Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the 3rdChapter of the Gospel according to St Luke: Verses 15–22:
15 As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, 16John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
18 So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people. 19 But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother’s wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, 20 added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison.
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
We are now in the season of the Epiphany of our Lord. The epiphany of our Lord is all about the many ways that our Lord, Jesus Christ reveals Himself to people. The first Gospel for the season of the Epiphany of our Lord is about our Lord revealing Himself to some magi by means of a sign in the heavens … a star that led them to the Christ-child. This week the Gospel tells us that God the Father tore the heavens open in order to talk about Jesus as Jesus submitted to a baptism by John in the Jordan. The gospel also tells us that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove. Today’s gospel is an epiphany not just of Jesus, but also of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is on His journey to the cross. He journeyed from His throne in Heaven to take on our humanity as a single cell in Mary’s womb. He grew in her womb just like any other human baby and on Christmas we celebrated His birth. He lived His life under the law just like any other human being. The only difference is that He kept the law perfectly. He never sinned.
The entire time that He grew both inside and outside of His mother, He carried our sin … your sin and mine. Up until the events in today’s Gospel, He had carried them privately … quietly. Very few people knew who He was. When it was time for Him to go public, He came to the Jordan River … to John the Baptist. He came to be baptised.
Now Luke 3 tells us that John was ‘proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’, and the natural question is, “Why did Jesus have John baptise Him?” Jesus never sinned. He didn’t need to repent, and He didn’t need forgiveness of sins. What was Jesus doing in the water with John?
The best answer to this question that I know of is an excerpt from the prayer that the Rev Dr Martin Luther wrote for the rite of baptism. “Through the Baptism in the Jordan of Your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, You sanctified and instituted all waters to be a blessed flood and a lavish washing away of sin.” You see, Jesus submitted to baptism in order to stand with us in order to save us from our sin. In the water of John’s baptism Jesus publicly proclaimed that He carried our sin. When JESUS is baptised, the sins that were washed away from sinners all stick to Him. At His Baptism, Jesus comes to be a sinner covered with our sins. And not just one person's sins. He comes to take on EVERY person's sins ever!
In the Gospel according to Luke that we just heard, both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God chosen to earn salvation for us. Today’s Gospel proclaims, (Luke 3:21–22)“Now when all the people were baptised, and when Jesus also had been baptised and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’” This reverses the results of sin that God proclaimed after the first sin when He said,(Genesis 3:22–24)“Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” So, in Adam, it is our sin that closed off the way to paradise. The account of Jesus’ baptism informs us that, in Jesus, the way to paradise is open once again. For, as Jesus prayed, the heavens opened once again. The Holy Spirit descended on Him, and the Father declared Jesus to be His beloved Son … the Messiah … the one anointed to earn salvation for all people.
As Jesus journeyed to the cross, His baptism by John is a major milestone. This event is second in importance only to the crucifixion and resurrection. The Holy Spirit anointed the Christ in both His humanity and His divinity. God the Father acknowledges Him as His Son. His ministry of carrying our sins to the cross became public knowledge.
One of the demonstrations of the importance of this event comes after Jesus ascended. Judas the betrayer had hung himself, and the remainder of Jesus’ disciples came together to choose a replacement for him. Peter reminded the others of the qualifications for the replacement. He said, (Acts 1:21–22)“One of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” Many of the men Jesus chose were originally disciples of John. Like them, the replacement for Judas must be able to bear witness to the baptism of Jesus by John. The baptism of Jesus forms the beginning point of the witness.
Today’s reading from the Gospel according to Luke informs us of this incredible epiphany. The heavens were opened. God the Son was in the water. God the Holy Spirit descended like a dove. God the Father spoke to the crowds. John the Baptist witnessed this epiphany along with his followers, and some of those followers would later become Jesus’ disciples.
However, not all the witnesses of this epiphany were friendly witnesses. This epiphany was also a message to the devil and all his evil angels. God the Son has taken up human flesh. He is bringing the battle to the earth. This is the one who will crush the serpent’s head. Jesus, full of the Spirit, is ready to battle the temptations of the devil in the wilderness. He will fight for us, brothers and sisters in Christ,and He will win.
In a few Sundays when the season of Lent starts, we will read the temptation that the devil brought against Jesus. Two of the temptations begin with the words, (Matt. 4; Luke 4)“If you are the Son of God …”. The other temptation asks Jesus to worship the devil as God. All three temptations attack the identity of Jesus as God … the identity that the Father proclaimed at Jesus’ baptism.
Jesus endured the full fire of Satan’s temptation. He endured not only the temptation in the wilderness, but Satan never really stopped tempting Jesus. He tempted him through His friends and followers. He continued to tempt Jesus even as Jesus was hanging on the cross. As Jesus hung on the cross those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, (Matthew 27:39–40)“You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Even as Jesus hung on the cross, the passers by were still challenging the words that the Father proclaimed in this morning’s Gospel. Jesus endured these temptations as we never will. Jesus’ perfect perseverance under Satan’s fiery temptation was part of the mission to open heaven for us.
The epiphany we heard about this morning also marks Jesus as the target of God’s wrath. The Apostle Paul writes,(Romans 6:6) “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” Jesus took your place. He was the target of God’s wrath – a wrath that was so severe that Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” Jesus suffered the original baptism of fire for us. He fulfilled John’s prophecy of baptism by fire in order to open heaven for us.
Jesus blazed a trail through death that leads to life. He conquered death and rose from the dead. Through His triumph, the way to heaven is open.
Here at His baptism, Jesus took our place under the burden of our sin. As our substitute, He carried out God’s plan perfectly. The mission that Jesus began at His baptism was successful. He opened a way to heaven. He offers to join us to Himself through baptism. The Holy Spirit gives us the faith that receives that offer. God the Father adopts us into His family by that faith. When the time comes for us to leave this world, the heavens will open, the angels will carry us home and we will hear the Father say, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” Amen
The love and peace of our Great triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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