Why Jesus?

Matthew 3:13-17

January 13, 2008, Baptism of the Lord Sunday

Before performing a baptism, the minister approached the young father and said solemnly, "Baptism is a serious step. Are you prepared for it?"
"I think so," the man replied. "My wife has made appetizers and we have a caterer coming to provide plenty of cookies and cakes for all of our guests."
"I don't mean that," the minister responded. "I mean, are you prepared spiritually?"
"Oh, sure," came the reply. "I’ve got a keg of beer and a case of whisky."

Obviously the meaning of baptism was lost on the man. But I wonder if all of us truly understand what it is about. For centuries the church has said that baptism is about repentance, the forgiveness of sins, taking away the stain of original sin. There are many who still believe in their deepest hearts that if a person, child or adult, is not baptized that they will go to hell. How many times over the years have I had calls asking me if I will baptize an infant and when I tell them that one or both of the parents should be a member of the church, they hang up, or in some cases get downright huffy that I would refuse to do it, as though I’m consigning the child to hell.

Many also believe that if you’re baptized then you are forever saved. Nothing can happen to you. Many of you have heard me say that baptism is not a process of applying a Teflon coating so that sin just slides off of a person.

If we look at our account of Jesus’ baptism we recognize that in many respects baptism after Jesus was not about sin. Jesus came to John to be baptized. John said to him why are you coming to me? You should baptize me! This little exchange has given many in the church fits down through the year, because it is a case of the lesser baptizing the greater. John’s baptism was a baptism for the repentance of sin; but if Jesus is the Christ then he is without sin. Therefore for Jesus it is not a baptism of repentance, but of something else.

In Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, the narrator John Ames (a Congregationalist pastor) recalls a day when he and other neighborhood children decided to play “church” and baptize a new litter of kittens—not, Ames explains, out of lack of respect for the Sacrament, but because “we thought the world of those cats.” Ames writes,

“I still remember how those warm little brows felt under the palm of my hand. Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing. It stays in the mind. For years we would wonder what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them. It still seems to me to be a real question. There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily. It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that. I have felt it pass through me, so to speak. The sensation is of really knowing a creature; I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.”

Marilynne catches the essence of what Jesus’ baptism and our baptism was and is all about. It lifts up the sacredness of our lives. That there is a part of us that is set apart, just as Jesus was set apart. Jesus heard the words that he was God’s son, the beloved. He was blessed; he was marked as one of God’s own. The same is true for each of us. In our baptism we have been blessed by God and marked as God’s own. It doesn’t mean that we will not sin, but what it does mean, if we will take the time to remember our baptism and think about what it means, is that we will remember that we are one of God’s beloved; that God cares about us and wants us to be happy, to live holy and loving lives. We are known to God and God is known to us.

That is why Jesus was baptized, not because he had sin that he needed to be absolved of, but that he, like all of us, needed God’s blessing. He didn’t need a party, he didn’t need the keg of beer and case of whisky, but what he did need was to know that God cared about him. And isn’t that what we all need? May God bless each one of you as you remember you own baptism and reflect on it.

Amen

© 2008 Rev. Dr. Thomas T. Peters