Transcription
John the Baptist’s moment has now come. His big moment. Now, up to this point, we’ve seen this steady building of who and what John is.
Up to this moment, we’ve seen how he’s dressed with that weird belt around his waist, that cloth of animal hair he wears. We’ve heard him call the Pharisees a brood of vipers. But all of that doesn’t matter compared to this great moment because in this moment, John moves things forward.
Although he’s not exactly a willing participant in the beginning. When we look at John the Baptist, he is not this sustained piece of ministry. He’s like a bottle rocket shooting across the sky.
He’s there, he’s there, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and boom, he’s gone. He’s not there anymore. His job, his ministry was not about that sustainability.
It was about coming and proclaiming and preparing. And then when the point of transition comes in the Jordan, his ministry fades away to nothing. That’s what John is supposed to do.
We don’t know anything about his youth really. We just know about him coming out of the wilderness like a wild man. We don’t know if his neighbors were sitting on their porches saying, I always knew John would end up that way.
He was a weird kid. You know, you don’t know if they were sitting there saying, he comes from such a nice family. I can’t believe he would end up like this.
You don’t know what he was like. All we know is this moment, he streaks across our conscience. He streaks across scripture.
When he comes out of the wilderness, he’s like a house on fire. There is no slowing down his time. There’s no steady progression, taking your time to go forward.
It is 100%, 100 miles an hour, all gas, no brakes, shooting across conscious because he doesn’t have time. His ministry is to get the people ready and then transition to the next moment. In many ways, he’s like an interim minister.
You bring in an interim minister to transition between two long serving, hopefully, ministers. They come in maybe for a year or a year and a half or two years and they help you to navigate grief and everything and get you ready. And then when the new minister comes, they fade off into nothing.
But there needs to be a transition moment. John is the road grader. He’s the trailblazer.
He prepares everything for Jesus. And when Jesus comes in this moment, when we have this great moment, John goes. John, surprisingly, has drawn quite a crowd.
His focus is on repentance, people coming and preparing and making ready, making themselves ready for the Messiah to come. He’s calling them to change and turn away. And the sign of that is being washed in the Jordan.
And before those students of geography start correcting me, I understand they probably have the dirtiest river and one of the colder rivers to baptize people in. So it’s not like people are saying, oh, I just need to go take a dip in the water and cool down a little bit. No, it’s cold.
It’s fed by the mountains. It makes me think about when I was on a mission trip and we whitewater rafted the Colorado River and every picture of us from that youth group looked cold, miserable, and wet, and we were. And to this day, on a cold day, I am so grateful that it’s not that cold.
The fact of the matter is people are willingly coming to that cold and dirty river to show that they desire to be washed clean of their sins. They are coming to show that they’re ready for the Messiah. And then we have the whole beautiful interaction with the Pharisees and between they and John.
And then Jesus comes. Jesus comes and there’s this moment in our brains where we look at this moment and we wonder, wait, son of God, not a sinner, free from sin, and yet he comes to be baptized in the waters because he needs to commit to being washed and turned white. There’s this moment where if you really drill down and think about why Jesus is coming, it might make your head explode.
But the reality is it’s about so much more than what John’s baptism means. Because think about that interaction between John and Jesus. It’s not, hey, cousin, how are you? Been a long time, no see.
Haven’t seen you since you were in your mother’s womb. You want to be baptized? But no, no, Jay, Jay, Jay, no, no. I, no, excuse me.
Son of God, I know, I know, but you got this wrong. I’m supposed to be baptized by you, not you by me. Think about that interaction and how absolutely problematic it could be.
But Jesus then says, no, it must be done for all righteousness. It’s a partnering, a working together. The two of them in this moment work together to move the salvation story forward.
And Jesus isn’t coming because he’s repenting. He isn’t coming because he needs to repent. He is coming to stand with us.
He is coming to not hedge his bets like the Pharisees and Sadducees. He’s coming because he needs to stand beside us in this moment. When we look at it and think about how absolutely beautiful this moment truly is.
Because in this moment, Jesus, though he is not a sinner, comes and stands with all the other people, among all the other people that are there. And John baptizes. And then he goes to get out of the water.
And the heavens open up. The spirit descends like a dove. This isn’t about Jesus making a sign that he is ready to turn away from his sinful ways.
This is God anointing this moment of transition. This moment where suddenly Jesus is now the story. Jesus is now the man who will drive every step of this way.
Jesus is going to transform this. Now we could try and figure out if Jesus is actually sinful as some theologians have tried to do. So that they don’t have to navigate that hard conversation about what this means.
But really in baptism here, Jesus sets out certain different things. And it is most key for us to remember. Because he has walked everywhere with us.
When we in the Reformed Church talk about baptism as a sign and a seal of God’s covenant. That relationship, that tie in between us and God is through Jesus. That tie in where God knows the pain we feel is through Jesus.
And it starts really from the very beginning in the manger. Jesus has walked every step of the way with us. He has walked in our shoes, though he probably would look at phones and do what many of us do and roll his eyes.
But he is connected to us in what he has done. He is connected along that whole path. Because when we feel pain, when we feel grief, when we feel lost, when we feel joy, guess what? Every single emotion we have felt, he did.
When we feel betrayed, when a relationship goes wrong, you don’t think that Jesus knows what that feels like? You don’t think that he didn’t hurt when he realized the betrayal of Judas? You don’t think he realized the joy, the wonder of the feeding of the 5,000? Yeah, yeah, sure. He was the one who did it, but don’t think that the looks on those faces being fed on that day didn’t show him what joy means. When you give a gift to a child and they have that absolute beaming face, Jesus knows what that is.
He knows what that means. When he thinks about grief and loss, you don’t think he has lost friends along the way. When we think about Lazarus and how Jesus grieves, he knows what it was like to lose a friend.
He knows everything we have, and he has walked with us. He has covenanted to be with us. That’s what the baptism means.
He was baptized as much in the spirit as into humanity because he knows everything we feel. And I want you to think about this in terms of how we look at the world. Because when we look at the world, we look at other faiths and we think about other faiths, and there’s this amorphousness to it.
In many ways, I think of it as, we talk about it like Star Wars and the Force. The Force be with you. May the Force be with you.
But it’s this amorphous thing. You don’t feel it. You don’t know it.
It’s this non-known, but we have a known God who knows what we feel, who has lived and experienced what we feel. And so when, as I said to the kids, we go to him in prayer, he knows those fears we have. He knows those joys, those celebrations, and those hurts.
Every single one, he has lived those, felt those. And that is the beautiful relationship that exists between us and God. Because God knows us.
So brothers and sisters, find joy in this. Find peace in this. Understand that God is not a God who is aloof, unapproachable, uncommunicative.
He knows what we feel. He knows and has experienced the pain and joy we feel. And so when you turn to him in your prayers, know that he knows what you feel.
And so go to him as often as you need, as much as you can, and find peace and comfort in that. And now,