You may remember before Christmas, during our advent journey, we looked at the arrival upon the scene of John the Baptist. We read in both John’s gospel and in Mark of his call to repentance. Now, today on the feast of the baptism of our Lord, we have the next little episode of John’s ministry; the baptism of Jesus from the end of Matthew chapter 3.
I often approach my preparation for preaching as a kind of problem solving exercise, and today is a prime example of this. Over Christmas we celebrated the birth of God’s Son, who the New Testament is at pains to tell us - in verses such as 2 Corinthians 5, 21 - was without sin. Jesus did not sin; he lived the perfect human life as a man, and he lived it by human means, not by divine means. Because he was fully human, when Jesus resisted temptation, he did so in human strength, and when he healed people, though it was with the power of God, he did it as a human being, which is how healing happens in the church today; Jesus didn’t use any supernatural power that the Holy Spirit has not given to the church. When we pray and people are healed, that is the same kind of miracle as Jesus did. But that’s another sermon!
So if Jesus was the perfect human being, without sin, who lived a perfect and blameless life, why did he go to John the Baptist for baptism, when this involved a public repentance of sins? If he didn’t sin, why did he need a baptism of repentance? This is the problem I seek to solve in my mind and in your heads today.
I think there are two possible approaches to this; either we behave as the liberal do, and chuck out the idea that Jesus did not sin, discounting it purely on practical grounds as impossible, or we find another conclusion. You will be glad to hear that I am not going to take the first option, but rather the second; the Bible is clear on Jesus’ perfect life, and that in itself has a huge impact on the atonement – without his total perfection, his sacrifice would have been in vain. Sin could not be conquered by a sinner, but by a perfect, spotless lamb.
So what is going on here? Well, let’s first have a look at what exactly John was calling people to.
Every Sunday we have our prayers of confession, and if you’re like me you need to be confessing during the week as well. There is a lot of talk about “repentance of sins” when it comes to the Church of England’s liturgy. However I don’t think we mean the same thing by that term as John did. The Greek word metanoia, which is at the heart of John’s message doesn’t mean, “saying sorry”, it implies a total turnaround, a life-altering decision to change the direction of one’s life. We might do that once in a while – especially at the beginning of our faith journey, but its not something that happens to us every week.
But at the time of Jesus it was widely expected that the Messiah would be revealed following a time of national repentance, when the whole nation would change. The context of John’s preaching and baptising ministry then was one of national crisis – the Romans had occupied the nation, and had already put down one revolt following the Maccabean uprising. The very fabric of the religious life of God’s people was under threat – remember that the main Roman fort in Jerusalem, the fortress of Antonia, actually overlooked the Temple, so that architecturally and in terms of privacy, Jewish worship was dominated by Rome. With the crisis came the expectancy of a messiah, God’s anointed servant who would come to rescue the nation. Prophecies like Isaiah 42 fuelled this expectation. As the people cried out for justice and freedom, they would have returned to these words in hope.
The boot is on the other foot in the Holy Land this week. Israel is in the Roman role, as the oppressing invader, and the Palestinians are the occupied and oppressed poor. It is interesting that in Hamas videos available on You tube, the leaders are still castigating Rome and vowing to destroy it because of the crusades. We might think Israel is milking it a bit by using the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust as an excuse for violence, but Hamas seems intent on keeping alive a conflict that was over 800 years ago – and which at times saw Jew and Muslim soldiers shoulder to shoulder defending the walls of Jerusalem from Christian invaders.
Right, rant over … back to the text.
Who knows how much John knew about how his relative Jesus would indeed fulfil this prophecy and so many others? All that is certain is that the Lord led John to begin calling people to repentance, calling them back to himself. There must have been some understanding in John of the nature of Jesus, because he says, “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?” In other words, John recognises that Jesus is “the one more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry,” that he was announcing to the people just before this episode. He doesn’t understand why Jesus would want to be baptised, but as we learn from John chapter 1, God had revealed to the Baptist who Jesus was.
Jesus’ first public words in Matthew’s gospel then are a correction of the theology of his cousin. “Let it be so now, it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness”. These words are the answer to the question “why did the sinless Christ need to be baptised?”
But what do they mean?
Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t say, “it is right for you to baptise me”, or even “it is right for you and me to do this.” The “us” doesn’t just refer to John and Jesus. It refers to everyone there who wants to be part of John’s call to repentance to bring in the messiah. As Robert Mounce puts it in his commentary on the NIV text, “Jesus’ own baptism demonstrates his solidarity with the people.”
This reminds me of the Robert Redford film “Brubaker”, about a prison governor, who chooses to enter the prison on his first day at work with a busload of convicts. Unrecognised, he undergoes everything they had to as they were brought in. Only later is his true position revealed. In the same way, Jesus undergoes the same ritual as everyone else; only when he comes out of the water does anything different happen, and we’ll come to that in a moment.
I like to find ways to explain the gospel in plain English, to make it easier for people to understand, so I think stuff like “to fulfil all righteousness” is the kind of thing that might make my preaching tutor say, “go away and put that into words that an ordinary person can understand”. But that’s what Jesus said to John, so we’re stuck with it.
At moments like these I head for the bookshelf and see what other versions have; the Message says “God’s work putting things right all these centuries is coming together right now in this baptism.” The good News says,” In this way we shall do all that God requires.”
Remembering that the Message is a paraphrase not a translation helps me get over the “all these centuries …” bit, but I think these two other takes on a strange sentence do confirm that God wanted Jesus to fully experience humanity, including a baptism for repentance of sins, and also that this was God’s plan from all eternity.
And the baptism obviously met with God’s approval because of what happened next.
The account of the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus in Matthew indicates that God’s voice was heard by everyone there – “this is my Son…” Mark and Luke have “You are my Son”, indicating that only Jesus heard the words addressed to him. But if Matthew’s emphasis is on the identification of Christ with a whole people whom he has come to save, it would make sense for his account to involve God addressing everyone, letting them know “this is my Son.” Has Matthew tinkered with what actually happened? Possibly, but it is still God’s word; in all three synoptic accounts only Jesus sees the Spirit descend upon him. In John, the Baptist sees him too. Eventually everyone will have heard the story of what happened that day; Matthew then is telling a story that was a key element in the identity of the people he wrote for; since they know what God said to Jesus, why not tell it as if they had all heard it then, instead of later on. The differences in the accounts do not negate who Jesus is declared to be.
Why was Jesus baptised? Essentially, in one way or another, that day, there was a glimpse of glory, a little peek at the true nature of Jesus. Matthew is strong on community, wanting everyone to identify with Jesus as a child of God with whom he is well pleased, because they have repented and return to him. What a tragedy for Gaza that today’s Israel cannot hear that same voice and take that same step of repentance.
