2 ½ weeks after hanging the stockings by the chimney with care, Jesus is getting baptized and then (although we won’t read this part of the story until Lent) is thrust into the wilderness for 40 days and nights of temptation and heart-wrenching loneliness. Wow Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I could spend a lot of time on the vagaries of the liturgical calendar, why the powers that be choose what we read from Holy Scripture when, but that would be boring and ultimately pretty unproductive.
Bottom line, what in the world does Jesus’ baptism have to do with the Christmas message of incarnation or the Epiphany theme of shining the light of Christ, of being the light of Christ in this world?
Well if we remember what baptism is all about the answer becomes pretty obvious.
Depending on what religious tradition you were raised in, your answer might differ: more mainline protestant faiths like Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterians would say that baptism is the bath which cleanses us and redeems us from the sin we will enter in life, the mistakes and missteps we’ll take. If we have been washed with the waters of baptism we have an assurance of forgiveness. Forever.
If you were raised in the Roman Catholic and in some more traditional Episcopal churches the act of baptism was viewed as an admittance ticket of a sort. Once baptized you were on the road to being able to do things like receive communion and you were on the inside track to eternal life. Once baptized you were---yes even if you were baptized as an infant---returned to a place of purity, the stain of Original Sin washed away. You had your get out of purgatory for free card stamped.
For those of us who grew up in the more middle of the road Episcopal tradition, baptism, up until 1979 was really just an occasion to name the child and have a tasteful party afterwards. Baptisms were often done privately and frankly, the congregation as a whole didn’t pay much attention to it. Somehow it was the priest’s job to keep track of our souls, and the first task of a family…within the first 6 weeks of a newborn’s life, was to make sure they had the child baptized.
But if you challenged most of those families as to why this baptism was important, the most common answer would have been, “well because that is what is done.”
I’m not saying all these reasons for baptism are necessarily wrong, but they all miss the main point of baptism. The purpose of baptism, the end result is laid out clearly on page 298 of the Book of Common Prayer: “Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body the church. The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble.”
There isn’t any grey area here folks. The bond we make with God and the bond God makes with us at baptism is forever. Nothing NOTHING can diminish, dissolve or destroy it. Nothing we think, nothing we do, nothing we fail to do. It’s indissoluble. It’s impenetrable. It’s forever.
Once we make our promises to God (promises we will renew in a few moments), God reiterates the promise, the covenant God made with us through Jesus Christ some 2,000 yrs ago on the banks of the River Jordan: you are my child, my beloved and with you I am well pleased. {Ascension translation}
A baptism is another seal placed upon the ancient covenant God made with us, God’s people.
I guess there is a certain logical order to celebrating Christ’s baptism a few weeks after his birth—after all that’s how baptism occurs for most of us. We’re born and then a few weeks or months later, we are baptized.
But that’s not why we have the Baptism of Christ on our calendar today.
We commemorate Jesus’ baptism 2 ½ weeks after his birth because it is the next step in comprehending just what happened with his birth and life among us (the incarnation) it is the next step in understanding how we are to be a manifestation of Christ in the world (the Epiphany).
Jesus wasn’t baptized because he needed to be admitted to some religious organization. He wasn’t baptized to be washed of sin, He wasn’t baptized so Mary could have a tasteful luncheon afterwards. Jesus was baptized because he was fulfilling all righteousness. He was fulfilling the act of the incarnation…he was being submerged in the muddy waters of the Jordan to emerge reborn, renewed and ready for his ministry. He was dying to his life as a regular young man and being born into his life as our Savior, our Teacher, our Lord. Jesus’ baptism strengthened him, readied him, oriented him to his life of Faith.
Baptism—Jesus’ and our own-- provides the blueprint for a life of Faith. It equips us to see Christ at work in the world and to be Christ in this world.
Why do we commemorate Jesus’ baptism so soon after the celebration of his birth? Because Jesus’ birth, served as the inaugural act of forming the Body of Christ on earth. God came to live among us, as one of us in an effort to bring God’s Kingdom to reign in our world. God took on a human body in order to establish an impenetrable indissoluble Body of Love and Light, of Hope and Joy right here, right now. And that Body grows, its reach lengthens, its impact increases each and every-time a person is baptized.
The goal of our faith is to spread the Body of Christ, by being the Body of Christ. We are equipped to do that by virtue of our baptism, we are empowered to do that by the community of faith in which we live and worship and we are drawn to do that through the Love of God as given to us in that baby laid in a manger, that man baptized in the River Jordan and that Lord whose light shines on us in all that we do.
So yes, the baptism of the adult Jesus seems a bit disruptive so soon after Christmas but disruption is really the name of the Christian game. And it is what we’ve all been baptized into. Now and forever. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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