Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
Matthew 3:13-17
We are reading today from Matthew’s gospel, chapter 3, starting with verse 13. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we were doing something similar to watching a television series out of order. We did something like this: Jesus was born, the wise men left, then the wise men came. Well anyway, according to Matthew, what happens next is Jesus’ baptism. In Matthew’s account, we miss from, from what we can guess, Jesus at age two, to Jesus as an adult, leaving us to guess whether or not Jesus was a difficult toddler and whether or not the Son of God as a teen ever snuck out and went hot-roding with Joseph’s mule.
13Then Jesus came from
I get a question about this passage a lot which goes something like this, “I know what baptism means to Christians, but what were the Jews doing here?” Remember, John the Baptist was a Jew. In this scene these are all Jews coming to be baptized. What is going on? If we turn to the Old Testament, we will see.
You see for us, as Christians, the waters of baptism are part of a central sacrament of our faith. As people are brought into the community, they are baptized in the name of God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit. But water had powerful ritual importance in the Jewish tradition as well.
In Exodus 40, God is instructing Moses as to how to make an offering to God once the tabernacle is completed.
12Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance of the tent of meeting, and shall wash them with water, 13and put on Aaron the sacred vestments, and you shall anoint him and consecrate him, so that he may serve me as priest.
If we look in the book of Leviticus, there is a whole section in Leviticus 8 on the ordination of the priests where it tell us that Moses,
6Then Moses brought Aaron and his sons forward, and washed them with water.
This is clearly a ritual washing. There was clearly an understanding that one had to be clean to enter in God’s presence. The idea of ritual washing was not only for priests. The Jewish law is very concerned with the idea of clean and unclean. There were many things that could make one ceremonially unclean. For instance, touching a dead body. Now, the way to get ceremonially clean again was to follow the ritual which included: Leviticus 19:19(b)
Then they shall wash their clothes and bathe themselves in water, and at evening they shall be clean.
The Jewish ritual of cleansing, Mikvah, unlike our Christian baptism was a repeatable rite. It could wash away impurity, it could wash away sin, it could restore one into community. Let’s back up in Matthew a little bit to get some perspective on what John the Baptist is doing here. Matthew 3:4-6:
4Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5Then the people of
So basically what John the Baptist is doing is not the same as what we do, but this Mikvah has the similar idea. Baptism, for us, is a sacrament. We define a sacrament as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. We believe that God has given us physical representations of things that we can’t really see. John wasn’t actually washing sins away, he was using water as a sign of what was going on. In baptism, God is at work through the Holy Spirit and water is the means by which we see it.
13Then Jesus came from
This is one of the most truly awkward moments in the Bible. John knew exactly who Jesus was and knew that he had no need to be ritually cleansed. John’s water was washing away sin and Jesus didn’t have any. John was aware of what would be later written in Hebrews 4:15:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.
“I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
But Jesus is quite insistent.
15But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
There is a lot in this passage. In fact, I could preach a whole hour just on that phrase,
to fulfill all righteousness, but today on this occasion of the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, we come to take the opportunity to reaffirm the commitments we made in baptism. As United Methodists, we do not re-baptize, because we believe baptism is God’s work and therefore cannot ever be undone. Unlike the Jewish Mikvah, baptism is not a repeatable write. But, just like the Jews who returned to the river, we can fall away from our side. We can wander away from our baptismal vows, whether for a moment, or for a day, or for a year. When that happens, when we are not following our side of the bargain in baptism, God is still faithful to the promise. On days like today, we can take the chance to reaffirm what we believe and allow the water to be a powerful reminder of the cleansing grace of God.
Before we reaffirm our commitment to God and allow the water to wash over us, let’s look back at our scripture. John gives into Jesus’ request.
Then he consented. 16And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
There is so much going on in this passage. You should count yourself lucky if you have been here the last two years to hear John the Methodist preach on it. But I just want to point out one more thing in here.
16And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
In this moment, the boundaries between heaven and earth grow strangely thin. This is one of those moments in scripture when God’s kingdom seems to be breaking into our world in an unnervingly powerful way. The boundaries of separation between God’s reality and our reality are, for a moment, not so clear.
16And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Something I believe about the sacraments of the church, Holy Communion which we celebrate nearly every week and baptism which we will take a time to remember this morning, is that, in them, this same sort of thing happens. When we come to the table, when we come to the water, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the boundaries of heaven and earth grow strangely thin and if we listen, very closely, through the ordinary things like bread and wine and water, if we listen very closely, we can hear the almighty God speak clearly to us.
John the Baptist used the water as a sign of people’s repentance for sin. The water represented a washing away of sin. For Christians, it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that truly washed away our sin. But the water is the outward sign of that amazing gift. Water has amazing power. While God never turns away from the promise of baptism, some of us turn away again and again and the water has the power to bring us back.
Pastor John and I are about to do something you might not all like, we are going to get you a little wet. We are not going to baptize you. We are not going to rebaptize you. We are simply going to sprinkle you with water. Here is the invitation: Let this water wash over you. Let it remind you of your baptism, how the water poured over you claimed you and named you as a child of God and how it is still at work in you continuing to re-create you in the image of likeness of God. If you have never been baptized, let this water wash over you and hear it as God’s invitation to you.
After we are done with the water, you are invited to a time of prayer. There will be no formal benediction today. After we are done with the water, you are welcome to pray in your seat. You are welcome to come to the rails. Come considering the promise that God made to you in your baptism, to love you with an everlasting love that will never let you go. And consider the promises you will proclaim to God again today.
