Baptism Of Christ - A Short Sunday Sermon

 

Today we celebrate the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan, an epiphany in which God reveals himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, as a Trinity of divine persons. All well and good, more than that, a miraculous revelation of divine truth. But why, we have to ask, did Christ allow himself to be baptized by John?

After all, John's baptism was a matter of repentance; the Jews went down into the Jordan confessing their sins and arose, cleansed in the living waters of the river to a new life of righteousness. Death and rebirth, aptly summed up in the water itself, water which kills and gives life.

All well and good, but why did Jesus, who knew no sin, get baptized by John; he had nothing to repent of. The Baptizer says as much, "I should be baptized by you," to which our Lord replies, "So be it for now, to fulfill all righteousness."

To fulfill all righteousness, that being obedience to the Father's will. And what was the Father asking of Jewry? To be baptized, and Christ, representing the people as King of the Jews must be baptized too. But perhaps "represent" is too weak a word.  

Jesus, the Word made Flesh, though sinless, assumes fallen human nature and it's this which he takes down into the depths of the Jordon. To death, if you like, only to rise up again from the waters, Spirit anointed. He does the very same thing at the Cross and Resurrection. His baptism, then, is a prefigurement of his redemptive action. Benedict XVI puts it well:

"Jesus loaded the burden of mankind's guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross."

And, we can add, the Resurrection. Right there on the Jordan, a place pf Exodus, God reveals his redemptive work in Christ, who in loving obedience to the Father will offer sinful humanity sinlessly upon the Cross as a perfect, atoning sacrifice. 

All this, unveiled and prefigured at the outset of Jesus' public ministry, at the beginning of the road which will take him to Calvary and from there to resurrection, to new life in the power of that same Spirit which descended upon him in the waters of the Jordan.

That same Spirit who rests upon us who believe and are baptized in the name of the God who revealed himself to us in the Jordan as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Amen,

LSP