Sermon: Baptism of our Lord - 2020

12 January 2020

Text: Matt 3:13-17 (Isa 42:1-7, 1 Cor 1:26-31)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

“For thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” 

Our Lord does many things that He doesn’t have to do.  He was born of the flesh, circumcised, baptized, and put to death on a cross.  All of these things involve the Law – the Law that we have not kept.  But Jesus takes on our burdens.  He suffers the very obligations that we have, but which He is above.  Why does He do this, dear friends?  Because He loves us.  The lover is willing to suffer for the sake of the beloved.  This is the true meaning of the word “passion” – a word that we have reduced to describing what people think about pizza and hobbies.  True passion, in the original sense of the word, means suffering.  Even the baptism of our Lord was a kind of passion, a humiliation.  For by submitting to a washing is to give the impression of being filthy.  Jesus is not, but we are.

Jesus fulfills the Law, or as He says, fulfills “all righteousness” – so that we can be righteous.  For of ourselves, we can’t do it.  We are damaged goods.  We are rotten to the core.  We are headed to the scrap heap.  But Jesus looks upon us with pity, knowing that it is sin that has made us filthy and ugly.  It is sin that has crippled us and turned us into monsters.  It is sin that has brought death into the world.

And only He, the Righteous One who is both God (who is perfect) and Man (who exists in the flesh in our world) can keep the Law on our behalf, and then transmit His righteousness to us as a free gift.

But this gift is actually an exchange, a trade.  He gives us His righteousness, and we give Him our sins; we get everlasting life, and He gets the cross and death.  We are exalted; He is humiliated. 

“For thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” 

This idea of a once-for-all blood sacrifice is radical.  But it is the only solution for us poor, miserable sinners.  God loves us infinitely, and He is willing to go to any length to redeem us, to drag us out of the pit, to bind up our wounds, to dress us in the finest clothing, and sit us at the table with Him.

St. John the Baptist recognizes the radical nature of the Messiah coming to him for baptism.  In fact, “John would have prevented Him.”  John realizes that this is contrary to how the world works.  For in the world, the guilty are punished and the innocent are rewarded.  In the world, love takes a back seat to selfish desire.  In the world, the judge punishes the offender; He does not serve the offender’s sentence.  John is aghast at just how extraordinary this is: “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?”

And here is where Jesus explains the mystery of the Gospel: “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”

We cannot fulfill all righteousness, but Jesus does.  He keeps the Law where we fail.  And like Abraham, by faith, the righteousness of God Himself is counted to us, credited to us, given to us by proxy.  We wear the royal ring and we bear the royal scepter – because our Lord has given them to us as a passport, as a key to admission to the Kingdom of God.  It is He who takes the beating reserved for the impostor and the intruder – even as we are clothed in unearned royal garb and seated undeserved at the head table of the banquet.

And where is this faith given to us, dear friends?  In baptism!  For just before He ascended into heaven, He gave the apostles, the ministers of the church, both the authority and the order to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  John’s baptism of repentance is completed in our Lord’s baptism of salvation.  And this is what the Church does, dear friends.  We follow in the footsteps of our Lord: bringing sinners to where they find life: to Jesus, to Holy Baptism, to the Word of God, to the Gospel.

And all righteousness is fulfilled in the faith given as a gift by means of Holy Baptism, by the “Word of God in and with the water” and the “faith which trusts this Word.”  The Holy Baptism that the baptized, crucified, and risen Lord Jesus Christ gives us is “a life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit.”

And even as Jesus emerged from the water with “the heavens… opened to Him,” and just as the Holy Spirit descended and came “to rest on Him,” and even as the Father claims Him as His “beloved Son with whom [He] is well pleased,” so too does all of this happen to us in Christ.

The Father is pleased with us, His baptized.  The Son exchanges His righteousness for our sin, and the Holy Spirit comes to rest upon us.  Our baptism links us to the cross, to the passion of Jesus, whose love impels Him to take our punishment while we receive His justification as a free gift of faith.  This is why we make the sign of the cross in remembrance of Holy Baptism, for the cross is where all righteousness was truly fulfilled.  And that fulfillment of the Law and satisfaction for our sins is made at the cross, and it is given to us “to fulfill all righteousness” at our own Holy Baptism.

Most of us were baptized as little children, even as young as our Lord was when He was brought into the covenant through circumcision.  We are weak, and God uses “what is weak in the world to shame the strong,” as St. Paul proclaims.  As children, as newcomers to the faith, we are “low and despised in the world,” so that we cannot boast of ourselves, but so that “in Christ Jesus,” God Himself “is the source of your life.”  Christ is our “wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” 

For even as children, even as sinners, even as those who are despised by the world, God Himself sends His beloved Son to us to redeem us, “as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.”

“For thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”  Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.