose; Jesus is the one who has not strayed from God’s Way, but who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life made manifest for us.

The fullness of Jesus’ unity with God is yet to be revealed, of course, through Jesus’ life, his ministry, his work, his death, his resurrection, his ascension. All of that is yet to come. But already, here at the beginning, John recognizes Jesus as the one who will embody that fullness of God. John has been promising all along that after him will come one mightier than him, one who will bring baptism with fire and the Holy Spirit, and he recognizes that mighty one in Jesus right away. So of all the people in the world, Jesus is the last one who needs to undergo John’s baptism of repentance, he’s the last one who needs to be submerged in the waters that symbolize alienation from God’s presence, he’s the last one who needs to go down into the depths of the awareness of separation from God.

And yet that is precisely what Jesus has come to do. He enters the waters as a sign of just how far he’s willing to go to be with human beings where they are. Jesus plunges into the depths of human life as we really live it, with all the fear, with all the confusion, with all the sense of separation and isolation, with all the feeling we sometimes get that we don’t know which way is up or how to keep our heads above water or how to find our way back to the surface.

A couple of summers ago a friend took us sailing on Lake Pepin. At one point in the sail we all went for a swim off the back of the boat. I jumped in and went down deep (at least it seemed deep to me)—and I began to feel the water turning cold around my ankles, and the water above was filtering out the sunlight so it started to get dark, and I could feel some pressure building up in my ears—and I had this sudden stab of panic, I kicked out hard and headed back for the surface, I came up gasping hard for breath, and I could see the sailboat slipping away slowly in the breeze, and I swam for my life. Now, I hadn’t been down that far, and I hadn’t been under that long—but I felt like I was back from the brink of the abyss. And I learned that it’s not for nothing that the Psalms use being plunged into deep waters as a metaphor for separation from life and light and the presence of God.

And Jesus jumped into those deep waters. He didn’t have to—of all the people in the world he didn’t have to—but he did, and he did so that he could be with us there, so that he could meet us in the deep places in life, so that he could share our entire humanity with us. And being with us in the deep waters, Jesus shows us that we are not alone there, we are not cut off from God—Jesus shows forth to us that sin and alienation and separation from God’s love is not the final word for us.

And because Jesus comes down in the deeps to us, Jesus also lifts us up to the light with him, Jesus brings us to the surface, so that when we come up out of the waters with him, we will see the heavens open and we will see the Spirit descending and we will hear God name us beloved children.

Jesus shares the depths of human life with us so that we might share the heights of divine life with him.

And that is what the Baptism of Jesus can mean for us today. The Baptism is a showing-forth of Jesus’ divinity—and it is a showing-forth of his humanity as well. The Baptism is a promise that Jesus will be with us when we are in the depths: in pain, in illness, in sorrow, in grief, in sin, in guilt, in fear, in confusion. The Baptism is a promise that Jesus will lift us up, and anoint us with the Holy Spirit and with power, and bring a happy issue out of all our afflictions, because in Jesus God is with us.

So today we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus—and we celebrate our own baptism into Jesus as well. It is in that spirit that we make our prayers today, in that spirit that we renew our own Baptismal Covenant, in that spirit that we promise, with God’s help, to live the baptized life Jesus gives to us.

In the Name of God: Yahweh, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. Amen.