Sermon for the First Sunday After the Epiphany
What's a Nice God Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus Christ! Amen. Today Jesus comes to be baptized. "John [the Baptist]
would have prevented Him," and we all understand very well why John would
have done this. We would prevent Jesus, too. The good news for John-and the
good news for us-is that Jesus will not be prevented.
Dear Christian friends,
Neither you nor I want to believe that Jesus should remain with us
in the messy details of our everyday lives. It is no problem for us to think
that we come here to Jesus on a Sunday morning, using this consecrated room
as neutral place to get together with Him. We tend to think of our Lord as a
neat-and-clean Jesus, a statuary Jesus who should be kept polished and on a
pedestal. You and I like to think of a Lord Jesus who stays a little bit
distant from us so that His holiness will not get too much contact with our
sin.
You might not feel that you can agree with me. You might even feel a little
disgusted by my statement that we do not want to believe Jesus remains with
us in every detail of our everyday lives. If so, here is an even bigger pill
to swallow: beyond not wanting to believe that Jesus remains with us, you
and I do not even want Jesus to remain with us. Consider the evidence:
1. Sometimes, Christian parents rebuke their children's misbehavior by
saying, "How would Jesus feel if He saw you act that way?" This horrible
question portrays Jesus wrongly, not only because it makes Him out to be our
divine disciplinarian, but also because this question assumes Jesus is not
actually present, seeing the child act this way.
2. For the sake of a little get-to-know-you, turn that sledgehammer
question around to yourself: What thoughts do you entertain that you would
rather not have Jesus know about? What abusive or careless words do you
speak that you would not like Jesus to hear? What things to do you do to
your neighbor-or to yourself-that you would just as soon not have your Lord
Jesus see?
3. Undoubtedly you find it comforting to know that your Lord Jesus
Christ is with continually you in your times of hardship, fear, or grief. It
is equally undoubted that you feel totally creeped out to know that your
Lord Jesus is continually with you in the midst of your self-indulgence,
your malice, and your premeditated sin.
Perhaps I can now rest my case: Neither you nor I really want to believe
that Jesus belongs with us in the messy, Monday through Friday details of
our everyday lives. We all prefer a pinstriped Jesus, not a Jesus who
wallows with us in "the mud, the blood, and the beer" (to quote Shel
Silverstein). What is a nice God like Him doing in a place like this-a
heart, a mind, a mouth and a body like this?
What is a nice God like you doing in a place like this? That is
what St. John the Baptist wanted to know. "Jesus came from Galilee to the
Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented Him." It is
not that John protested in order to be polite, like I pretend to protest
when someone offers me a token of appreciation. "John would have prevented
Him." The verb indicates that John persistently and strenuously protested
Jesus' Baptism, repeatedly blocking our Lord's access to the river. This
scene almost portrays John the Baptist physically blocking to the right and
to the left as Jesus tries to dodge His way around him and into the
baptismal water.
"John would have prevented Him." John the Baptist knows how you
and I tend to think about Jesus because John the Baptist thinks about Jesus
in the same way: John does not think Jesus should be immersed into the messy
details of our everyday lives. It is as if John said to Jesus, "What is a
nice God like You doing in a place like this? You are holy! That water is
full of sin! I know the water is full of sin because I have been baptizing
people in that water, washing their sins off from them into the water. If
you get into the water, Jesus, You are going to get soaked with sin!
"Let it be so now" says the Lord, "for thus
it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."
Our weekly Bible Study spends its evenings looking for images of
our Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. (You should join us in that
class. The portraiture of Christ in the Old Testament is almost
indescribably beautiful-you really need to see it for yourself.) We love to
see our Lord's picture in King David's broad-shouldered defense of the
people (2 Samuel 5:17-21) and in Jonathan's sacrificial love toward lowly
servants (1 Samuel 14:12-13) and in Solomon's world-renowned majesty (1
Kings 10:23-25). I wonder if we would feel so thrilled also to see our Lord's
picture in David's selfish adultery with Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11) or Jephthah's
foolish sacrifice of his beloved daughter (Judges 11:30-39) or Solomon's
detestable idolatry (1 Kings (1 Kings 11:1-8). For that matter, might it
also be possible for us to see our Lord's portrait in the nakedness and
shame of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-4), or in the
manure-encrusted skin and the empty belly of the prodigal son? (Luke
15:14-15) How about Barabbas, the murderer? (Matthew 27:15-23)
Today is the Baptism of our Lord. Today we must see Jesus as all
these sinful things and more. If we do not see the adulterous woman and the
prodigal son and the murdering insurrectionist as portraits of Jesus, we
will never believe that Jesus should actually remain with us in the messy
details of our everyday lives. If we do not take to heart this Baptism in
today's Gospel, our Lord Jesus will forever seem to be like the doctor who
washes his hands after touching us, so that He does not catch our disease.
That is NOT who your Lord Jesus is, dear friends. Your Lord Jesus
is not grossed out by you. He is not afraid of catching something from you.
He is not offended by you and He is not out there somewhere, waiting for you
to clean yourself up and come to Him. Your Lord Jesus Christ covered Himself
with you and He is not going away-ever.
I know what you are thinking: You have that Bible passage in mind
that states, "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with
our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet
without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). You will get no argument from me that Jesus had
no sin-at least, no sin of His own. But Jesus did not really need any sin of
His own because He got all yours. "John would have prevented Him," but Jesus
would not be prevented. Jesus got past John and went into the water that was
teeming with sin. What is a nice God like Him doing in a place like this? He
is living eternally with people like you and me. He may have been a shiny,
lily-white Jesus when He got into the water, but He wasn't that way when He
came out. That is why John the Baptist would later points to Jesus and says,
"Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away-who bears, who carries, who lugs
around-the sin of the world" (John 1:29).
The sin of the world-your sin and my sin-came to Jesus at His
Baptism. "John would have prevented Him" because John did not want to see
His God get dirty. Jesus insisted because that is the kind of God He is.
Jesus is not the holy God; He is the holy God who trades His holiness for
your sin. He is not the perfect God; He is the God who stripped His
perfection from Himself, gave it to you, and wrapped up in your
imperfection. What is a nice God like Him doing in a place like this?
Everything. Everything for you.
Here you and I are, not wanting to believe that Jesus should
remain with us in the messy details of our everyday lives; thinking its best
if we mostly keep our God up on the shelf with the Sunday dishes, and
honestly preferring that He stay there so that He cannot see us in action.
This Gospel teaches us to believe differently. "Let it be so now" says the
Lord, "for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."
"John would have prevented Him," but Jesus will not be prevented.
There must be a connection between your Lord's refusal to be prevented from
being baptized and what He later says concerning you and concerning your
Baptism, "Let the little children come to Me and do not PREVENT them" (Mark
10:14-it is the same word in each verse). Just as Jesus will allow no one to
stand in the way of His Baptism, He will allow no one to stand in the way of
your Baptism, or in the way of those benefits that come to you through your
Baptism. Where Jesus becomes the sinner, you become the saint; where Jesus
is declared unforgiven because of the sin in the water, you are declared
forgiven by virtue of that same sin that has been washed into the same
water. "Let it be so now" says the Lord, "for thus it is fitting for us to
fulfill all righteousness." Here at the Jordan and here at the Baptismal
font, you and I become the very righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts
and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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