The Baptism of our Lord (C) 2019

+ In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti + Amen.

Text: Luke 3:22
Theme: Baptized For Us

Dear friends in Christ Jesus,

Your wellbeing isn’t incidental to God’s plans. The coming of Christ to the manger, to Calvary, and through the opened tomb was not a scheme of salvation only anecdotally important to your personal relationship with God. In short, reconciliation with God happens only through Jesus and the events of His life which accomplished redemption. Baptism, His and yours, is part and parcel with that plan. Jesus didn’t need to be baptised for His own sake. He also didn’t need to leave the heights of heaven and lower Himself by becoming a man. But for us it was absolutely essential. It is the reason we can have confidence in Isaiah’s words today, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”1

Our service today began with the invocation, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” More than just clarifying that this is a Christian gathering, it is a reminder this is the community of the baptized. That means a number of important things. Firstly, the church is a fellowship of faith. Believers see the world differently. Life has a purpose and meaning beyond the struggles and joys of the here and now. Can infants believe? (Can Racer believe?) They can, and we baptize on that premise. The Holy Spirit enables the individual to trust in God’s promise and take Him at His word. It doesn’t require intellectual comprehension, just as a baby can trust in its parents to look after it without a cognitive understanding of what that all entails.

Secondly, in baptism you come into possession of the justifying power of Christ. This is no small matter. It doesn’t mean excuses are made for your sins. It doesn’t mean God waves a magic wand and makes all your sins disappear. In fact, it means we face our sins for what they are. We recognize (not by our own free will, but by the Spirit’s conviction) that sin severs our relationship with the heavenly Father and greatly compromises our relationships with people. So, implicit in baptism is the reality of repentance. Letting sin have free-reign is incompatible with life as a baptized child of God. “Jesus [once]said to His disciples: ‘Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come.”2

So, possessing the justifying power of Christ means that your sinful nature, with all the associated guilt is put to death, crucified, freeing you to live a new life. Listen to the Scripture, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”3 Note how remarkable that is: We were buried with Him through baptism into death. That is, our sinful natures were put in the grave with the corpse of Jesus.

Thirdly, through baptism we come into possession of an inheritance. The final enjoyment of that inheritance involves being in the eternal presence of God. Yet, it’s an inheritance that we enjoy, and that impacts us each and every day. Our daily bread and every other blessing we receive from God’s hand are down payments on our inheritance. We don’t seek to hoard it because we know the Almighty will continue to provide what we need when we need it. The world, of course, looks at the matter of inheritance very differently. Consider the following true examples:

A woman named Nina Wang, who died of cancer in 2007 at age 69, signed over her vast fortune to previously unknown feng shui master Tony Chan as a promise for eternal life. (Feng shui is a Chinese practice that seeks to use energy forces to harmonize people with their environment). Wang changed her will in 2006 in order to leave everything to the feng shui master, voiding a previous will written four years earlier that left the fortune to her family and to charity. With no children of her own, Wang wrote a new will in 2006, two years after her ovarian cancer was diagnosed, making the 48-year-old Chan her sole beneficiary. The question is, why would Chan ask Wang to put him in her will if he had ensured her she would live forever, or at least for a very long time?

A homeless man supposed to be living on the streets of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia fled police who were bringing him news of a $6-million inheritance. Tomas Martinez, 67, apparently thought the police were about to arrest him for his alcohol and drug habits. The man disappeared without a trace, causing Bolivian newspapers to speak of him in 2000 as a "new millionaire paradoxically not knowing his fortune". The inheritance came to Mr Martinez from his ex-wife, who inherited the money herself from family members. She evidently did not blame him for leaving her several years ago. The man has never been found.

Dear friends, the baptismal inheritance of the Saviour is unexcelled and nobody can become so lost that God cannot track him or her down. Jesus Christ was crucified in your place and in mine. Everyone deserves capital punishment for their transgressions. Divine justice demands it. Yet, the miracle of the gospel, the fabulously good news, news so magnificent, extraordinary, and remarkable that enough superlatives could never be found to adequately praise it, is that the infant of Bethlehem who grew up to be sacrificed on Calvary took the full measure of the punishment due us. We are freed from Satan’s accusations and from sin’s power. God looks at repentant believers through the cross.

Jesus’s own baptism wasn’t one of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It was one of solidarity to fulfill all righteousness. It was part of His substitutionary work and identification with sinners. The benevolence of Christ is not that of a distant Deity who makes divine decrees to disconnected dependents. Jesus is the Emmanuel, God-with-us, God-in-the-flesh Saviour who unites Himself with His creation in order that He may redeem it. The power of Christ is revealed in the ‘weakness’ of the cross. We won’t find God by peering piously into heaven and striving to reach beyond all the parameters of the physical universe understood by the human intellect. We find Him in the meekness of the manger, the horror of Golgotha, and the radiant light of the empty tomb. Jesus is in heaven, indeed. But the threshold of heaven is wherever the sinner is reconciled to God. He is present with His people here and now (in these baptismal waters), in the world of forgiveness and pardon, in the body and blood of Holy Communion.

Remember we said at the beginning that the fellowship of believers is a fellowship of faith. If you feel your faith is too frail to really appreciate what the unconditional love of God in Christ means, don’t worry about that. Salvation isn’t dependent on the strength of your faith, but on the object. Faith is trust that God is as good as His word, that His promises are unbreakable, that His capacities are unlimited, that His grace is immeasurable. Pray to have your faith strengthened. The desire to have your faith strengthened is, itself, evidence of faith’s activity.

External parallels in everyday life are analogous: If I have the desire to do something, the battle is half done. Or, from the perspective of the heart instead of the will, if I am passionate about something, I am well on my way towards the goal. But if my heart’s not in it, it will be an uphill battle. If you fear that you’re not passionate enough about God’s will, His word, His grace, then pray that God will invigorate your soul. But remember, that could involve some painful pruning in those areas where your will is in contradiction to His. The Holy Spirit is always seeking to dethrone idols from our hearts. There is only One who has been exalted to the Father’s right hand and He cannot be dethroned. He has our wellbeing in hand. Thanks be to God! Amen.

+ In nomine Jesu +

The Baptism of Our Lord
The First Sunday After Epiphany
13 January 2019
Reverend Darrin L. Kohrt

1 Isaiah 43:1
2 Luke 17:1
3 Romans 6:3-4