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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Divinely‑inspired St. Mark is said to tell of the Baptism of our Lord in the “simplest possible manner” (Taylor, ad loc Mark 1:9, 159). After John the Baptizer appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and after all the country of Judea and Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins, and after John preached about the One coming after him Who would in a different way baptize with the Holy Spirit—in those days of God’s saving activity (Voelz, ad loc Mark 1:9, 124), Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Not the Newborn once acclaimed in the Temple or the Child worshipped in a Bethlehem house, but a “young” Man of about 30 was baptized, and not because He Himself needed it but because you needed Him to be baptized: “Jesus was baptized for you”.
The Gospel Reading makes clear both that John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins and that those going out to John were—in all likelihood privately—confessing their sins. Jesus is the sinless Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. Of what sins did He need to be forgiven? What sins did He have to confess? Your sins! Jesus, as the Divinely-inspired St. Paul puts it, Who knew no sin, obediently is baptized by John in order to be sin, so that in Him you might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
All of you are children, and probably all of you can remember displeasing your parents at one time or another (or maybe at many times and others). What may have been your failures to honor your parents, your despising or angering them, your not serving and obeying them, your not loving and cherishing them—those sins against the Fourth Commandment are only some of your sins. From the day of your conception, through the day of your birth, to this very day, by nature you are condemned and lost with all the earth, none good, without exception; for, like your parents flesh and blood, you were turned inward, away from the Highest Good (Lutheran Service Book 596:2). Your original sin and your actual sins, those against the Fourth Commandment and those against all of the other Commandments, warrant temporal and eternal death, unless you repent, as God—through His servants like John the Baptizer in today’s Gospel Reading—calls and enables you to do. When you repent, when you turn in sorrow from your sins, trust God to forgive your sins, and want to do better than to keep on sinning, then God forgives your sin: your sinful nature, your actual sins against the Fourth Commandment, and your actual sins against all the other Commandments. God forgives all your sin, whatever your sin might be; He forgives your sin for the sake of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The One Whom John the Baptizer said “comes” in fact “came”. No mere man, that One, as the Triune God makes clear at the Baptism of Our Lord. As in the beginning, when God the Father created the heavens and the earth, by speaking His Word, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:1-2), so, when Jesus came up out of the water of the Jordan, at least He (John 1:32-34) saw the heavens opening and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove and heard the Father’s voice identifying Him as His beloved Son. The opening of the heavens at both Jesus’s Baptism and at His crucifixion, in a figurative manner with the tearing of the Temple curtain on which the heavens were depicted (Mark 15:38)—the opening of the heavens is associated with God’s acting to save in ways that have not been perceived from all eternity, which no eye has yet seen nor ear heard (Isaiah 64:1, 4-5; Maurer, TDNT, 7:962; Voelz, ad loc Mark 1:10, 128-129). More than to any previous prophet (Schweizer, TDNT 6:400-401), the Holy Spirit was given to Jesus’s human nature in order for Him to carry out that work of salvation and at the same time also to reveal Who Jesus was (Isaiah 42:1; 61:1; and confer 52:13-53:12). More than a few shepherds or wise men, the crowds at the Baptism of our Lord could hardly miss it, and Jesus’s identity as the Father’s Son confirmed then later figures prominently, both in Jesus’s trial before the high priest (Mark 14:61) and in the centurion’s confession after Jesus’s death (Mark 15:39). Prophetically foreshadowed by Abraham’s offering his beloved son Isaac on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22:2, 12, 16; Mann, ad loc Mark 1:9-11, 199), God the Father offered His beloved Son on the cross, for your sins. Jesus took them on Himself in His baptism, and He paid the price for them on the cross. And, in that way, God the Father, working through the Holy Spirit, delivered you from the domain of darkness and transferred you to the Kingdom of His beloved Son, in Whom you have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13-14).
The One Who according to His human nature received the Holy Spirit at His Baptism in turn now gives the Holy Spirit to you through the pure preaching of the Gospel and the right administration of the Sacraments, and that Holy Spirit works faith, when and where He pleases (Augsburg Confession V:1-2). Jesus’s being baptized makes your baptismal water and font holy (LSB 401 and 404) and makes your baptism a cleansing from transgression and release from death’s oppression (LSB 406). Unbelievers cast aside this gift, but believers gladly receive it. By Holy Baptism you are connected with Christ’s death and resurrection and daily walk in newness of life (Romans 6:1‑11; Small Catechism IV:12). You privately confess the sins you know and feel in your hearts for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, and you come often to the Sacrament of the Altar in order both to eat bread that is the Body of Christ given for you and to drink wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for you, and so you receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Here the heavens open again, as it were, and we join in worship with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. Baptized and Communed, you live contented in God and die without fear (LSB 598).
Until then, you at least begin to honor your parents and other authorities, keep the other Commandments, and live in the forgiveness of sins for when you do not. As Jesus began His work of saving you, the Father expressed His pleasure with Jesus. As you are in Christ, God is also pleased with you, as you carry out the various vocations God gives you, including service to this Pilgrim congregation. This morning we thank those who served as Officers and Board and Committee chairs and members last year, and, under our new Constitution, Bylaws, and Standing Rules, we this morning put in place new Officers, Elders, and Program-area Coordinators, and we thank them for being willing to serve this year. No one is really off the hook, as other volunteers are still needed, both to head-up and otherwise work on specific projects over the course of the year.
“Jesus was baptized for you”. In His baptism, He took on your sin, and so in your baptism you took on His righteousness. Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Trust God to answer the petition of today’s Collect to make all who are baptized in His Name faithful in their calling as His children now and ultimately also inheritors of everlasting life.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +