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The Baptism of Jesus

Pastor Jeremy Schultz
January 15, 2012

On Thursday, I was with St. Paul Lutheran's Boys Basketball team that was playing a game down in Waltz against St. John's Lutheran School. And because I got there with time to spare before the game, I did as I always do when visiting another church/school. I snooped around. I was specifically looking for their sanctuary because I wanted to see what their place of worship was like, so I just kept following the hallways that led me to where I believed it would be found. And suddenly, I opened up the door, took a look around their chancel area and was struck by the beauty of their baptismal font. Here's a picture. It's a wooden carving of our Bible reading for today. John is baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River and immediately after this, heaven is torn apart, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove in fulfillment of Isaiah's earlier prophesies and the voice of the Father is heard: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased!”

I love today's Bible reading for so many reasons. After all, it's a day for us to not only celebrate the baptism of Jesus, but our own baptisms too. Today we remember and rejoice with the 25 who were baptized here at St. Paul during the year 2011. We rejoice in the gifts of the forgiveness of sins, the life we live by faith and the Holy Spirit, who comes to us to create and strengthen such faith in us that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Right away we have one of this Gospel writer's favorite words. That word is “immediately.” Mark uses it 35 times - way more than any other writer in the Old or New Testament. And that's because there's urgency to Mark's Gospel account. There's momentum, a forward thrust, a surge. Jesus doesn't stay put and neither do the people around Him. So immediately the disciples leave their nets and follow Him. Immediately Jesus enters the synagogue and begins to teach. Immediately He cures a man and the leprosy leaves him. Immediately! And so today we have Jesus coming out of the water and immediately He sees the heavens torn apart.

And this isn't really supposed to make us think of a nice parting of the clouds so that the sun can shine. No this is much more like a violent ripping apart of the sky! Just as there's urgency in our text, there's something very forceful happening too. The heavens were torn apart. This is the same word used by Mark to describe what happens when Jesus is hanging on the cross and dying for our sins and at that very moment, the curtain in the Temple was torn in two! That curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. It was as thick as the length of your hand. And when Jesus died on the cross, that curtain, symbolizing the separation between God and Man was ripped apart! Even violently! Forcefully! There's something very violent and forceful that all of this makes us think about today in the heavens parting at the baptism of Jesus. The sky is ripped apart. And we wonder, “what's going on here?!”

At this time, John had been baptizing people in the Jordan River, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people were coming out to him from all over Judea, confessing their sins. We too have a lot to confess. Today we celebrate Life Sunday. We have a God who creates life, loves life and has redeemed our lives. But we have not upheld life, prayed about life, done all we can to support ministries like CareNet, or our own national organization Lutherans for Life. We easily become fascinated by people like Casey Anthony, and live in a world where people gain celebrity status for evil deeds. Oh there are sins that we have to confess. We enjoy the benefit of people not really knowing the majority of our sins and yet if they did...if they knew just one portion of our sins, we'd have to cover up in shame. We have not upheld and protected all life. We have not honored our elderly in the way that we should. We have become angry with one another. We have abused our own bodies. And so much more!

But what you have here in the baptism of Jesus is not what you'd expect. You have the Christ right there in the water, submitting to the baptism of John, even though He had absolutely no sin of His own. This is the Great Exchange that Luther spoke about on the basis of 2 Corinthians 5:21. “He became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus fully identifies with sinful humanity in the water of baptism and He takes that identification to the cross where He dies for our sins. How unbelievably comforting is this forceful, even violent parting of the heavens. For what you have is not judgment, but a dove and a voice. “This is my Son, whom I love, with Him I am well pleased!” In this way, we all can now become God's sons and daughters through our baptisms. St. Paul says, “You are all sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”

You are sons and daughters who are immediately cast out. That's what happens with Jesus following His baptism. Jesus is cast out by the Spirit into the wilderness. And in the same way, you might say, we too are cast out. We come out of those baptismal waters as Sons and Daughters of the Father and we are cast out into the world as changed people. There's some urgency to it as well. The word immediately is again used. And we show ourselves to be sons and daughters of the Father by the way we live our lives. We uphold the sanctity of life and reflect the values of the One who gave His life for others. We don't live for ourselves, but for Him who died again and was raised again! We support ministries and people that honor and respect all life as precious. We live lives that reflect the One who gave His life for us all.

In a recent email that someone sent me, I read about a woman named Pam, who lives such a life. More than 24 years ago, she and her husband Bob were serving as missionaries to the Philippines and praying for a fifth child. Pam contracted amoebic dysentery, an infection of the intestine caused by a parasite found in contaminated food or drink. She... went into a coma and was treated with strong antibiotics before they discovered she was pregnant.

Doctors urged her to abort the baby for her own safety and told her that the medicines had caused irreversible damage to her baby. She refused the abortion and cited her Christian faith as the reason for her hope that her son who would be born might be born without the devastating disabilities physicians predicted. Pam said the doctors didn't think of it as a life, they thought of it as a mass of fetal tissue.

While pregnant, Pam nearly lost their baby four times but refused to consider abortion. She recalled making a pledge to God with her husband: If you will give us a son, we'll name him Timothy and we'll make him a preacher.

Pam ultimately spent the last two months of her pregnancy in bed and eventually gave birth to a healthy baby boy August 14, 1987. And Pam's youngest son is indeed a preacher. He preaches in prisons, makes hospital visits, and serves with his father's ministry in the Philippines. He also plays football. You know Pam's son as TIM TEBOW.

God will use you for His purposes. For you see you are His baptized child. His Son. His Daughter. As you confess, you will be comforted by the power of your own baptism. And then you will be cast out - cast out into the world to live as His beloved child with whom He is well pleased. Amen.