Last week we spoke of the fact that the Epiphany, the glorious appearing of Christ, has come to be
associated with the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. The reason is that this was the first instance
in which the news of the Messiah was made known to Gentiles. But in the church of the first few
centuries, Epiphany was associated mainly with Jesus’ baptism. It was here that the Holy Spirit
descended upon Jesus and anointed him for the three years of His active ministry on this earth.
This morning’s Gospel account of this great event raises some interesting questions, and gives us
the opportunity to clarify some of the mysteries of baptism. The first thing that many people might
be inclined to ask is why Jesus underwent baptism in the first place. Even John was mystified by
this. Matthew says that John told Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
You see, John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. In the section just before today’s reading,
John proclaims that the kingdom of heaven is near. He calls the people of Judea to repent and
prepare for this great development. He lashes out at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and
Sadducees, and warns them that real repentance will produce real fruit—real change. John cries
out, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me;
I am not worthy to carry is sandals.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that John is talking
here about Jesus. The kingdom of heaven is near, and it will be ushered in by the work of this one
who’s now coming to John for baptism.
So if John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance, why in the world is Jesus coming to him to be
baptized? Wasn’t He sinless? One very controversial bishop in our denomination proclaimed a
couple of years back that Jesus was a repentant sinner. Perhaps he was thinking of today’s Gospel
passage when he said this. In any case, it made me wish that there were still woodsheds. Because I
think that, at least metaphorically, he needed to be taken to one.
The reason I say this is that the scriptures are abundantly clear that Jesus Christ was without sin.
There are numerous passages that say this. In his first Letter, St. John writes, “You know that Jesus
was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.” And then in his first letter, Peter writes,
“…[Jesus] committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth’,” and he refers to Jesus as a
“lamb without defect or blemish,” showing that it takes a sinless man to be able to atone for the sins
of man. And Peter is quoted by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles, speaking to a large gathering at
the temple in Jerusalem, saying “…you rejected the righteous and holy One and asked to have a
murderer given to you.” The writer to the Hebrews writes that we have a great high priest who “in
every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” And again, he writes, “…it is fitting that
we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted
above the heavens.” And if that’s not enough, Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians,
“For our sake [God made Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.”
I hope this puts to rest any nonsense about Jesus being a sinner. Such a notion not only
contradicts the fact that Jesus must have been sinless in order to be a perfect sacrifice to remove
our sins, but it contradicts the plain and unambiguous words of Scripture. Indeed, John the Baptist
recognizes this about Jesus, when he says in today’s passage, “I need to be baptized by you, and
do you come to me?” In other words, “I’m not the pure one; you are.”
So, John’s astonishment is very understandable. In response, Jesus says something a little
mystifying. He says that it’s proper for them, Jesus and John the Baptist, to “fulfill all
righteousness.” So what in the world does that mean, to fulfill all righteousness? While this phrase
is a little vague to us, I think that what is clear is that Jesus’ statement has something to do with his
divinely appointed mission to bring salvation to mankind. This mission flows from what we’ve just
learned in the past couple of weeks about Jesus—that he’s the Word become flesh, the divine mind
become a man. God incarnate.
It’s critical that we know what this means. Not that Jesus is God and simply appeared to be a man,
but that he’s God who became fully and really human. That he was a warm, vulnerable baby born in
a manger. That he grew in wisdom and stature, and learned to use his mind in learning and
teaching about God and his ways, and used his muscles in plying his craft of carpentry. That he
experienced temptation to sin just like every one of us. That he took a very genuine risk in
confronting the power brokers who abused their authority—a risk that eventually culminated in his
violent death, a fate he knew well in advance awaited him.
There’s something in all of this that’s central to Jesus’ entire mission. I think the key to
understanding it may be found in what Jesus said later in Matthew’s Gospel, “…the Son of Man
came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Jesus’ insistence upon being baptized by John was one of his first, very visible acts of humility.
Jesus didn’t need cleansing and he didn’t need repentance. But what he was doing was preaching
humility by example—something he did throughout his ministry, like when he washed the dusty feet
of his disciples. He was teaching us that none of us should consider ourselves to be beyond the
need of God’s grace, and that we shouldn’t think of ourselves as better or more important than
others. This, of course, flies in the face of our prideful and defensive nature.
You may have heard the story of the mother who was making pancakes for her sons, Kevin, age 7,
and Ryan, age 5. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother
saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. She said, "If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my
brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'" So Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, "Ryan,
you be Jesus.”
We need Jesus’ example of humility and servanthood from an early age, and in his baptism, Jesus
models that for us. This is pleasing to the Father. Afterwards the voice from heaven in verse 17
says, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” You may have already noticed
that this is very similar to the first verse of today’s Old Testament reading, Isaiah 42, which says,
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”
One reason this is so significant is that it was the prophet Isaiah who painted a picture of the
Messiah as a servant, or more specifically, a suffering servant. This is not the military, politically
triumphant image that many then associated with the expected Messiah. Instead, it harmonizes with
the record we have in the Gospel, of one who embodies and models humility by submitting himself to
the waters of baptism.
But Jesus isn’t just modeling humility for us. Even more importantly, he’s identifying with us sinners
so that we can be rescued. This, after all, is the whole point of the Incarnation. Jesus is the one
who, as the suffering servant, would bear on his body the wounds that would be the source of our
cleansing and our reconciliation with God.
This, for us, is hard to understand. We live in a world in which the ideas of sacrifice, and shed
blood, and the paying of a price for another person’s actions, seem very foreign. In our human
limitation we can’t begin to know how all of this works.
But God does. And He designed His solution—the sending of God the Son, Jesus Christ to pay the
price for our rebellion—out of His love for us. While we may never know how this works, the
Scriptures tell us it does work, and as we trust His word, this really is all we need to know. It’s about
faith. And the rest is simply standing in the light of His love. Because, in the words of Isaiah, “He
was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that
made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” Isaiah 53 continues on, giving an astonishingly
accurate portrayal of Jesus’ suffering around 700 years before the fact. The chapter concludes with
these words: “…he poured out himself to death, and was /numbered with the transgressors; yet he
bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do…”
Do you see how all of this ties together? After Jesus’ baptism, God’s voice echoes the words He’d
given to Isaiah some 700 years earlier about his chosen One, in whom he’s pleased. Isaiah was the
one who had revealed that the Messiah was to be a suffering servant, and had said that the
Messiah would be numbered with the sinners, yet making intercession for the sinners. In the
moment of his baptism, this prophecy is coming to fulfillment.
I think this explains the baptism of Jesus on its deepest level. For by insisting upon being washed in
the waters of baptism, Jesus is being numbered among the sinners, even though he hasn’t sinned.
And he’s being commissioned for the ministry that will result in him bearing the sins of many, and
making intercession for us, the sinners.
In His love for us, God almighty has taken it upon himself to identify with His human creation so
completely that he actually changes places with us. Through His Son he substitutes himself to
receive the penalty for our rebellion. He brings light and purity down to be crucified in the realm of
darkness and sin, so that we may receive light and have our sins forgiven. He brings heaven to
earth so that we can be brought from earth to heaven. For our sake God made him to be sin who
knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
And this brings us inevitably to the matter of our own baptism. Because when we’re submerged in
the waters of baptism, which is activated by our faith, we not only reflect the humility that Jesus’
baptism modeled for us, but we actually receive around our shoulders His sacred cloak of life and
purity. When we come up from the waters of baptism, in the eyes of God we are pure, cleansed by
his mercy. We become the righteousness of God! This is staggering! Despite our frailties and the
ongoing war between our old nature and the new, we stand guiltless before the almighty Creator
God, not by any action of our own, but entirely by the deep and merciful love He has for us. With
this assurance, how can we allow ourselves to be defeated by worry or hardship? Because now,
everything is different.
As we face the many questions and trials of this new year, my prayer is that each of us will
remember this. Because of the One who submitted himself to baptism and changed places with us,
we’ve been cleansed and born anew in the waters of baptism. This trumps anything the world has to
throw at us. Through the inseparable graces of faith and baptism, we’ve become the righteousness
of God, and the awesome and comforting words which the Father offered to Jesus the Son, He now
offers to us as well: “This is my child, the one I love, in whom I am well pleased.” Amen.
associated with the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. The reason is that this was the first instance
in which the news of the Messiah was made known to Gentiles. But in the church of the first few
centuries, Epiphany was associated mainly with Jesus’ baptism. It was here that the Holy Spirit
descended upon Jesus and anointed him for the three years of His active ministry on this earth.
This morning’s Gospel account of this great event raises some interesting questions, and gives us
the opportunity to clarify some of the mysteries of baptism. The first thing that many people might
be inclined to ask is why Jesus underwent baptism in the first place. Even John was mystified by
this. Matthew says that John told Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”
You see, John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. In the section just before today’s reading,
John proclaims that the kingdom of heaven is near. He calls the people of Judea to repent and
prepare for this great development. He lashes out at the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and
Sadducees, and warns them that real repentance will produce real fruit—real change. John cries
out, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me;
I am not worthy to carry is sandals.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that John is talking
here about Jesus. The kingdom of heaven is near, and it will be ushered in by the work of this one
who’s now coming to John for baptism.
So if John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance, why in the world is Jesus coming to him to be
baptized? Wasn’t He sinless? One very controversial bishop in our denomination proclaimed a
couple of years back that Jesus was a repentant sinner. Perhaps he was thinking of today’s Gospel
passage when he said this. In any case, it made me wish that there were still woodsheds. Because I
think that, at least metaphorically, he needed to be taken to one.
The reason I say this is that the scriptures are abundantly clear that Jesus Christ was without sin.
There are numerous passages that say this. In his first Letter, St. John writes, “You know that Jesus
was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.” And then in his first letter, Peter writes,
“…[Jesus] committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth’,” and he refers to Jesus as a
“lamb without defect or blemish,” showing that it takes a sinless man to be able to atone for the sins
of man. And Peter is quoted by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles, speaking to a large gathering at
the temple in Jerusalem, saying “…you rejected the righteous and holy One and asked to have a
murderer given to you.” The writer to the Hebrews writes that we have a great high priest who “in
every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” And again, he writes, “…it is fitting that
we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted
above the heavens.” And if that’s not enough, Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians,
“For our sake [God made Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.”
I hope this puts to rest any nonsense about Jesus being a sinner. Such a notion not only
contradicts the fact that Jesus must have been sinless in order to be a perfect sacrifice to remove
our sins, but it contradicts the plain and unambiguous words of Scripture. Indeed, John the Baptist
recognizes this about Jesus, when he says in today’s passage, “I need to be baptized by you, and
do you come to me?” In other words, “I’m not the pure one; you are.”
So, John’s astonishment is very understandable. In response, Jesus says something a little
mystifying. He says that it’s proper for them, Jesus and John the Baptist, to “fulfill all
righteousness.” So what in the world does that mean, to fulfill all righteousness? While this phrase
is a little vague to us, I think that what is clear is that Jesus’ statement has something to do with his
divinely appointed mission to bring salvation to mankind. This mission flows from what we’ve just
learned in the past couple of weeks about Jesus—that he’s the Word become flesh, the divine mind
become a man. God incarnate.
It’s critical that we know what this means. Not that Jesus is God and simply appeared to be a man,
but that he’s God who became fully and really human. That he was a warm, vulnerable baby born in
a manger. That he grew in wisdom and stature, and learned to use his mind in learning and
teaching about God and his ways, and used his muscles in plying his craft of carpentry. That he
experienced temptation to sin just like every one of us. That he took a very genuine risk in
confronting the power brokers who abused their authority—a risk that eventually culminated in his
violent death, a fate he knew well in advance awaited him.
There’s something in all of this that’s central to Jesus’ entire mission. I think the key to
understanding it may be found in what Jesus said later in Matthew’s Gospel, “…the Son of Man
came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
Jesus’ insistence upon being baptized by John was one of his first, very visible acts of humility.
Jesus didn’t need cleansing and he didn’t need repentance. But what he was doing was preaching
humility by example—something he did throughout his ministry, like when he washed the dusty feet
of his disciples. He was teaching us that none of us should consider ourselves to be beyond the
need of God’s grace, and that we shouldn’t think of ourselves as better or more important than
others. This, of course, flies in the face of our prideful and defensive nature.
You may have heard the story of the mother who was making pancakes for her sons, Kevin, age 7,
and Ryan, age 5. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Their mother
saw the opportunity for a moral lesson. She said, "If Jesus were sitting here, He would say, 'Let my
brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'" So Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, "Ryan,
you be Jesus.”
We need Jesus’ example of humility and servanthood from an early age, and in his baptism, Jesus
models that for us. This is pleasing to the Father. Afterwards the voice from heaven in verse 17
says, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” You may have already noticed
that this is very similar to the first verse of today’s Old Testament reading, Isaiah 42, which says,
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”
One reason this is so significant is that it was the prophet Isaiah who painted a picture of the
Messiah as a servant, or more specifically, a suffering servant. This is not the military, politically
triumphant image that many then associated with the expected Messiah. Instead, it harmonizes with
the record we have in the Gospel, of one who embodies and models humility by submitting himself to
the waters of baptism.
But Jesus isn’t just modeling humility for us. Even more importantly, he’s identifying with us sinners
so that we can be rescued. This, after all, is the whole point of the Incarnation. Jesus is the one
who, as the suffering servant, would bear on his body the wounds that would be the source of our
cleansing and our reconciliation with God.
This, for us, is hard to understand. We live in a world in which the ideas of sacrifice, and shed
blood, and the paying of a price for another person’s actions, seem very foreign. In our human
limitation we can’t begin to know how all of this works.
But God does. And He designed His solution—the sending of God the Son, Jesus Christ to pay the
price for our rebellion—out of His love for us. While we may never know how this works, the
Scriptures tell us it does work, and as we trust His word, this really is all we need to know. It’s about
faith. And the rest is simply standing in the light of His love. Because, in the words of Isaiah, “He
was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that
made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” Isaiah 53 continues on, giving an astonishingly
accurate portrayal of Jesus’ suffering around 700 years before the fact. The chapter concludes with
these words: “…he poured out himself to death, and was /numbered with the transgressors; yet he
bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do…”
Do you see how all of this ties together? After Jesus’ baptism, God’s voice echoes the words He’d
given to Isaiah some 700 years earlier about his chosen One, in whom he’s pleased. Isaiah was the
one who had revealed that the Messiah was to be a suffering servant, and had said that the
Messiah would be numbered with the sinners, yet making intercession for the sinners. In the
moment of his baptism, this prophecy is coming to fulfillment.
I think this explains the baptism of Jesus on its deepest level. For by insisting upon being washed in
the waters of baptism, Jesus is being numbered among the sinners, even though he hasn’t sinned.
And he’s being commissioned for the ministry that will result in him bearing the sins of many, and
making intercession for us, the sinners.
In His love for us, God almighty has taken it upon himself to identify with His human creation so
completely that he actually changes places with us. Through His Son he substitutes himself to
receive the penalty for our rebellion. He brings light and purity down to be crucified in the realm of
darkness and sin, so that we may receive light and have our sins forgiven. He brings heaven to
earth so that we can be brought from earth to heaven. For our sake God made him to be sin who
knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
And this brings us inevitably to the matter of our own baptism. Because when we’re submerged in
the waters of baptism, which is activated by our faith, we not only reflect the humility that Jesus’
baptism modeled for us, but we actually receive around our shoulders His sacred cloak of life and
purity. When we come up from the waters of baptism, in the eyes of God we are pure, cleansed by
his mercy. We become the righteousness of God! This is staggering! Despite our frailties and the
ongoing war between our old nature and the new, we stand guiltless before the almighty Creator
God, not by any action of our own, but entirely by the deep and merciful love He has for us. With
this assurance, how can we allow ourselves to be defeated by worry or hardship? Because now,
everything is different.
As we face the many questions and trials of this new year, my prayer is that each of us will
remember this. Because of the One who submitted himself to baptism and changed places with us,
we’ve been cleansed and born anew in the waters of baptism. This trumps anything the world has to
throw at us. Through the inseparable graces of faith and baptism, we’ve become the righteousness
of God, and the awesome and comforting words which the Father offered to Jesus the Son, He now
offers to us as well: “This is my child, the one I love, in whom I am well pleased.” Amen.
The Baptism of Jesus
(Matthew 3:13-17)
(Matthew 3:13-17)
January 13, 2008
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton