Beloved Son

Scriptures: Isaiah 42:1-9, Psalm 29

Acts 10:34-43               Matthew 3:13-17

 Among the records kept by churches, including Emanuel Church, are records of baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals.  Emanuel’s date back to 1861.  The older records are a challenge for me to read, as they’re in German, which I don’t read at all fluently.  But we do get inquiries from time to time from people of German ancestry whose grandparents and great and great-great grandparents lived in Bridesburg.  Nancy [a lifelong member of the church] used to respond to these – she could read the old style German - and I still do what I can, given the limitations of my ability to read German.  The records generally include items such as the date, the parents, the godparents, and the name of the pastor who did the baptism.  Such records document that the person baptized grew up within the care of the church – or, if baptized as an adult, that the person made a conscious decision to follow Christ in the company of a community of faith.

You could say that, in a sense, today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel gives us Jesus’ baptismal record.  We don’t have a date, nor are Jesus’ earthly parents mentioned as being present.  However, we are told that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.  And I suppose you could say that, like any proud papa at the baptism of a son, the smile of Jesus’ heavenly father beamed bright, as Jesus saw a dove descending and heard a voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” 

Today, as Protestants, we recognize baptism and holy communion as the two sacraments of the church – two actions in which Jesus promised that God would be especially present for us.    In Judaism, part of the ceremony by which a non-Jew would signify conversion to the Jewish faith by immersing the entire body in a river, or in a ritual bath, called a mikveh, that was connected to flowing water.  It was a sign of washing away the sins of one’s life outside Judaism, in preparation for entering the Jewish faith.

Of course, John the Baptist was known for doing….guess what.....baptisms.  The thing that was different about John’s baptism is that those coming to him were not Gentiles seeking to convert to Judaism, but Jews seeking to turn their lives around and live out their Jewish faith in a more committed way – almost a kind of re-conversion to a more vital Jewish faith and practice.  And as Jews come to be baptized and to recommit to the faith, John is telling them about a Messiah to come, One sent by God who is greater than John.

And then along came Jesus.  While after 2000 years in the church, we’ve kind of lost the shock value of what Jesus is doing, it still comes through in today’s reading if we pay attention.  John’s asking himself – is Jesus a Gentile seeking to convert to Judaism? – clearly not; Jesus was born and raised a Jew.  Is Jesus a lapsed Jew wishing to turn His life around and find his way back to the faith – no, Jesus was completely and unfailingly faithful.  In fact, John senses that Jesus is the One sent by God about whom John had been preaching.  And yet, here’s Jesus standing in front of John asking to be baptized.  And so John asks Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?”  And Jesus replies, “Let it be so for now, for it is proper in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”  And so John consents, and Jesus goes down into the cold, muddy water of the Jordan.  As Jesus comes out of the water, he has a vision of the Spirit coming down as a dove, and a voice proclaims from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with Him I am well-pleased.”

Jesus told John this must happen “to fulfill all righteousness”. We might ask, “What righteousness was Jesus fulfilling?”    And so, Jesus, God’s beloved Son, was baptized, not on his own behalf, but on our behalf; not for his sins, but for ours.  In Jesus, God so completely identified with humanity that in Jesus, God went through the whole human experience – being born, being helpless, being hunted, and now, at his baptism, Jesus, God in the flesh, goes down into water - and steps into the muck and mire and mess of the Jordan river, steps into the mud along with the worms and frogs and whatever was living there,  on our behalf.  And as Jesus comes out of the muck and out of the water, God’s spirit comes down as a dove, gentle, graceful, beautiful.  And this tells us the way in which, in Jesus, God is with us.  John the Baptist ranted of fire, fire, unquenchable fire, but in Jesus, God comes to us not with fire, but with gentleness, with vulnerability.  In the words of our reading from Isaiah,

“I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
   he will faithfully bring forth justice.”

Like a dove, Jesus is vulnerable, ultimately giving his life a ransom for many, a ransom for us.  In our baptism, we are united with Christ.  As Paul wrote to the church at Rome,

“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, 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.

We are united in Christ’s death and in Christ’s resurrection – and we are to live as those who are united in Christ’s life.  As Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, “It is not I who live, but Christ in me.”  And so, in our baptism, our lives are claimed by Christ.   Christ lives in each of us – our hands his hands, our feet his feet, our eyes his eyes.

Our society, our culture, tries to  hang lots of labels on each of us – citizen, member of a political party, consumer, shopper, worker, unemployed person, person on public assistance – labels of nationality, of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, of age, of disability – lots and lots of labels.  And yet, before all of these labels is our baptismal identity.  No matter what others say about us, no matter what others do to us, nothing can change that identity:  child of God, disciple of Christ, member of Christ’s church.

Through baptism, we are marked forever as God’s beloved children.  May we say, in the words of the old Heidelberg Catechism with which many of us grew up, that our only comfort, in life and death, is that we belong, not to ourselves, but to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who through the waters of baptism has claimed us for his very own.  Amen.