But we don't have to stop there. That is a good question to ask, and its good because we aren't the first ones to ask it. If we look back at the story of Jesus baptism in Matthew 3, we realize that John the Baptist was the first one to ask it.
Remember where we are in the story. John is preaching a message of repentance. He is telling people to turn their lives around. John knows what many of us have come to know, and that is that sin, and the things that we do wrong, keep us from fulfilling our potential. It's not that we don't learn from these things, but its when we don't let go of them, when we let what we've done take a hold of us and be the things that control every decision we make that becomes the problem.
John is saying that you get over that by repenting, by naming what it is that is sinful and wrong, and then by working to let go of its control of yourself and looking in a different direction for that control and decision making. John directs people to God who doesn't seek to control, but guide meaning that in him we find freedom.
John also knows that there is a problem with what he is offering. He ties his message of repentance to the act of baptism. However his baptism is not perfect and will need to be repeated.
I baptize with water those of you who have changed your hearts and lives. The one who is coming after me is stronger than I am. I’m not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. --Matthew 3:11John knows that there is someone who is coming after him that will do this better than he can. So, one day when he is preaching and baptizing down at the river, he sees Jesus come up. John knows who he is. It could be that John recognizes his cousin, but Matthew doesn't tell us anything about that. Rather, I think John recognizes in Jesus that he is the Messiah. I think this is what we're seeing in the conversation that they're having.
John tells Jesus that he is the one that should be baptized, not Jesus. There is where I think we begin to see that Jesus doesn't need to be baptized. That also makes sense with what we know about who Jesus is as the Son of God. This is where Jesus' response tells us more information.
The key to this is the "fulfill all righteousness" part of the verse. John consents after this because he sees what we see now. Jesus isn't being baptized because he needs to be baptized. Jesus is being baptized because we need it.
We learn through experience, whether it's ours, or someone else's (who we trust). In our case we're reading about Jesus being baptized and it strikes us as something that Jesus would do, and we even understand why. Jesus knows how we learn and how we grow, and that we are a finicky people that have a hard time trusting. At some level we know that Jesus didn't need to be baptized, but he was anyway.
That impacts us.
We see that it is important to be baptized because Jesus did. It's not just that Jesus came down to earth and became human like us, but he is living like us, only living the life we wish we could. So we follow his lead. Jesus is fulfilling our righteousness by guiding us into the story he is telling.
A couple of posts ago I was looking at the ways that Jesus draws us into his story: post 1, post 2. Jesus' baptism is a continuation of this. Jesus tells a better story that we do, and he wants to share it with us, so he works to draw us into the story. Through baptism he is doing just that by helping us to let go of the things that keep us out of his story.
Coming up next Sunday we're going to show what this means. I get to baptize several members of one family as they are taking steps to being drawn closer into Jesus' story. For the rest of us, let us live a life as a part of the story Jesus is telling, knowing that he is in control, and through that gives us freedom to live our lives in the best way we can.
No comments:
Post a Comment