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Baptism of Christ

Readings: Isaiah 42: 1-9; Acts 10: 34-43; Matthew 3: 13-17

09/01/05

Six weeks ago we began a journey together called Advent. We marked milestones on that journey by lighting candles on the Advent Wreath to remind us of the things that had to happen in order to complete the journey. Six weeks ago it seemed like a long journey, [unless you still had gifts to buy - Advent Sunday was 23 shopping days before Christmas.]
And now, two weeks after Christmas, the new year is well under way - where has all the time gone?

It’s a question that many of us ask ourselves in many different situations. For me it’s one year since I first preached in this church, and the time seems to have passed very quickly.

Likewise, in today’s gospel reading we have skipped from last week’s Epiphany story of the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus, to the story of the beginning of his ministry in his early thirties. Although we still display the nativity scene in church, and think about his birth as a human child and his humble origins, with the gift of hindsight we know that Jesus grew up and began a ministry which would end with his death and resurrection.

Today’s gospel shows Jesus receiving baptism from his cousin, John; not because he is a sinner but because it is part of his ministry to stand beside and identify with sinners. He meets sinners where they are. And when Jesus comes out of the water the Holy Spirit “descends like a dove and alights on him”, as Matthew tells us; and God states “ ‘this is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ ” [God is pleased with his son even before he has begun his ministry, because God’s nature is to love, he loves us before we love him, he meets us where we are.]

In the Old Testament, which is the story of God’s first covenant with his people the Israelites, the Holy Spirit comes to specific people whom God had chosen to accomplish a particular task. In this sense, the story of told in today’s gospel shows that John and Jesus are part of a long tradition of prophets acknowledged by God in this way. But God has done something new with Jesus – he acknowledges him as his son.

In our reading from the prophet Isaiah, the Lord says “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.” He was preparing his people for the coming of their messiah, their saviour, long before John preached ‘prepare the way for the Lord’.

And again, in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, god is doing a new thing. Up until that time when Simon Peter went to Cornelius’s house, Christianity was a Jewish sect. The disciples were Jews, the first Christians were Jews; they worshipped and taught at synagogues; they knew and followed the Jewish laws. Gentiles, or non-Jews, could worship God in the temple at Jerusalem, but they were only allowed into an outer court, they were always apart from the true children of God. But this was about to change; God was about to do a new thing.

He had prepared Simon Peter by giving him a vision; God shows Simon Peter many animals, which are ritually unclean according to Jewish law, and asks him to kill and eat. But Peter is entrenched in the laws he was brought up in and refuses – three times he refuses to do as God asks, and then he is called to Cornelius, a Roman Centurion, and a Gentile follower of God. Reading earlier in the book of Acts we can find out that he is respected by the Jews of his home town as a righteous and God-fearing man; he prays to God and gives generously to the poor. God also has prepared him for something new, through the visitation of an angel.

Simon Peter realizes that his visions have prepared him to speak to the Gentiles gathered in Cornelius’s home, and he goes with the message that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him”. He goes on to re-tell the story of Jesus’s ministry, explaining that he witnessed these things personally. He tells of Jesus rising from the dead, impressing on his listeners that this was no vision but a physical reality – they ate and drank with him. He tells them of the mission Jesus set them, “to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.” And then Peter announces his new interpretation of the prophets’ testimony. That “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” Not just Jewish sinners, but everyone, Jew and Gentile alike.

Continue reading in this chapter of the book of Acts and you will see how dramatically God affirms that message. He pours out his Holy Spirit on these Gentile believers immediately and obviously, so that Peter and his colleagues cannot possibly deny them baptism with water.

The baptism with water is an outward sign of an inward grace, the grace of God forgiving our sins and giving us a new life in Christ. It is a sign of God doing a new thing in us. It is a sign of turning away from the old life of sin, and entering a new life of freedom through the love of God.

We are imperfect people living in an imperfect world and will at some point fall from grace; sometimes, like Simon Peter, we might find ourselves rejecting what God wants to do because we don’t understand it, and so we will always need to repent and turn back to God. Every Sunday, as part of this service, we confess our sins to God before we receive communion. And when we do repent, God forgives us again and gives us a new start through his grace.

Jesus received baptism from John as a sign that he accepted the new things that God would do through him and God acknowledged his son immediately, saying he was pleased with him. When we turn to God, he will also acknowledge us and be pleased with us.

As we begin a new year, with the days gradually getting longer again, it’s a good time for us to consider our baptismal vows, as we will later in the service, and to think about our continuing journey with the Lord and the new things he wants to do in our lives.


Music: In Te Confido