Concerning Baptism
Why Did Jesus Get Baptized?
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle
Frist Sunday after the Epiphany, January 12, 2025
Isaiah 43:1-7 ;
Acts 8:14-17 ;
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 ;
Psalm 29
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Last week, we began our season of Epiphany, and we had the three wise men, the three kings, the magi, make their way up front and we talked about “what is Epiphany”. It is a season where Jesus is manifest as Lord, where we see the glory of God in Jesus, and where he is manifest to the gentiles, that’s us.
That is a main focus of Epiphany, but there are two other foci, focuses, for Epiphany. One of them is that Jesus was a doer of miracles, so we always read the story of the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine. That is part of the “Miracle Doer”, the “One who Heals”, the “One who can do Things with Power that we Cannot Do”, things like that. That is this focus of Epiphany, that “ah, That’s the one, That’s the Long-Expected Messiah”.
The third passage, interestingly enough, is the baptism of Jesus, which is what we are celebrating today. It’s an amazing thing that that is such a big deal. I want to look at what is baptism, why do we baptize, why were we baptized, and why would Jesus be baptized? Okay?
So, let’s start with our own baptisms and why we were baptized. I was baptized on January 5th, 1948. The interesting thing is that I wasn’t born until February 2nd, 1948. The clerk made a mistake on my baptismal certificate. But I was baptized, we lived in a part of Austria that was 120% Catholic, and suddenly two Protestants were born in the same region. The pastor came from Southern Germany by train to baptize us. A good reason to baptize me is that my Godfather, the only one of my many godparents that actually showed up at my baptism, was the commandant of the French occupation forces in that part of Austria, and he had access to good food and champagne. There was a party! But I remember very little of it, as I hadn’t been born yet.
But we baptize in the church, that’s the fun part of this story of baptism, but we baptize in the church for a variety of reasons. One is tradition, we baptize because our parents were baptized and our grandparents were baptized, and it’s kind of what we do. When I was a priest of a church in Upstate New York, I got phone calls saying, “hello there, is this the priest, I’d like to have my baby done”. I had to figure out what that meant, and what it meant was baptized. It meant that they would show up on a Sunday morning, hope to receive 20 minutes of instruction on baptism, have their baby baptized, and disappear. That would be the last we would ever see of them, until it was time for a marriage or a funeral. That’s tradition, it doesn’t mean a lot, but it’s not a bad reason either. My children were baptized when I was a card-carrying atheist, and I had my children baptized because I was pleasing my parents, that was the only reason. And yet, it was okay, because eventually I have come to faith, and they have come to faith. God is in charge, so I’m not actually against traditional baptisms, but it’s one reason.
Another reason that we baptize is that it is a sacrament. In the Lutheran tradition, a sacrament is something that is instituted by Christ himself, which is interesting because he didn’t actually institute Baptism, it had been going on in the Jewish tradition for a long time before He was baptized, but still it is this sacrament and we are part of a church and we are a sacramental people, and we do this. Baptism has, as all sacraments, our definition of a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, right? The outward sign in baptism is, get ready, it’s water, right? The inward sign is a variety of things. The inward sign is that we believe that baptism involves forgiveness of sins, that there’s a newness. Well, most of the people I’ve baptized in my life are about [18 inches] big, and they haven’t had a lot of opportunity to sin yet. But it’s part of who we are as people of God that we baptize for forgiveness of sin, if I’m baptizing a teenager to an adult, no problem, lots of opportunity for sin and what a wonderful thing to have this regeneration, this newness and new life.
Another reason that we baptize, and I’m going to see if I can hit them all, and you are welcome to respond afterward, is to welcome a person to the family of the Church. It’s a wonderful thing, when I baptize someone, I ask “will you who are gathered here, witnessing this baptism, will you support this person in his or her life in Christ” what is your answer? [“We will”] “WE WILL!!” Yeah! We mean it, we will support this person, this person is part of our family now, and is welcome into our family, is welcome to sacraments, is welcome to all of that.
Those are some of the reasons for baptism, does anyone have someone that I missed?
Fear. Thank you, I did mention that at 8:00, thank you for bringing it up. Now, for those of you who, well, there’s connection, but the fear is that if we don’t get baptized, that’s it. We’re lost, yeah, Carol is doing this [drawing her hand across her throat to signal death], and there is this fear that we won’t go to heaven. In the Catholic tradition, that fear was so strong that they created a ting called limbo, so that children who hadn’t had a chance to be baptized wouldn’t go to hell, they’d go to some intermediate state.
So, those are some reasons for baptism. Carol? Oh, receiving gifts! We’re going to get to that! Thank you, that’s absolutely true. Oh, and we have, yes, sir! That’s the welcoming, joined into the body of Christ, very good.
“Part of the Apostolic Succession”, I think we will have a conversation about that afterwards, but interesting thought. Thank you! Okay, I’m going to stop taking responses now because there’s a coffee hour afterwards.
So, all of these are reasons to be baptize, why did Jesus get baptized? And I ask this very seriously. Jesus, did he meet any of those criteria? Did Jesus sin? No, Scripture says that He experienced everything the rest of us humans experience except He did not sin, Which I think is impressive, because He was a teenager at some point, and yet it seems that He did not sin. So, He didn’t need the forgiveness of sins. Did He need to be brought into the Body of Christ, connected to the Body of Christ? My response is no, because it didn’t exist yet, He was the Body of Christ! Any of the other reasons we had, I see that Jesus did not meet those requirements. He was perfect, He was God, and yet He was obedient and got baptized. John didn’t want to baptize Him, particularly. He knew He was the Messiah, but he said, “Who am I to baptize you?”
But, in obedience they went through with the baptism.
A couple of things that I would say why Jesus was Baptized. One is as a model for us. It is part of the Christian life to be baptized. Jesus started with that, and here we are. Most of us were baptized as infants, and so didn’t have a choice about it? How many of you had a choice? Cool! That’s a pretty high number! What a wonderful choice to get to make, I love to baptize people who get to make that choice, because there’s a reason for them to be there.
Another reason that Jesus was baptized is that people would see Him, it was part of that “made manifest”, there He is. There were a lot of other people being baptized that day, and they could see what was going on between John and Jesus, what was happening at the baptism, possibly hear the voice of God in all of that. So, there He was, doing this.
I think that maybe we now get to Carol’s point, the receiving of gifts. Jesus had been working in his father’s carpentry shop until now. He is now going to go out and minister, and He needs the empowerment to do that, so the Holy Spirit comes upon Him in the shape or form of a dove and empowers Him with the gifts of the Holy Spirit to do ministry. He had never preached a sermon, He had never taught the Sermon on the Mount, there were teachings he had never performed, miracles, he had never done any of those things. Now He was empowered and sent forth to do that. That’s something that I love that all of us have that available to us too. We can ask God to anoint me for ministry, to send the Holy Spirit so that I can understand this scripture, or minister to the homeless, or the shut in, or whoever.
Finally, Jesus was baptized for the very best reason I could possibly imagine. That is that Jesus heard a voice from Heaven saying, “This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased”. Those words are words that stayed with Jesus throughout His ministry, that He could say “Oh, I am so tired. I am my Father’s Beloved”. Oh, this is so hard, or so whatever. I am my Father’s Beloved. We’ve talked already about the definition of grace, that grace is the unmerited, unearned, unconditional love of God. That, again, wasn’t because of how incredibly anointed Jesus might have been for all of this, it is that He is loved. We hear those words again, we’ll hear them on the last Sunday of Epiphany, and on the 6th of August, at the Mount of Transfiguration, where again a voice from Heaven says, “This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”. They strengthen Jesus for going to the Cross, and His ultimate Ministry.
We, too, get to hear those words. We, too, get to be empowered by the Holy Spirit for ministry. We, too, get to be beloved people.
Praise God.
Amen.
We are now going to have a renewal of our baptismal vows; I want to introduce that with one more little story. That is, I think it was last week, I think I told a story of an 8-year-old at her baptism. This girl is from my parish in upstate New York, and she was an excited young Christian, she was going to be the first person in her entire family to ever go to college. She came to church every Sunday, and was an acolyte, and did all sorts of things. Then she went to college, and a young man in college got her on drugs and started trafficking her. This girl became lost. She really was lost, for about two years when no one knew where she was. But that baptism stayed with her, and she found her way back, she found her way into recovery, and back into the church. I went and visited the church about four years ago, and this young girl was clean and sober, and was graduating with a nursing degree. Those words of her belovedness and her being received into the family and her forgiveness stayed with her and carried her through those dark, dark times.
As we renew our baptismal vows, we can be encouraged that God’s promises stay with us.
Amen again.
