When Jesus Came to the Jordan River

When Jesus came to the Jordan river to be baptized by John he did not follow the crowds.  They came for a show.  They came to be aroused from their spiritual slumber.  They came for a sign of hope that God had not abandoned them in their plight.  They came for healing, for forgiveness, for cleansing from the sin that separated them from the salvation of their God.  They came because John cried out and they heard his voice crying and they heard their prophets’ voices in his voice and they believed that in His baptism they would find faith and the promise of God for God’s people.  They came because they needed to come.  They came because of a longing---a longing that escapes us in this culture of immediacy and access and now and comfortable living.  They longed because they lacked, they longed because they tasted hunger and thirst and death.  They longed because they were weary from oppression and abuse.  They longed because that’s all they could do.

When Jesus came to the Jordan river to be baptized by John he did not follow the crowds.  He did not come to join the community in the wilderness.  He did not come to make amends, get his life right with the LORD, if you will.  Jesus came to reveal Himself to the world.

Jesus’ baptism marks in all four gospels the beginning of His ministry.  Baptism is Jesus’ entrée into the world of men and women and pain and sickness and broken relationships and love and lust and violence. Baptism was his entrée into power politics and oppression and fear by coercive force.  Jesus’ baptism was the first step on the road to the cross.  But it was the first step.  Jesus’ baptism was his anointing, his coronation, his inauguration, his symbolic establishment as the Son of God, the true King, the Messiah, the long-awaited Savior of the world.

Jesus’ baptism was a public announcement on a holy stage, from whence the people of Israel may come to recognize the power of God at work in Him.  He rises from the waters; the heavens and opened.  A dove descends upon him; a voice from heave proclaims, “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased”.  The voice of God, shut up in the heavens, silent for all those years.  Silent since the words of the last prophet which echoed in their ears when they read the scriptures.  But silent.  God had not spoken to them in so long.  Centuries.  And now God’s Voice is heard.  God’s voice calls to Jesus and to the world.  THIS IS MY SON.

Sonship was the essential identification.  Messiah, King---human ID, vocational, more like one’s career than one’s personal name.  SON is inheritance; SON is communion, company, familial bonds, SON is LOVE.  God’s Son is revealed to us in the baptism of Jesus. Therefore,

To know the Son is to know the Father.  To love the Son is the love the father  To imitate the Son is to reflect the will of God. 

When you are baptized into Christ Jesus, you are made sons and daughters of God—adopted into the family,given a new identity.  You are a new person.  Your life belongs to God. In baptism, God calls to us all—This is my child.  And in that calling is our entrée into the world of sin and suffering and love and joy.  It is our entrée into God’s world, not our ticket out.  It is our entrée into the way of Jesus, whose road from baptism to the cross, becomes are own.  Because we are His Body, the church.  And since the dy of His baptism, Baptism has become the way in which we are born into the family of God and the ministry of Jesus. May you be renewed in the baptism life today and begin your journey with Jesus into the world of the poor, the suffering, the helpless.  May you serve as you are called.  And may you die trusting in the promise of His resurrection.  Amen,