Matthew 3:13-17

January 9, 2005

1. We begin the story at mid-dip, so to speak. In other words, it’s not the beginning of the story, but it’s not the end, either. The beginning of this story started at the beginning of Chapter 3, which we actually read during Advent, when John the Baptist describes "the one who is to come, the one who is greater than I." Last Sunday we celebrated the journey of the magi to the house in Bethlehem where Jesus was living with his mother, Joseph apparently being at work that day. Sometime after the Magi left, one of God’s angels appeared to Joseph to warn him about Herod’s evil plan to kill all the children. The angel told him to flee with Mary and Jesus; take them to Egypt where they would be safe. So he did. After Herod died, the angel appeared again to invite them back to Israel. But Herod’s equally evil brother had taken his place, so Joseph moved his little family straight to the district of Galilee, to a town called Nazareth. There they made a home for their family.

2. Time passed. Twenty-eight or 30 years sped by between the last word of Chapter 2 and the first word of Chapter 3. By now, Jesus is a grown man living in Nazareth. We are left to wonder what happened in the intervening years. There’s the story about Jesus in the Temple when he was 12, but that story only appears in Luke’s gospel; Matthew new nothing about that event. However, Matthew and Mark and Luke and John all knew that John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, was down by the Jordan River ritually washing people, "baptizing" them. That’s the "mid-dip" I mentioned earlier. "Baptize" is the way the word sounds in the language Matthew used; it means ‘to dip or plunge in water.’ We have a tendency to think John was doing a new thing, but that’s not true! For centuries the Jewish people ritually cleansed themselves after being defiled in some way. Matthew doesn’t tell us how long John had been washing people in the Jordan River; could have been years, or months, or only days. I’m sure it made a different to all those other people, but the one to whom it made the most difference was Jesus.

3. There are three things to note about this day in the life of Jesus. The first is that it happened during the normal course of his life. He didn’t spend months planning it. We can assume, correctly, I think, that until that day Jesus worked as a carpenter. We can assume this because we know Joseph was a carpenter in Nazareth, and it was normal practice for a son to go into his father’s business; train to take over after the father could no longer work. We know he was a carpenter, but we can only guess why Jesus left Galilee and walked 70+ miles to the area near where John was. Maybe he had to go to Jerusalem on business, and his mother Mary had said "While you’re in Jerusalem, call on your cousin John and give him my best wishes." Maybe he needed to get away from all that sawdust; clear his brain so he could think about what it was that God wanted him to do. However he got there and why-ever he did it, all four gospel writers put him in the same place as John.

4. The second thing to note is that Jesus wanted to be washed. But just as Matthew is silent about how Jesus happened to be right there, Matthew is also silent about why Jesus wanted to be washed. Perhaps he had stopped along the way to help someone who was hurt and bleeding. That certainly would be in keeping with his later teachings and actions. And touching a bleeding person would immediately make him impure, and he would need to be washed. John, of course, wouldn’t have known this, which is why he protested.

5. The third thing to note about the baptism of Jesus is that it marked his entrance into ministry. It was like many calls to ministry; a deeply personal thing. Notice that no one else heard the voice from above. This was not a Mr. Universe contest where everyone hears "the voice" announce the winner’s name, and the spotlight shines on his glistening muscular body. None of that by this river! "The heavens were opened to him, and he heard God speak directly to him. God called him "My son." The very next words from Matthew tell us that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, where he struggled with want being "God’s Son" meant. What did God want him to do? That day by the Jordan River was not the first day of Jesus’ life, and it was not the last day, either!

6. Just as there are three things to note about Jesus’ baptism, we can claim the same three notables. One: We are baptized in the course of our daily lives. Whether we are infants, children or adults, our lives move along one day at a time before our baptism, and they move along one day at a time after our baptism. But the day of our baptism is a day like no other, for that is the day God claims us as a son or daughter, "adopts" us, if you want to say it like that, makes us part of the family. That’s the first notable. Second is that we come seeking baptism because we want to do what is right. If we’re very young, our parents bring us because they want to do what is right. And the third notable for us is that our baptism is our call to ministry. Just as God had a job for Jesus to do (and a very big job at that!), so also God has a job for each one of us to do. It could be a church vocation, it could be teaching, it could be calling on the lonely, it could be feeding the homeless, it could be teaching a child. God has given every one of us particular gifts, and wants us to use our gifts to help people.