Matthew 3:13–17
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. 16 And 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. 17 And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."
I - sometimes - find myself not too excited about Baptism of Our Lord. In fact, I sorta grimace at the thought of once again going down to the Jordan. . .
However, usually, by the time I preach on it, I see it as a good starting point for the venture into the Epiphany season and the new year.
As the year begins, as folks have thought - a little - about New Years’ resolutions, having thought about themselves in a sort of critical or abstract way, this might well be a good time to touch on Baptism as God’s gift of identifying you as God’s own. As one in whom God is “well pleased.”
I like Daniel Patte’s commentary on Matthew - and he goes on quite a bit about Jesus’ vocation, his identity given in the name Emmanuel, and the name Jesus - “he will save his people from their sins.”
I suspect that our congregations (and our own darn selves) might be well served by reflecting on Baptism - Vocation - other Baptism themes abound, and they are probably all fitting for our preaching on this text. Reflecting on the theme of God’s claim on you in Baptism - I like this line from my sermon last year. Noting that some think their baptism is not meaningful to them because they can’t remember it. . . (names have been changed to. . . ) -
If Bilbo or Frodo were to complain that they did not remember the day when their adoption was finalized, I would tell them, it didn’t matter. “What matters,” I would say, “is that your daddy held you in his arms at the court house and cried happy tears, he knew that no matter what, for all our lives, we belonged to one another.”
As you venture into the year ahead, you are God’s own. You are called. You are sent. I like this idea from Loving Jesus by Mark Allen Powell. He says that we sometimes talk as if forgiveness means that God loves you in spite of who you are. Yet, could the Good News of the Gospel be heard in a fresh way, if the congregation heard ? - “God loves you because of who you are.” God has proclaimed about you, “with you I am well pleased.”
2 comments:
Here's how Mark Allan Powell concludes his book Loving Jesus: while God's pronouncement of delight is announced about Jesus, this might still be an interesting meditation on God's delight in us:
"Grace is more than pity. God made us to be lovable, and so we are. God's love is not blind or silly, but based on perception clear and profound. Indeed, God sees things in us that we might not see in ourselves, including our potential, or even better, our destiny. God adores us not out of foolish infatuation, but because we are, in fact, adorable. God takes delight in us not because God is easily delighted, but because we are in indeed delightful. God loves us not because God is too dense or generous to see us as we are, but because we actually are essentially and ultimately lovely.
This is the great truth that cuts into our complicated lives. Loving Jesus begins and ends with this truth. Loving Jesus is our way of coming closer to this God, of adoring the God who adores us, of taking delight in the God who delights in us, of loving the God who loves us first."
Loving Jesus - 195-96, Fortress 2004
some stuff from my reading
As Karl Barth has rightly said, Jesus Christ is the Lord who became servant by going into the far country and concealing his glory. But by his condescension into servanthood, the Lord does not disfigure himself. He reveals his true nature as one who came not to rule but to serve {Church Dogmatics, IV/1, p. 59). Epiphany, therefore, is the manifestation to all humanity that the God-with-us-ness of Christmas (1:23) is not finally the presence of mysterious otherness but rather is the revelation of God's radical solidarity with us. We are then to proclaim that the one whom we confess in baptism to be Lord of all is, first, servant of all.
Oscar Cullman observed:
The baptism of Jesus is related to dikaiosynên, not only his own but also that of the whole people. The word pasan is probably to be underlined here. Jesus' reply, which exegetes have always found difficult to explain, acquires a concrete meaning: Jesus will effect a general forgiveness.
reflections by Carol Mork W&W Fall 1989
The baptized are received as "fellow members of the body of Christ, children of the same heavenly Father and workers with us in the kingdom of God."4 Jesus' baptism, his entry into public ministry, reminds all believers that baptism marks our entry not into private Christianity, but into public witness, into the public mission of Jesus to the world.
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