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S. Baptism of our Lord.26 Matt. 3:13-17

But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness’.

The Baptism of our Lord has always been a major festival in the Eastern Orthodox Church from the earliest days. Because the East saw something that the West still to this day often misses. It pains me to admit this! Because I’m a firm believer that “East is least and West is Best!” And that is most certainly true. But, sometimes, the blind squirrel finds a nut…

The nut the East found is that the Baptism of our LORD answers an important question. St. Paul says that “for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” And uhm, when and how was that done?

Well, by the Baptism of John in the Jordan, the sinless Son of God was made to be sin personified and he bore that burden 3 years to the cross where he laid down his sinless perfect life to pay for the sins of the whole world and rose victorious over it for us all.

Think about it: Jesus took on our human nature from his mother Mary at his incarnation by the Holy Spirit. He was made exactly like us—save without sin! So we saw him last week in the temple, a sinless 12 year old boy who shows the knowledge and understanding any 12 year old boy will have if he receives the Word of God without sin!

It seemed superhuman—the 12 year old Jesus’ wisdom and understanding that confounds the great teachers of the Torah. But as we said last week, in his state of humiliation, from his conception in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit till his resurrection from the dead, Jesus didn’t always use his divine powers, and never used them for himself, but simply allowed the faithful to draw on that power to heal and save and forgive, often without his knowledge as with the woman with the flow of blood who simply touched his robe secretly in a mob and was healed.

Jesus turned in the crowd and asks: “who touched me?” because “he felt power go out from him”. But he didn’t use that power to turn and identify the woman! This is a paradigmatic passage for our understanding of what Jesus knew and how he knew it. Too often we think that Jesus as God was always drawing on his divine omniscience to answer bible questions or do math problems or resist the devil.

But, NO! Paul says in Phil. 2 that “though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be held onto, but emptied himself taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on cross.”

Which is to say quite plainly that though Jesus is God, he emptied himself of all the divine power and prerogatives and made no use of that for himself but operated only in human mode if you will. “All the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Jesus,” Paul says elsewhere, so to “empty himself” doesn’t mean he ceases to be God, but he doesn’t draw on his divine power. If he drew even a little on his divine power he could not die!

So, in the temple last week, with his knowledge and understanding we are not seeing divine wisdom, but the wisdom any 12 year old boy has who hears the scriptures and takes them at face value! This is something nearly all Western readers miss, for example in the verse at the end of our Gospel that says,

“and when Jesus was baptized, straight away he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold a voice from heaven said: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”

The Greek pronouns “him/he” naturally refer to the subject of the sentence—Jesus! It was to him the heavens opened, Jesus is he (3rd person singular) who saw the Holy Spirit descend and rest on him. Western believers, convinced that Jesus needs no such vision—Spirit as dove descending, the Father’s voice claiming him his beloved Son to know who he is, that God is pleased with his baptism—think this refers to John. But neither Greek nor Jesus works like that!

That John and others could also see the heavens open, the descent of the Dove, and hear the voice John witnesses. But it was directed to Jesus, who learned the Word in human mode by the same means of grace we have!

All Westerners have a tough time with this because of our prejudice that Jesus is always using a little divine power for daily tasks. But… St. Paul makes it quite clear (as do Gospel events like Jesus not knowing who touched him to draw healing power from his latent divinity) that Jesus doesn’t cheat like that! If he did, he could not have died—and the cross wasn’t the first time he emptied himself of the divine power and prerogatives that are his by nature. It was the last in a long line of instances of 33 years of operating in human mode only and thus fully identifying with our mortal state, save without sin.

But Jesus needed to identify with our sin, take it on himself without actually committing it in order to conquer sin by his death and resurrection. And that’s what John’s Baptism did!

John is a priest of Israel by birth (we often forget!) and his Baptism is just like the OT priestly rite of the SCAPEGOATS where Israel confesses their sin and the priest takes it and transfers it by laying on of hands to two goats—one that gets sacrificed by slitting its throat and the other that gets sent into the wilderness to Azazel the demon of the desert.

John’s baptism identified you as a sinner, which is why John baulked at Jesus identifying as a sinner; yet that’s NECESSARY for Jesus’ sinless life, death and resurrection to take away our sin!

Jesus is both goats: he will be slain on the cross and the first thing he does after baptism is to go into the wilderness to battle with Azazel (the devil) being tempted for 40 days!

This is as major a festival as Christmas or Easter, people! Because, without the sinless Lamb taking on the sin of the world, we’re still stuck with our sin. And by Baptism in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we share fully in the death and resurrection of Jesus as William Larsen Wharton III does this morning…

As the voice from heaven sounds to us in the Word, as we feed on the Lamb’s flesh at his Table, so; by faith, through these holy means of grace, we all enjoy the Peace surpassing understanding, guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.