“Why did Jesus have to be baptized?” (Matthew 3:13-17)

My Oxford Dictionary defines the word “eccentric” as “odd or capricious in behaviour or appearance; whimsical”. I suspect there are a number of us who have had either friends or relatives they might describe as eccentric. I had an uncle who at one time ran a Shell gas station. Whether it was to save money or because he liked the colours, I don’t know, but he painted the exterior of his house in the same yellow and red. The neighbours didn’t like it, but it sure made it easy to find.

I don’t know if the statistics would bear me out, but it seems to me that the greatest concentration of eccentric people is to be found in the British Isles. There was, for instance, an officer of the British army in World War 2 known as “mad Jack Churchill”. He lived by the motto, “Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed”—and the sword he was referring to was the Scottish broadsword. In addition to his sword, he occasionally used a longbow. Early in the war he ambushed a German patrolman, shooting him with a barbed arrow. His shot earned him the title of the only British soldier to have felled an enemy with a longbow during the war.

Delving farther back into history, there was William Buckland. He was a clergyman and a brilliant geologist and palaeontologist, who lived in the early nineteenth century. He was known to have occasionally delivered his lectures on horseback and his obsession with the animal kingdom knew no bounds. The result was that his home was literally a zoo. Besides this, he was famous for eating animals of every species and placing them before his dinner guests. Various people who sat at his table recall being served panther, crocodile and mouse. Among the few creatures that did not suit his taste buds were moles and bluebottle flies.

Perhaps he was not as far along the eccentricity spectrum as William Buckland or Jack Churchill, but I do believe there is an argument that the man we meet with in this morning’s Bible reading falls somewhere into that category. He is John the Baptist (or John the Baptizer). Matthew describes John’s clothes as being made from camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waste, and that he lived on a diet of locusts and wild honey. (As an aside, locust eating probably wasn’t all that eccentric. Locusts were commonly eaten by the poorer people of that region and were an efficient source of protein.)

John’s message was uncompromising. He had no fear about exposing the hypocrisy of religious leaders, the corrupt practices of the tax collectors or the bullying tactics of the Roman soldiers—and ultimately his fearless denunciations would lead to his death. At the same time there were those who found John’s challenging message of repentance deeply attractive. And they came in droves to the grassy banks of the Jordan River.

However, John always recognized that his mission was only an anticipation of something far greater. And he knew its fulfilment was around the corner when one day he spotted Jesus in the crowd. “I baptize with water,” he said, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (John 1:26-27; Matthew 3:11-12). Then something that had never entered John’s mind began to happen. Jesus walked forward and stepped down into the water. John was aghast. “I’m the one who needs to be baptized by you,” he protested. “So what are you doing coming to me?”

And that’s the question I want to ask this morning. Why did Jesus feel the need to be baptized? And what did he mean when he said it was “to fulfil all righteousness”? I think the answer is threefold.

Submission

In the baptism of Jesus the gospels give us a unique picture of the Holy Trinity. As the Son emerges from the water, we see the Holy Spirit coming down as a dove and alighting on him, and we hear the voice of the Father pronouncing, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Before I say anything else, let me state that at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity there will always remain a mystery. We can skirt around the edges of it, but we can never fully penetrate it. Theologians have sought to clarify it, yet sometimes their explanations can leave us more confused than when we began. The most helpful approach I have found is through the picture of a dance. Eugene Peterson put it this way:

Imagine a folk dance, a round dance, with three partners in each set. The music starts up and the partners holding hands begin moving in a circle. On a signal from the caller, they release hands, change partners, and weave in and out, swinging first one and then another. The tempo increases, the partners move more swiftly with and between and among one another, swinging and twirling, embracing and releasing, holding on and letting go. But there is no confusion; every movement is cleanly coordinated in precise rhythms … as each person maintains [their] identity. To the onlooker, the movements are so swift it is impossible at times to distinguish one person from another; the steps are so intricate that it is difficult to anticipate the actual configuration as they appear.[1]

So it is, at the baptism of Jesus, that for a brief moment in time the curtain is lifted and we are given a glimpse of the eternal dance of the Trinity—a still shot, if you will. Here we see the Son empowered by the Spirit in humble and willing submission to the Father. And that is Jesus’ posture not only at his baptism but throughout his ministry, and indeed through eternity.

We hear it repeatedly from his own lips: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” Jesus told his followers (John 4:34). “I do not seek to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30). “I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me” (John 14:31). And we see his unwavering commitment to that purpose most poignantly demonstrated in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion. There we find Jesus falling with his face to the ground as he prays, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).

As Jesus stepped down into the Jordan to be submerged under the water, then, it was not as an act of repentance as John supposed, but as a public witness for all to see, to his complete commitment to the Father’s will. As he would later tell his followers, “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).

Solidarity

There is a second purpose that underlies Jesus’ baptism. That is, that it was not only an act of submission to the Father’s will but also an indication of his solidarity with the human race—with you and with me. Jesus was demonstrating in a visible, physical way that he is one with us, one of us.

Some of you may remember when the Queen visited Halifax in 1994. Part of her itinerary was to take her along Barrington Street. At that time Barrington was already well down along its slide from its former glory in the first half of the century. “Seedy” and “run down” would be a kind way to describe the way it looked. So the government spent thousands of dollars on temporary cosmetic improvements to some of the surrounding buildings. The result was that the street took on the appearance more of a movie set than of a real place. For some reason someone among the powers-that-be was of the opinion that the Queen should not be exposed to things as they really were.

Well, not so with the Son of God. When Jesus came to our world, he did not come as a visiting dignitary. The opening verses of John’s gospel emphatically tell us that the eternal Son of God became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14). As preachers such as myself are keen to point out, a literal translation of that verse is that “he pitched his tent among us”. What that means is that Jesus did not just come for an overnight visit—touch down, see a few of the sights and then fly off again. And he did not live in a palace, surrounded by all the luxury that this world is able to provide. No, he came as an ordinary man and over the course of thirty-three or however many years, experienced all that it is to be human.

Being baptized in the muddy waters of the Jordan was for Jesus a concrete way of conveying that this was what he was doing. As he plunged under the water, he was physically identifying with all those who were responding to John’s message—not standing on the bank in silent observation but throwing himself in with our lot, becoming one with us, immersing himself in our condition and all that that entails.

Sacrifice

Jesus’ baptism, then, was an outward and visible sign of his total submission to the Father’s will. And it was a sign of his solidarity with you and me in our human lot. But I believe there was also a third meaning to be found in what he did that day. And it is revealed in a couple of conversations he had with his followers some time later.

The first of them came while Jesus was teaching a large crowd. He had warned them in a parable of how they must be ready for the coming of the Son of Man. At that point Peter came to him privately and asked if the parable was just for them or for everyone. Part of Jesus’ response consisted of these words: “I have a baptism to undergo, and what stress I am under until it is completed!” (Luke 12:50) I can only imagine that Peter must have been mystified by those words. Nevertheless they stuck with him and lodged in his mind.

On another occasion two of Jesus’ followers came to him asking, “Let us sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.” To which Jesus replied, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38) Again Jesus’ words were met with incomprehension.

Yet, while the disciples failed to grasp the implications of what Jesus was saying at the time, it became clear to them later that what he had been referring to was his death. So it was that, even at this beginning point in his ministry, there loomed before him the shadow of the cross. As Jesus descended into the waters of the River Jordan, he was also looking ahead to the day when he would be plunged into the deeper waters of death—when he would willingly offer himself up for you and for me on the cross.

There he would take upon himself not only our humanity but our sin. There he would bear the full weight of our waywardness and rebellion. And he did it so that you and I might be freed to be the men and women that God created us to be, to be human in the truest, fullest sense. He did it so that you and I might join in the joyful dance of the Trinity and one day hear our Father’s voice pronouncing, “This is my beloved son, this is my beloved daughter…”

Today, as we remember the baptism of Jesus, may it help us to recognize him as the one and only Son of God, completely submissive to the Father’s will. May we know his presence, walking alongside us, sharing our joys and our pains, our hopes and our disappointments. And may we live in gratitude that the road that began with his baptism was the road that led him to Calvary—that he was pierced for our transgressions and that by his wounds we have been healed.

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[1]     Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 44-45

“In this is love…” (1 John 4:7-21)

Many of years ago now I remember strolling through the streets of Manhattan, when I came across a fine stone neo-Gothic structure advertising itself as the Church of the Incarnation. I am always curious to look inside church buildings. (You can call it an occupational hazard—ask Karen how many churches and cathedrals we have visited on our vacations.) So I walked in, and there at the far end I could see a larger-than-life full-length marble statue of a clergyman. The inscription beneath it read that it was of none other than Phillips Brooks, the fifth Bishop of Massachusetts, one of the greatest preachers of the nineteenth century, and most renowned of all as the author of “O little town of Bethlehem”. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “so Phillips Brooks was the rector of this church.” But I soon found out that that was not the case. Next to the towering statue was a modest bust of the Rev. Arthur Brooks, Phillips Brooks’ lesser-known brother, who had served there from 1875 to 1895.

I suspect that for much of his life poor Arthur Brooks lived in the shadow of his famous brother. And something similar could be said of our Epistle passage this morning, from 1 John 4. When you think of love in the Bible, where does your mind automatically turn? To this passage before us, or to Paul’s soaring prose in 1 Corinthians 13? “Though I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal…” I suspect that there are some of us who could recite the whole chapter by heart. But how many could say the same of 1 John 4? Yet the fifteen verses that we have read this morning contain some of the most incredibly concentrated and profound teaching on love to be found anywhere in the Bible. In 1 Corinthians 13 we find Paul using the word “love” nine times. In this passage it occurs an amazing twenty-nine times. So let us take the next few minutes to see what John has to teach us about love.

The nature of love

The first thing I take from these verses has to do with the nature of love. What do we think of, where do our minds usually go, when we hear the word “love”? I think for most people it has to do with emotions, indeed a whole spectrum of them running all the way from a warm feeling we have towards someone else as a fellow human being or even for a dog or a cat, all the way to the uncontrollable chemical explosion that we call “falling in love”. While emotions play no little part in it, however, the kind of love that John is writing about is not essentially a feeling. Nor is it merely a theoretical concept or a pious wish.

No, the love that John is writing about—and, for that matter, that we find throughout the Bible from beginning to end—is a love that by definition shows itself in action. How does John describe the love he is writing about? “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son…” The words parallel those that we find in the gospel. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” It’s not just that God thought kind thoughts about us. No, his is a love that invariably expresses itself in concrete, practical action.

One of the wisest and most pastoral men I have ever encountered, Bishop Stephen Neill, once wrote this about love:

Love in the Bible sense of the word is always concerned with self-giving. It is never merely feeling; it always includes “a steady direction of the will towards another’s lasting good”.[1]

“A steady direction of the will towards another’s lasting good.” Those words have echoed through my mind for decades. And if you’ve ever been to a wedding where I have presided, you will likely have heard me repeat them in my remarks to the bride and groom. I don’t know of a better definition, or one that more accurately reflects what underlies what John is saying in this passage.

“No one has ever seen God,” John wrote in the prologue to his gospel. “It is God the Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18). Now in this chapter we hear the same words again: “No one has ever seen God,” but this time John continues, “if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” God is invisible, but we do gain a glimpse of him when Christians exhibit practical love.

Several years ago a number of us drove across town to hear Christian philosopher Dallas Willard. At the end of his talk one member of the audience told of how she had tried again and again to bear witness and explain the Christian faith to another person for years, but much to her frustration her words seemed to bear no result. What should she do? Willard’s reply was classic: “Have you tried sending them a birthday card?” We have all been told that a picture is worth a thousand words. The same is true of love. One caring act can mean far more than a thousand words. It is what puts flesh on what is otherwise nothing more than an ethereal concept.

The source of love

Such is the nature of love. From here John goes on to write about the source of love. It’s almost fifty years since the Beatles first recorded their song, “All you need is love”. It was a #1 hit and captured the ideals and beliefs of a generation. That kind of thinking is still popular in the world today. John, however, says that, like so much of the world’s thinking, they got it backwards. Not, “Love is God,” as the song implies, but, “God is love.”

There is a world of difference between the two philosophies. God is not defined by our notions about love, which are bound to be imperfect at best and can be twisted and destructive at their worst. Rather, our understanding of love arises out of God and what he has revealed of himself. What do we mean, then, when we claim that God is love? I believe it arises out of our knowledge of God as Trinity, which among other things tells us that love is incorporated into God’s very being. The Father loves the Son and the Spirit. The Son loves the Father and the Spirit. The Spirit loves the Father and the Son. It is what theologians call “perichoresis”. The word comes from peri, which means “around” or “near”, and choros, which means “dance” and from which we derive our English words “chorus” and “choreography”. So think of a chorus of singers, whose voices are so perfectly balanced and blended that they combine to form a single whole. Or picture in your mind a troupe of dancers elegantly sweeping across the floor and supporting one another in such a way that you can’t separate them without destroying the whole. According to one definition, “Perichoresis is the fellowship of three co-equal Beings perfectly embraced in love and harmony and expressing an intimacy that no one can humanly comprehend.”

Such is the love that binds together the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And that love flows out in acts of self-giving—in creation, in redemption, in the daily presence and empowering of the Holy Spirit. It also yearns to draw others into its warmth. It is the love that reaches out to us, seeks us as a shepherd seeks his lost sheep, stops for us on the road and binds up our wounds, weeps for us, rejoices with us, suffers for us, dies for us. “So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.”

The fruits of love

What I have said thus far is based on two of the many remarkable statements that we come across in this passage: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us” (verse 10) and, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (verse 16). Before we leave, there is a third and it is found in verse 18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Here John brings us from the nature of love and the source of love to the fruits of love.

Of course as long as we live in this world there will be fears. As many of us have learned in our recent Adult Education series, fear is a part of our primal nature. It is necessary for survival. But that ordinary, inbuilt fear is not the kind of fear that John is referring to. What John is writing about is fear of judgment, the fear that keeps us away from God, the fear that gnaws away at our soul and holds us captive to negativity and gloom.

Knowing that God loves me is like opening a blind on a shuttered room. It dispels the darkness and gives light in every direction. It allows us to enter into a relationship of intimacy with God, in which there is no need to hide anything from him because his desire is only for our good. It is what Charles Wesley wrote about in his classic hymn:

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in him, is mine!
Alive in him, my living head,
And clothed in righteousness divine…

More broadly, knowing that we have a God who loves us and cares for our every need frees us from fear about material things. It is what Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount when he said to his disciples,

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear… Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them… And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For … your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

Thirdly, God’s love frees us from fear in relationships. It impels us to emerge from our shells of self-absorption to love others with the same quality of love that God has shown to us. “Beloved,” John exhorts us in verse 11, “if God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” And if that were not clear enough, he turns his exhortation into a commandment in verse 21: “Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” “Let us make no mistake,” writes Bishop Stephen Neill again. “ ‘Love thy neighbor’ is not good advice… It is a command; and in the Bible, if commands are given, it is because they are expected to be obeyed.”[2]

As we pause this morning to consider the love of God, may the vision of it draw us out of the shadows of fear to open our hearts more fully to him. May it move us to trust him to care for us and lead us through life. And may we allow that love to flow through us into the lives of others. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.”

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[1]     The Christian Character, 22

[2]     pages 19,20