EPIPHANY 1 - The baptism of Jesus

MATTHEW 3: 13-17

Doesn’t time fly? Last week, we were contemplating those mysterious wise men from the east, the magi bringing their gifts to the infant Jesus. Now in the space of a mere week, he has become a grown man of some thirty or so years and he is once more down south - only this time he has come seeking baptism from Cousin John.

He’s what? Yes, he is seeking to be baptised. And if you feel uncomfortable about that, well you are in good company. For John himself is not exactly won over on the idea. And he only does so as a result of a bit of persuasion on the part of Jesus.

And call me a heretic if you will but I’m inclined to agree with John. After all, his mission is about preparing the way for the greater more powerful one, the one whose sandals he is unfit to carry - Jesus! So surely, he has a point when he is reticent about baptising Jesus. It is a sign of things being turned upside down.

And yet it happens. It is no accident or moment of madness. For as Matthew records it;

"Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John.”

That is putting it clearly as a very deliberate event, an event that serves as a springboard for Jesus as he prepares to be the very embodiment of good news. And more than that, it is a highly significant event in itself which tells us much about the Gospel that is about to unfold.

So why should this event be so important?

One reason is not so far removed from the message of Christmas. We heard that the baby of Bethlehem would be called “Immanuel” which means “God with us.” But now we see an expansion of this glorious truth for here we see Jesus sharing in our humanity. Seeing the deeply flawed gathering of people who have come to John, Jesus does not as some remote Deity condemn these people for their shortcomings. Far from it! He joins them. He gets down in the river with them. Yes, what we witness here is Jesus not giving it to them straight as some might wish but Jesus being alongside this motley gathering of humanity. For as One who is truly as human as he is divine, he associates and identifies himself totally with us. Truly, he comes as a brother and so it is that we are able to sing that much loved hymn of old;

“What a friend we have in Jesus.”

But more than this, there is the heralding in of something that is new. John has quite uniquely been baptising his fellow Jews and doing so with a baptism for repentance. He has been challenging people to change the direction of their lives. But with the baptism of Jesus we see the beginnings of Christian baptism that brings in new dimensions. Yes, it symbolises the washing away of sins but it also has so much more. In the baptism of Jesus, we witness the presence of the Holy Spirit and Jesus hears the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s beloved son. And both of these things lie at the heart of Christian baptism. Yes, there is the turning from evil by instead being guided by God. But in Christian baptism we welcome the presence of the Holy Spirit who is the greatest of enablers. And we rejoice in the parental love of God which is offered to all peoples. Oh yes, baptism marks our being grafted into God’s family in which rather than being set up to fail, we are loved deeply and strengthened by the very author of our lives.

Indeed, baptism tells us that we are both loved and given a task. Jesus was told by the heavenly voice that he was loved but the voice declaring pleasure in him, marks the fact that he also had work to do. Human resource specialists would tell us that being valued and having a purpose are significant motivating forces in our lives. An example of this is the Jewish psychologist Victor Frankl who was held in Nazi concentration camps in World War 2. After the war, he attributed his survival through those grim days to two factors. One was the knowledge of his wife’s love. The other was his desire to rewrite the book that he had written but which the Nazis had destroyed. Love and purpose! And there is plenty of both to be found in baptism - the unlimited love of God and the calling on each of us to play our part as signs of God’s Kingdom of grace.

And finally, there is assurance in the baptism of Christ. The humanity of Jesus means that like us he had a need to feel assured of God’s favour. And in the words of the voice there came that assurance. I suspect that this was truly sustaining in the darker moments of his life. And like Jesus we have the times when we need assurance especially during those dark nights of the soul. John Wesley knew this so very well after his long spiritual search. And so one of the emphases that he preached was;

“All can know that they are saved.”

It is not so much that baptism makes us the children of God or grants us the Holy Spirit but that it gives us assurance of these things. Looking at baptism gives us an assurance of these realities. Not for nothing did Martin Luther, that great German reformer who nonetheless was regularly afflicted by severe depression, in his darkest times walk around saying repeatedly the words;

“I am baptised.”

So today as we look to the baptism of Jesus, we can rejoice that his baptism points us to the message of our baptism - the good news that by God’s grace we are all SOMEBODIES who are divinely loved and divinely called.



NORTHAM METHODIST CHURCH JANUARY 13TH 2008