Baptized in Water

Matthew 3.13-17

As I was doing sermon prep this week I read several different commentaries about this passage from Matthew about Jesus’ Baptism. It was interesting. A lot of them seemed to get hung up on one little detail or another. They focused on each verse or part of a verse to ferret out the meaning behind the text. They discussed why Jesus went to John to be baptized. There were all sorts of rationales for that. The scholars discussed the meaning of conversation between Jesus and John the Baptist. Some thought the gospel writer wanted to make it clear that the only reason Jesus was baptized was to fulfill scripture. Another suggested that Jesus was trying to become one of John’s disciples. There was one discussion about the dove that I still don’t completely understand. Its basic idea was that the gospel of Matthew talks about a real dove coming down from heaven and Luke and John only compare the Holy Spirit to a dove and this is evident by comparing the grammar of Matthew with the grammar of Mark and John. But it never explained the importance of that point.

Reading the passage through a number of times it always seems to come out the same. Jesus was baptized in the waters of the Jordan by John, and when he came up from the water God said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

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Let’s think about it in the context of people who might have been hearing the gospel in the first century. What would those Jewish-Christians have heard? Their ears would have been tuned to hear the story through the history of Israel. They’d be thinking, we’ve been to this river before. This isn’t the first time we’ve stood on its banks. After the forty years of wandering, after the manna and the quail we came to this river, don’t you remember? We stood beside the rushing waters of the Jordan waiting as the Ark of the Covenant went before us on the shoulders of the house of Levi. When the priests dipped the toes of their sandals in the water it pulled back from them. Then the water was heaped up upon itself and they stood there in the middle of the riverbed with the water held back and we climbed down the banks and passed by. The riverbed sucked at our sandals and we walked past, and Joshua led us into the Promised Land.

When our first century brothers and sisters heard the name of the Jordan, they thought of deliverance and the new life that began on the other side. They remembered the stones set up in the middle as a tribute to God and the stones set up on the sides as a sign of their safe crossing. When they heard the name they couldn’t help but think about the story they had heard so many times about how they had been saved by the waters of the Jordan.

But this time, when they approached the river, in the new story of Jesus, the water didn’t pull back. John the Baptist was already in the middle, with water flowing around him, waiting for Jesus. When Jesus dipped his toes in the water it didn’t pull back from him. It did not heap up upon itself and reveal the stones of Joshua. As they heard the story, our first century brothers and sisters felt the waters of the Jordan flowing around their ankles and making the hems of their tunics dance in the current. It climbed their legs and then up over their wastes as Jesus waded into the water. They thought of the cool water on their warm skin and of the current pulling at them.

As they watched Jesus submit to John’s baptism, as they watched him serve the will of God, they heard the words of their own baptism as Jesus leaned back and John pushed his head below the water’s surface, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” And they felt the water engulf them for a moment before their forehead and cheeks broke back through the water’s surface and were met by the sun and the air. And what was it they heard as they imagined Jesus finding his footing on the river bottom? From the heavens, in the voice of the Lord, they heard, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” In their ears it was not a phenomenon to be explained. There wasn’t a question of whether the dove was a literal dove or a figurative dove. When they heard the words and imagined the dove, they saw a coronation. Like a sword upon the shoulders of one knighted or a crown upon one kinged, the dove came from heaven and the words were spoken as a sign of Jesus’ role as Son of God. He was anointed King of the Jews by God’s Spirit.

Jesus’ baptism was not only a sign or a mark upon Jesus’ head. It not only united him with all the sinners he came to save. Jesus’ baptism was a charge, a commissioning to lead and to serve.
It is no coincidence that baptism marked the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. When he went below the water’s surface he died to old life. When he rose, Jesus rose to a new life of service. From then on he led and served the people. He preached and healed. He showed them the way to the kingdom and taught them how to live their lives to the glory of God. Baptism was the beginning, not the end of Jesus’ life of faithful response to God.

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Our own baptism is no different. When the waters rolled off the tops of our heads we were delivered from our sins by God’s grace. The water was a sign of the seal of God’s grace upon us. And as the water rolled down our cheeks we rose to new life – life with a purpose and calling. If you were baptized as an infant, the people around you were charged with the task until you could grow up to accept it as your own. If you were baptized as a child or an adult, then you received your charge after your baptism. Either way, we were all charged in our baptism to live our lives to God’s glory. That means we were charged to listen and respond to God and to serve one another.

Baptism is something that happens to us. God does it and we sit by, passively receiving the gift of God. It doesn’t matter how it happens, whether water was dribbled on your head or you were immersed. God’s grace works just the same and there is nothing we can do about it to make it more or less important. Nothing. What glorifies God is what we do afterward, after the water is poured and the words are said. What glorifies God is how we live our lives each and every single day. Are we kind to one another? Do we serve one another? Do we love one another? Do we give God a proper place in our lives? Do we acknowledge that everything we have is from God and give back to God accordingly?

The amount of water or where the water is from or even whether there is water at all doesn’t really matter. Those are details on which we fixate like biblical scholars trying to ferret out additional meaning. There is no need. When we hear the words of the baptism we hear our own ancient story. We, too remember the waters and the one who stepped down into them in his coronation to serve.

There are many ways to go about it, but there is just the one Baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and every time, every time, it demands a response.