Text: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Theme: “The Lord is All Wet”
The First Sunday after
the Epiphany/Baptism of The Lord
January 10, 2016
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
15 The people were waiting expectantly and
were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you
with[a] water. But one who is more powerful
than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will
baptize you with[b] the Holy Spirit and
fire. 17 His
winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the
wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
21 When all the people were being baptized,
Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in
bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I
love; with you I am well pleased.”
Lots churches have some sort of sign outside that people see
as they drive by. Most of them have
message boards. The new ones are digital
– very high-tech and programmable at the computer terminal in the church
office.
Anyway, driving through North Omaha last week I came upon two
traditional looking churches (they both had steeples) and had signs
outside. The first church’s sign (not
digital) said: “Sign broken; message
inside.” “Clever,” I thought.
The second church’s sign read: “Daily devotion beats yearly resolution.” You may wish to write that one down: “Daily devotion beats yearly
resolution.” Not only is it clever, it
is timely what with New Year’s resolutions underway. Church two wins the signs
wars in North Omaha!
There’s no word on whether the people we heard about in
today’s gospel had just begun New Year resolutions or practiced daily
devotion. We are told, however, that
they were waiting and wondering.
I don’t know about you, but I’m okay with wondering. I wonder about a lot of things. Then I start to daydream, and then I snap out
of it and get on with whatever else I was doing. My mind is like that. I am NOT okay with waiting – particularly if
I have to stand in line. Disneyworld,
with its Magic Kingdom, is a wonderful place to visit -- except, though, when you’re spending most
of the afternoon waiting in line to get on one of their rides. If I can sit in a comfortable chair and have
some reading material, the waiting is tolerable. But mostly, I don’t like it. When you have to wait for an inordinate
amount of time, don’t you think that someone somewhere is not being fair or
that they’re wasting your time? It turns
the mood gloomy and sours the rest of the day.
You people who have learned to wait patiently and politely, what’s your
secret?
Waiting and wondering!
Wondering and waiting! In today’s
Gospel from Luke, we learn that the people were waiting “expectantly”. Well, that’s a little better. I’ll be a lot more pleasant to be around if I
wait expectantly. Why? Because I’m convinced that good things are
going to happen at the end of my wait!
The folks in Luke 3 were waiting expectantly for the
MESSIAH! “Messiah” means “anointed
One.” To be anointed was to be set
apart, to be consecrated to a certain task.
That Messiah, that anointed one, that person consecrated to a certain
task was going to make things right, make everything right. That messiah would bring salvation. And that salvation meant more than just
eternal life in the sweet bye and bye.
Their lives on earth would have meaning, purpose, hope, joy, and
fulfillment. They would walk humbly with
their God and revel in their existence.
That’s what the Messiah would do.
And that much they were sure of.
They didn’t make a religion out of doubt. Now, doubt isn’t all bad; it can challenge
you to dig deeper into the question(s) at hand and try to arrive at the
truth. They were past doubt. They were convinced that Messiah would come.
Would the Messiah come in their lifetimes? They surely wondered about that. Thus, while they waited expectantly, they WONDERED
who that Messiah might be. John the
Baptist looked like a good candidate. He
had something we might call star power or celebrity status. He was
a popular figure. He called them to
repent, to change their minds about God.
The way this was demonstrated was though an act called baptism. You prepare for that Messiah’s arrival by
changing your mind about God. Baptism
marks you as one who has done that. It
is a baptism in the direction of and towards the forgiveness of sins. You’ve changed your mind about God and you’re
ready to receive that Messiah who is all about forgiveness.
That Messiah is not consecrated to turn people into
closed-minded zealots. He is not set apart radicalize people and then employ a
tactic called terrorism to scare others into adherence. That messiah is consecrated to bring
redemption to people, to do for people what they could not do on their own, to
bring a way of life that is marked by faith toward God and love toward the
neighbor.
Could they wait for that?
If anyone is worth waiting for, it’s someone who could do this. Why, it would take a divine Messiah to do
this!
Think about it: how
different would the world look today if people – more people, a growing number
of people – actually believed this. They
believe that their lives are not only precious to themselves and to their loved
ones but to God. They believe that their
lives, riddled as they are with sins and shortcomings, are worth redeeming,
worth bringing a Messiah to. Fueled by
gratitude, they have the energy to love even their enemies. They don’t “test” hydrogen bombs; they test
different ways to ease the burden of the less fortunate, to lose themselves in
a cause greater than themselves. In the
doing, they discover themselves.
At the Jordan River, the people wondered if John the Baptist
might be that Messiah! John squashed
that notion before it got any traction.
“One who is more powerful than I will come. I’m not even worthy to untie His
sandals.” He might as well have said the
same thing that St. Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians: “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the
heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
The sweet irony is that the waiting and wondering people
didn’t really see Him or notice Him at first. Based on what experiences they had, there was
no way on God’s green earth that they could conceive of the Messiah, the
Savior, to be this way. The One that John considered himself unworthy
for sandal untying was indistinguishable from all the rest. He was all but hidden – must another face in
the crowd. You can almost picture Him in
line waiting and wondering like all the rest.
The only difference is that He wasn’t waiting and wondering
when the Messiah would come. He was the
Messiah. All He was waiting for was to
be baptized by John – like all the other sinners who changed their minds about
God and sought to be baptized toward the forgiveness of their sins. “When all the people were being baptized,”
says Luke, “Jesus was baptized to.”
My friends, Jesus called people then, and, through His Holy
Spirit, He calls people today to be and do many things. He calls them to people to repent and believe
the good news. He calls people to
discipleship, if you will. He calls us
take up our cross and follow Him. He
calls us to be fishers of men. He calls
us to yank the log out of our own eye before we even think of removing the
speck from our neighbor’s eye. He calls
us to be servants. He calls us to be in
the world and not of it. He calls to
this; He calls to that. He calls and
calls and calls to yet more – even though we often put the mobile phone of our
heart into airplane mode.
But here is the significance – indeed, the great and massive
blessing – of the Baptism of our Lord:
before He even issues the first call, He is baptized; he is all wet; He
comes out of that baptismal water. He
hasn’t called anyone – yet. What He does
is IDENTIFY HIMSELF with us. There in that
baptismal line he takes His place with sinners.
He identifies with them. Those
are the people He is going to hang with.
He throws His proverbial “hat” into their ring, into our ring.
The first thing we learn about Jesus, as His public ministry
began when He was roughly thirty years old, is not that He has called us. It’s that he has identified Himself with
us.
A celestial Jesus, a Jesus far above the heavens, etc., we
can keep at a safe distance. After all,
He is sovereign. He is; I don’t deny
that.
But what about the Jesus who is standing there in line with
us, who walks with us our entire journey through indistinguishable from all the
rest? This is not Jesus the evangelist,
Jesus the great moral teacher, Jesus the miracle worker – not yet. This is just Jesus – the Son of God and the
Son of Man, one of us.
Dripping wet, He comes up out of the baptismal river. He didn’t ask for a towel; He prayed. We are told the heavens opened, and the Holy
Spirit descended upon Him as a dove. Then
the voice: “You are my Son whom I
love. With You I am well pleased.”
Since He identified with us, the same words – like baptismal
water – are applied to us. “You are my
child. You, people of First Church, are
my children too. With you I am well-pleased.”
Daily devotion, with the One who at His baptism identified
with you, is better than yearly resolution.
Amen.
