Homily for The Baptism of Our Lord (2020)

"Standing in the Water"
Joshua 3:1-3, 7-8, 13-17; Matthew 3:13-17

One purpose of liturgical art is to give us a glimpse of God’s truth and beauty. God has created and placed us in a beautiful world and He does have something to say about what’s good and true. Liturgical art also gives us a glimpse of where and how we fit into God’s truth and beauty. Not only does He give us a beautiful creation; He also makes us beautiful. Now that’s an amazing truth, especially after our fall into sin and death. Beginning with Adam and Eve and ever since, we humans have taken God’s truth and beauty and trashed it, spit on it, rejected it. Very ugly! Somehow, we thought we could come up with something better—something more true and more beautiful than God Himself did. But God still “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). God still wants to tell you: “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD” (Is. 62:3).

This is the message that flows out of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River. When King Jesus is baptized in the Jordan, He also purifies you, His bride, the Church.

Take a look at our liturgical art that evokes our first reading—the Crossing of the Jordan. (If you can’t see it on the wall, it’s also on your bulletin.) Put yourself in the scene, standing in the bottom corner, watching the event first-hand. It’s forty years after leaving slavery in Egypt and marching into freedom. It’s forty years after crossing the Red Sea on dry ground. It’s also been forty years full of ugliness—full of fear, of whining and complaining, of doubting God’s goodness.

"Crossing the Jordan" in the sanctuary of Hope Ev. Lutheran Church, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, by Max Autenrieb Church Interior Decorating, Inc.

Now, as you stand in your little place in the picture, God has brought His people to the edge of the Promised Land. When you see the Ark of the Covenant being carried by the priests, you know that is God present with His people. He is the one stepping into the water first so that the waters upstream stand in a heap. He is the one leading them through the Jordan River on dry ground. He is the one ushering them into the land of milk and honey that is completely His gift and always will be.

You can do more than merely imagine yourself standing on the dry river bed of the Jordan. The artwork does proclaim what actually happens in your Baptism. So put yourself at the font. That’s your reality. There your God brings you out of the slavery of your sin into the freedom of life with Him. There He washes you clean even as you wander in the filthy wilderness of this world. And there you stand, eager and ready for the eternal Promised Land—that land of milk and honey that always was, always is, and ever shall be His gift to you.

The problem is, you’re not in that Promised Land just yet. You still walk and live in the wilderness of this filthy, fallen world. And the temptations abound to wallow in the muck of sin. Actually, that muck infects and flows out of your heart and mine. Like our Israelite forebears, we too give in to the filth of fear, of whining and complaining, and of doubting God’s goodness. We need a good cleansing. We need a purification that comes from outside of us.

That’s why our God steps into the Jordan a second time. This time He is not merely represented by a golden box being carried by priests. This time He’s in the flesh. If Christmas proclaims that God, the Son of God, became a man, Epiphany proclaims that this man is God—true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true Man, born of the Virgin Mary. He’s the One who steps into the water to purify you.

Now John objects. “That’s not right,” he claims. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” The One who comes to purify does not need to be purified! After all, He’s like us in every respect, yet without sin. And John was right. We should say the same thing. “Jesus, we need to be baptized by You, and do You step into the water for us?” Listen again to Jesus’ reply: “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” No, the all-righteous One did not need to be made righteous; the all-pure One did not need to be purified. But He still stands in the water for you and for your salvation.

How does that work? Consider what you hear every time someone is baptized. When your Lord stepped into the Jordan’s water, He “sanctified and instituted all waters to be a blessed flood and a lavish washing away of sin.” (LSB, 269). We might even say that when Jesus steps into the water, He, the pure One, soaks up all of the impurities—all of your impurities and all impurities of every human being—like a sponge. He will carry all those impurities all the way to the cross. There He will nail all that filth—including your filth—to the wood with Himself. There your sin—your fears, your doubts, your whining and complaining—will die with Him. This is how Jesus’ Baptism fulfills all righteousness. God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

What does it mean for you that your Lord stands in the water in your place? Jesus’ Baptism expresses itself in your life at three big events: your Baptism, your communing, and your death.

In your Baptism, you were immersed with Christ. With Him, you died and were buried; and with Him, you were raised. “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11). Heaven has opened up for you. The Holy Spirit has come upon you. Now the Father says, “You are My beloved child.”

So why do you fear? Why do you doubt? Why do you whine and complain? Why do you fear such things as supposed climate change or recent news of international hostilities? Why do you doubt that your Father is still in charge in His beautiful world? You have been through “the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Tit. 3:5). By Jesus’ washing of death and resurrection you have become “heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Tit. 3:7). You may leave behind the ugliness of your sin and stand with your Lord in His purifying water.

Jesus’ Baptism also works for you when you commune at His Table. In His Body and Blood truly present under bread and wine you receive all the benefits of His sacrificial death. Heaven opens. The Holy Spirit descends. And the Father renews and enriches you as His own beloved children. So why fear? Why doubt? Why whine and complain? When you eat and drink at this Table, you are filled with Him in whom “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). After all, you have also been “buried with Him in baptism, in which you were raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God” (Col. 2:12).

Finally, Jesus’ Baptism takes place in you at your death. When your heart stops beating and your brain activity ceases, you plunge into the darkest depths. But in Christ you will arise from those depths. Your Baptism has already taken care of the big death—the separation from God for all eternity that you deserve. So when you arise from bodily death, you will be on the other side of the Jordan, in our Lord’s pure gift of the eternal Promised Land. “Death’s flood has lost its chill / Since Jesus crossed the river” (LSB 482:2). You will get to see the Blessed Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—no longer in a mirror dimly, but finally and clearly face-to-face.

So ponder all these things in your heart as you put yourself in the Jordan River in that picture. Rejoice in them every time you pass the font into Your Lord’s presence. Jesus stands in the water for you, and you stand there with Him for life. That’s God’s truth and beauty—for you, for your family, for your friends, and for every neighbor He puts in your path. Amen.