Text: Matthew 3:13-17 

                                                                                     Baptism of Christ

            Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Amen.  The Baptism of Christ is a very unique and interesting passage for us to consider this morning.  It’s not an event that really seems to demand the excitement and pomp of Christ’s nativity or the deep reverence of Ash Wednesday.  Hedged in between these two special events, the Baptism of Christ is more like a Sunday in search of a meaning than a festival day anticipated by the Church.  This does not mean that the Baptism of Christ is without any meaning at all.  There are a multitude of issues that this passage treats like the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, the cleansing of baptismal waters, or the God-man’s association with sinners, just to name a few. 

While all of these things are edifying and perhaps some of you have reflected on them from time to time, the Baptism of Jesus also seems to offer us something more.  For the early church, this particular event in the life of Christ was held with high regard.  It was even more important than the nativity of Christ, which was not regularly celebrated in the church until some confusion arouse in the 4^th century about the relationship between Christ’s divine and human nature.  So what was it that made this event in the life of Christ so important to our brothers and sisters in the early church?  Many biblical scholars and theologians seem to suggest that the real importance was the fact that it stood as a great sign of the nature and goal of Christ’s messianic ministry.  But describing Jesus’ baptism only as representative sign or symbol of his ministry does not seem to do justice either to the early church’s reverence of it or the Gospel writers’ universal inclusion and reference to it.  Perhaps there is more to this event than we usually describe.  Perhaps the baptism of Jesus is not so important because it is a representative sign or symbol but rather because it pertains to the nature of Christ’s work and his person.

In other words, perhaps the real importance is not that Jesus merely associates himself with sinners, but rather that something actually happens to Jesus in his baptism.  And I would like to suggest that this something is the real, actual, and official receiving of our sins.  Just like the scapegoat in the worship of Israel in the OT that received the laying on of hands, the passing of sin from one entity to another, and then was cast out as accursed, so to does Jesus receive our sins by his willful submission to John’s baptism, and then so to is he cast out into the wilderness that will eventually find its way to the cross.

Now this idea may seem kind of strange to many of us since it’s not the typical way we think of Christ’s baptism.  I suspect that we have a natural tendency to identify Christ’s Incarnation, his becoming man in the flesh, with the taking up of humanity’s sin.  But a close examination of Christ’s incarnation will reveal that his entrance into humanity is not so much about his being considered sinful before God but rather about his enfleshment as the sinless one—he is the perfect and pure horn of salvation precisely because he is sinless.  And if this is true that Christ does not assume our sins when he is conceived and born of a virgin, then where does it happen, for at some point he must take upon himself our sins in order to complete God’s plan of salvation?  Perhaps, just maybe, he does this at his baptism. 

Such an understanding seems more fully to explain Christ’s words that by his baptism righteousness will be fulfilled, that is, part of God’s plan of salvation will be meted out—something will actually take place.  In those murky waters at the river Jordan Christ actually did something—he took upon himself our sins in a very real and personal way.  It would be as if each and everyone of us were there at the river Jordon and Christ said to us, “Today I take your sins and lay them upon me, so that God’s plan of salvation which is now taking place may be fulfilled.”

And then what do we see but the heavens above him open since Christ’s mission to forgive the sins of the world is now set in full motion because he actually bears the guilt of the sins for which he must make payment.  And so it happens that the salvation of sinners, the righteousness that must be fulfilled is in view, because the payment for the guilt of those sins no longer rests on our shoulder’s, as was meet and fitting under the Law, but now rests on the shoulders of Jesus, as is now meet and fitting under the Gospel.

And then once he has received the guilt of our sins and the heavens have opened up, which were once closed to all men, behold, the Spirit descends upon Christ in the form of a dove.  To be sure this divine act proclaims to all the divine messianic nature of Christ, but it is also more, it is a sign of God’s peace towards man, as it was in the days of Noah.  And the voice of the Father now exclaims that he is well pleased with his beloved Son.  Its interesting, isn’t it, that God should now be delighted in his Son who has become a sinner in his eyes.  We would expect just the opposite, but God’s ways are not are ways, for him the sin that now rests on Jesus means the death of his own Son, but our life—and this life is pleasing to him.  The voice of the Father is vindication of what John cannot understand—that it is good for Jesus to become a cursed man.  And once again the fulfillment of all righteousness, the salvation of the Lord is in sight.

And so it is that when you are stricken by the guilt of your sins or the difficulties faced in the midst of this sinful life seem to much to bear, you may turn your eyes to Christ’s baptism where Jesus says to you, “See, I have taken your sins and your burdens, and now I am making all things new.”

Our brothers and sisters in the early church, and the Evangelists themselves, were right to assign so much importance to Christ’s Baptism because it is there where Christ shows each and everyone one of you personally that he has really taken yours sins upon himself and he has actually become the cursed one in your place.  The cross may still be ahead of him, but your sins are upon him, and the vindication of the unrighteous is at hand.  This is truly pleasing to the Father.

In Jesus Name.

Amen.

Vicar Mark Taylor