Text: Mark 1:9-11
Theme: Holy Baptism:
A Celebration of the Sacrament
Baptism of the Lord/1st
Sunday after the Epiphany
January 11, 2015
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
9 At
that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the
Jordan. 10 Just
as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the
Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And
a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well
pleased.”
Having heard it from the Gospel of Mark, we now turn to the
Presbyterian Book of Confessions:
“We utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm the
sacraments to be nothing else than naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we
are engrafted in Christ Jesus,” so says the Scots
Confession.
“Christ has instituted this external washing with water and
by it has promised that I am as certainly washed with his blood and Spirit from
the uncleanness of my soul and from all my sins, as I am washed externally with
water which is used to remove the dirt from my body,” so declares the Heidelberg Catechism.
“Now to be baptized in the name of Christ is to be enrolled,
entered, and received into the covenant and family, and so into the inheritance
of the children of God,” so states the Second
Helvetic Confession.
“Baptism is a
sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the
solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church, but also to be
unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of ingrafting into Christ, of
regeneration of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus
Christ, to walk in newness of life:
which sacrament is, by Christ’s own appointment, to be continued in his
church until the end of the world,” so affirms the Westminster Confession.
“By humble
submission to John’s baptism, Christ joined himself to men in their need and
entered upon his ministry of reconciliation in the power of the Spirit. Christian baptism marks the receiving of the
same Spirit by all his people. Baptism with
water represents not only cleansing from sin, but a dying with Christ and a
joyful rising with him to new life,” so says the Confession of 1967.
Then there is
this from the Brief Statement of Faith –
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): “The
same Spirit who inspired the prophets and apostles rules our faith and life in
Christ through Scripture, engages us through the Word proclaimed, (and) claims
us in the waters of baptism.”
And I couldn’t
resist; I had to throw in a little Martin Luther – this from the Large Catechism: “Thus we
must regard baptism and make it profitable to ourselves, that when our sins and
conscience oppress us, we strengthen ourselves and take comfort and say: ‘Nevertheless, I am baptized;
but if I am baptized, it is promised me that I shall be saved and have eternal
life both in soul and body.”
I’m here to
say that this day is more than finding out if the Dallas Cowboys will maintain
their spotless record for games on the road.
Our task today is to celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Baptism for all the
gift that it is and then to go on our way rejoicing! A Dallas win will only be gravy – for; with,
lose, or draw in the “Ice Bowl”, we are saved in soul and body.
What opposes
the Cowboys today is a Packer defense that will stop at nothing to stifle and
stop the vaunted Dallas ground game.
What tries to stifle and stop us is not the Packer defense but what
Luther dubbed our sins and conscience.
They, our sins and conscience, will beat us to a pulp. They will sully our spirits; they will mess
with our minds. And what of our
bodies? No less a giant than King David
declared: “When I kept silent, my bones
wasted away through my groaning all day long” (that’s Psalm 32). Another word, a popular and current term, for
that keeping silent is denial. It is the
devilish art of self-deception. If we
say we have no sin, who are we deceiving?
Ourselves!
If the
Sacrament of Baptism is as wonderful as the confessors assert (and I just gave
you a small portion/a list of quotes of what they had to say of Baptism), WHY
do we pay scant reference to it? Why are
baptisteries hidden behind screens and curtains? Why does the baptismal font appear to be no
more than an odd piece of furniture collecting dust in a house of worship? If people knew what Baptism gives and what it
profits them, they would come running – like the whole of Jerusalem came
running out to John the Baptist! They
would treasure it, use it, rely on it, throw it up against everything that
tries to get them down. They would
scream, from the depths of their souls, to the world: “Do what you must! Do what you may! NEVERTHELESS, I AM BAPTIZED!”
The good news
of this grand day is not that our spirits are soaring to God – although that
might surely be a result. The good news
of this grand day is not that our tender emotions have been touched and
fortified – although this, too, could occur.
Our spirits and emotions seek out God, and many times they come away
empty-handed. And then all we discover
is that faith and spirituality are hard to fake.
Where, then,
is God to be found – in the precious fragility of our spirits and
emotions? Is that where to look? Look
to the Scriptures. Let that living and
active Word of God make its case. Look
to Jesus. Look to Him on the day of His
baptism. He’s not up there in heaven far
removed from you or engaging you in some cosmic game of hide and go seek. At His baptism, He’s just another face in the
crowd of humanity right here on terra firma, where we are at. He strolls right up to John the Baptism to be
baptized.
You mean
Jesus, the sinless Son of the living God?
He doesn’t need what John had to offer:
a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. No, but He gets Himself baptized anyway -- as
the Scriptures say, to “fulfill all righteousness.” Righteousness is not something to be
achieved. It is to be fulfilled. Big difference. And it takes a Jesus to make the difference.
At His
Baptism, our Lord take upon Himself all that is wrong with us. To the Corinthian Christians, St. Paul
wrote: “God made Him who knew no sin to
be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
It’s a big
difference because it is a big exchange.
In the German language, it’s called the frohliche wechsel, the “blessed exchange”. Our sin.
His righteousness. Our sin
becomes His. His righteousness becomes
ours.
From today’s
Gospel we learn where the delight and pleasure of God lie: in His beloved Son. “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am
well-pleased.” And that’s where we are
too. What is ours is His; what is His is
ours. So God delights in us too.
This is sure
as God’s Words were put upon you at your Baptism. Rev. Dr. Nagel said it so beautifully in his
1990 sermon for the Baptism of the Lord:
With the water His name was put on you
at your Baptism. You are not just a
doubtful, ambiguous, meaningless hopeless bunch of atoms bouncing around. You have the word of God put on you -- at
your Baptism, surely, and at Jesus’ baptism too. For there Jesus is in solidarity with us and
we with Him. Because He is the beloved
Son, we with Him are beloved sons and daughters, delighted in and beloved of
God. So you can’t just drag along
dreary, fearful, guilt-ridden, nobody-loves-me, me-against-the-rest,
me-against-the-system, me-separate, all alone.
When John saw Jesus separate, Jesus said, “No. Us.” When Jesus says “us,” He takes on what we are
and gives us what He has. The Righteous
One fulfills all righteousness, and you are in on that where God says you are
at – in His delight with Jesus… . It
goes with you as it goes with Him. (Taken from: Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel: From Valparaiso to St. Louis, Concordia
Publishing House, 2004.)
Soli deo Gloria!
To God alone the glory – today and forevermore. Amen.
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