1. Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word for this day as we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord is taken from Mark 1:4-11 and is entitled, “Acceptance or Repentance,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. John has been preaching a radical vision of God, where God holds people accountable for their sin and calls them to repent. What will Jesus do? Years ago, a Lutheran church member was attending another church that hosted a Friendship Sunday. Do you remember those? On Friendship Sunday, each member was asked to bring an unchurched friend to church. Based on the principles of relational evangelism, Friendship Sunday was an opportunity to share your faith with your friends. So, this Lutheran church member brought an unchurched friend with him to church on Friendship Sunday. But, instead of a friendly witness, it ended up in a heated argument.
3. During the service, they confessed their sins. When they did that, he heard his friend gasp. It happened right after he said he deserved God’s, “…temporal and eternal punishment.” Though his eyes were closed, he knew his friend’s eyes were wide-open, staring in shock at what she was seeing and hearing. After church, she looked at him and asked why he went there… to that church. Why would he go to a church which asked him to say such horrible things… about God and about himself?
4. One thing that was offensive to her (and there were many!) was the idea God would punish sin. After all, aren’t we all just doing the best we can? Shouldn’t God be supporting and encouraging us rather than punishing us? For her, it was this vision of a hateful God that fueled the hateful religious conflicts of the world. Suddenly, this Lutheran church member who brought his friend to church on Friendship Sunday was somehow implicated in 9/11. Who knew going to church could be so bad? As they talked, he discovered something about his friend. She was comfortable with the idea that, “God is love,” but she wasn’t comfortable with the reality. She couldn’t see what that love looked like in the world. They both agreed God was all-loving. But when it came time for that love to be put into action, they were worlds apart.
5. For her, love was equated with toleration and acceptance. For God to be all-loving meant God tolerates our sinful moments, that He accepts us in our weaknesses, and does whatever He can to help us get better. God was eternally on our side, working through toleration and acceptance to help us improve. But, this morning, Mark’s gospel takes us into a radically different kind of world. It’s a world where God isn’t tolerating sin but calling people to repentance and a world where God isn’t accepting people but forgiving them.
6. Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark doesn’t begin his gospel with a genealogy. No, Mark begins his gospel with a prophecy. “A voice crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord.” In Mark, John the Baptist suddenly and surprisingly appears on the scene. John is out in the wilderness preaching and practicing a baptism of repentance. “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” And John’s message reached people. People were gathering. Not to stare in horrified shock, but to repent. Mark tells us, “All the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”
7. Then, Jesus comes, and the question is now put into real life: “What will an all-loving God do when He encounters this kind of a situation?” John has been preaching a radical vision of God, where God holds people accountable for their sin and calls them to repent. What will Jesus do? When Jesus comes, He doesn’t stand on the bank and call everyone to come out of the water. Jesus doesn’t stand there and say, “Hey, you’ve got it all wrong. There isn’t temporal and eternal punishment for sin. No, God is all-loving. So come, follow me. I can teach you to accept one another and we will try to turn this world into a happier, more tolerant, place.”
8. No, Jesus lets God’s judgment stand. Jesus lets people get into the water. But then, Jesus does something more. He gets into the water with them. Why? Because that’s the nature of God’s love. It doesn’t delight in the death of sinners but rather they turn from their sin and be saved. So, Jesus enters the waters of the Jordan because He loves and because He knows He alone can bear God’s punishment for sin and He alone can rise from death and lead God’s people into a kingdom where this kind of love never ends. Jesus lets God’s judgment stand. Jesus lets people get into the water. But then, Jesus does something more. He gets into the water with them.
9. When we gather today, to celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, we do so in a way our culture finds strange and frightening. We confess our sins. We acknowledge God is all powerful and holy; that God is just and punishes sin. But, as we make this confession, Mark calls us to see Jesus, the sinless Son of God, who takes our place in the waters of God’s judgment. Jesus willingly identifies with us sinners and, by doing that, leads us through the waters of God’s judgment to the life of God’s grace. Jesus bears God’s wrath so He might bring God’s grace to you and to me and to all who have sinned.
10. This is why Martin Luther, the Great Reformer, links baptism with repentance and the confession of our sins. In his Small Catechism on Baptism Part 4 he writes, “What does such baptizing with water indicate?” It indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever. Where is this written? St. Paul writes in Romans, chapter six: “We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4)
11. Having given his selfless testimony to the greater one who was to come after him, John is now privileged to have a most special role in inaugurating the Messiah into his own ministry. We know from the other gospels that John protested when Jesus came to him to be baptized. After all, Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. He had no sins to confess! Why did Jesus need to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins that didn’t exist? Jesus simply answers: “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:15).
12. In allowing himself to be baptized, Jesus was showing his solidarity with sinners. Though himself sinless, he was identifying himself with sinners by giving himself to the work of bearing their sins. In fact, as Martin Luther points out, Jesus was here beginning to be Christ, the Anointed One, and “was thus inaugurated into his entire Messianic office as our Prophet, High Priest, and King” (quoted in Lenski, Matthew, p. 133). The voice of the Father from heaven and the abiding of the Holy Spirit on Jesus (in the form of a dove) demonstrated the agreement of all the persons of the Godhead in what was taking place.
13. The one true God, the holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is now launching the climax to his great plan of salvation. The long period of expectation and preparation is now over. The most momentous days the world will ever know, the three years of Christ’s public ministry, culminating in his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, are about to begin. Satan’s power and dominion are doomed. The world’s redemption is at hand.
14. Jesus’s baptism opens the Kingdom of Heaven for sinners. An opening appeared in the sky above Jesus serving as a space for the sound of God the Father’s voice and for the emergence of God the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. Thanks to Jesus, the heavens are now open. God the Holy Spirit can now descend from heaven to sinful people like you and me and work in us the salvation Jesus achieved. We, now cleared of the guilt of sin, can approach God in heaven in prayer and, after death, live with God there forever.
15. Thanks to Jesus, God has access to us and we have access to God. The lines of communication are now open between God and people, those lines of communication Jacob saw in a dream as a ladder between heaven and earth on which angels were ascending and descending. Now, like Stephen, we can see “the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). The heaven was opened—now we can see that “inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven” for us (1 Pet. 1:4). The heaven was opened—now we can lift up our heads and see our redemption drawing near (Luke 21:28). The heaven was opened—now we can see “this same Jesus, which [was] taken up … into heaven … come in like manner as [we] have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The heaven was opened—now we can see “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2).
16. When Jesus opens up the Kingdom of Heaven for sinners, Mark asks us, for a moment, to look up into sky. There, the windows of Heaven are open and God, the Father, looks down upon His Son, Jesus, and says, “…with Him I am well-pleased.” Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
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