Text: Luke 2:15-22 

S. Baptism of Our Lord.10 “Dirty God” Luke 3:15-22

“He’s pretty…weird; a classmate of yours from college though, maybe that explains it a little?” one of my former vicars said with a smile as he was sharing with me his views of the faculty at one of our seminaries. “In what way exactly is he weird?” I asked. “Well,” the vicar said, “his prayers, for one thing, that he says to open up every class. They are these odd, off-beat, ex corde things.” I told the vicar I still didn’t get it, exactly. Because this particular vicar had a marvelous gift for mimicking the faculty, he launched into an impression [which was what I was really hoping for all along…]

“Well,” he said, “it starts something like this... he goes ‘will you pray with me?’ like there’s a good chance we wouldn’t, if we knew what was coming, and then before we have a chance to decline he goes: [burying his face in his hands] ‘O God! You are so…. [best Bale-Batman voice] dirty. You dirty God! Dirty with the muck and the filth of our transgressions! Dirty with the stench and stink of our sin! Such a dirty God! You who are clean, purity unimaginable, You came down by Your grace, moved by Your infinite mercy into our dark and sin-stained world and in the Jordan River, in the flesh of Your only Son, You became so dirty with our sin, that by Your bleeding and dying, we would finally be….clean.’

“Or something like that,” the vicar said with a little grin. “That is peculiar,” I said, quite pleased. “But very moving. No, I don’t remember him praying like that in college, but then again I don’t remember us spending all that much time praying in college. Maybe that was our problem, why we turned out the way we did?” The vicar was too polite to comment any further on that.

“Dirty God” became a favorite little prayer of ours. We had (actually still have) a standing dare to open a pastor’s conference with that prayer if we are ever invited to lead the brethren in prayer at Winkel or some other such forum. If you ever see this vicar, all you have to do is extend your hands and go “will you pray with me—the ‘Dirty God’ prayer?” and his expression will give him away. You could work through our last six vicars, when you see them, and eventually you’ll figure out which one it was… if you haven’t guessed already.

Every time the Baptism of Our Lord comes up, I can’t help it (thanks to this former vicar)—I think of the Dirty God prayer. It all comes back, racing through my mind, in the imitated voice of my former college classmate. My bones grew weary of holding it in, so I share it with you this morning. I’m sure you’ll keep it just between us. Our little secret. [“Dear President Diefenthaler: Well, here we go again! Since the last time I wrote you, pastor has…]

But this year, reading the text and having the mental tape of “Dirty God” playing along in my mind as I read, as it always does now, thanks to that vicar (we won’t even discuss how the same vicar ruined the Maundy Thursday foot washing scene for me…) I started thinking quite seriously why it is that the “Dirty God” prayer is a standing joke between my former vicar and myself? Why do we find it odd and embarrassing?

I mean, I know it’s the linkage of dirt with God. A God who is dirty, who isn’t squeaky clean is of course not a God most people are comfortable picturing or praying too. It makes us squirmy. If anyone is clean it must be God, right? And since Jesus is the Son of God, you just don’t picture Him with dirt under His fingernails or grungy from a long day’s hike, do you? You certainly don’t think of Him as having even a whiff or taint of sin about Him, do you? You don’t hear Him saying “So these two guys go into a bar and…” No, to force a picture into your mind of a dirty, grungy God just seems… wrong.

And it is wrong… except in the way that it’s right. With Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan, we’re in the deep end of the pool, in way over our heads, into a mystery so profound we’ll never get our head around it or our feet back on familiar ground once we take a dip with Him in that water. My goodness, you could drown in that Jordan River water with Jesus! Really, you could! It could sweep you right off your feet and way downstream, wash you into a whole new world: into visions and wonders of which you’ve never even dreamed… it could, if you’re not careful.

I go over the “Dirty God” prayer and struggle to find what’s wrong with it theologically. In fact, the more it plays in my head, the more I see that the joke just may be on me. The joke may be my theology is just too prim and proper and clean-cut. The joke just may be that my picture of God is too conventional, clean, and conservative to fit the Lord who is dunked in the Jordan by John.

Even John, fire and brimstone preacher that he was, couldn’t get his head around it either. He didn’t think it was right to Baptize Jesus. Because John’s baptism was a sinner’s baptism. It identified you as a sinner under God’s well deserved judgment. It was a baptism that put the dirt on you, made it come to the surface so it could be seen, which is probably why John chose the Jordan, then as now, a pretty filthy river.

John tells us how the Christ will come baptizing with fire and the Spirit, with a winnowing fork in His hand to take out the trash and burn it. But when Jesus shows up, He does this in such a completely unilateral and unimaginably gracious way that even John is stunned.

We all know that Jesus was born sinless. We all know He died on the cross as sin personified, bearing our sin to save us.

So where did He pick up our sin? Because a Savior who is never tainted or touched by the world’s sin, who never gets His hands dirty, so to speak, is not a Savior who can help us. Yet, even while He bears our sin, He must still be truly clean and pure Himself, otherwise He’s not the spotless lamb of Israel’s sin offering. So how would He do that?

By Baptism. Jesus goes sinless to the Jordan River, the squeaky clean God, and covers Himself with the world’s sin by John’s Baptism, becomes sin personified, yet still holy Himself, pure. And ever after He is hanging with the sinners, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the disreputable types as our friend. He hangs for us; He promises that by a Word, by His body, His blood, His Baptism—we are washed clean.

John’s Baptism put the sin of the world on Jesus. Made Him our Dirty God. I don’t understand it—how the sinless One can be Sin to save us. I don’t get why He’d do it. But give me the Dirty God, every time, please!—the embarrassing, the unconventional, the I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-Him-God. Because this is the only God who can make me clean…

Now, how would He do that? Baptism! By Baptism in the Name of Jesus, He exchanges our murk for His sparkling clarity. He went into the Jordan clean and came up dirty to draw us to Him that dirty sinners like us in His Baptism will be clean. Don’t try to understand it—just dive in, drown with Jesus in that deep water, and the dirty, grungy God of the Jordan will make you clean in a way you never really will understand. But you will hear the Voice say of you, too: “This is My beloved Son, My Daughter: with you I am well pleased.” For Christ’s sake… He is. Amen.

Pastor Kevin Martin