Epiphany I

Epiphany I The Baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3:13-17)

Let it be… to fulfill all righteousness.

The essence of the Plan of Salvation is revealed in Jesus’ baptism.
In only a few verses, Matthew records an immense treasure of divine revelation. He reveals the reality of the Trinity, the incarnation, the fatal problem with human nature, and the divine solution to that flaw. All of these themes are interwoven in the person of Jesus Christ.

As the last of the prophets of God, John proclaimed the true prophetic message: prepare and repent. There is no true prophet where there is no true message. Prophets call people to repent of sin and to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. John did both and lived to see the Messiah approach him.

The Holy Spirit had revealed to John that Jesus was the Messiah. So, when Jesus came to John for baptism John was amazed and bewildered.

Baptism is a sign of repentance. The penitent sinner enters the waters, the prophet holds him tightly then plunges him under the water. The total immersion in the river water is a symbol of death. The prophet then lifts the penitent into the light to take in a breath of air, a breath of life. In that emergence into the light and in that first breath there is the symbol of a new life and a new way of living.

Many people entered into the waters of John’s baptism. They did so for many reasons. They did so with various levels of sincerity and hypocrisy. But, they were all sinners. They had all separated from God. They had all habitually broken God’s Law.
The Bible teaches a unique understanding of sin. Sin is an act of disobedience to Divine Law. What the Bible teaches is that sin is a result of separation. Human beings as a species chose to separate from God in order to be like God. More specifically, humanity chose to separate from God in order to be God’s equals in knowledge and power.

There are two fundamental problems with that original choice that the Christian Faith terms original sin. God is not power and knowledge. God has power and knowledge. God is steadfast holy love. The second problem is that God and God alone is life.

To become like God is to grow in holiness and love. Separation from God kills the soul, confuses the mind, corrupts the heart and enslaves the will. The condition of separation produces a nature of fear and a character of pride and despair.
Having separated from God people no longer have clarity of thought. We miss the obvious. We employ reason to justify desire. We divide ourselves from each other, from the natural world, and from God.

We can test these assertions. The Bible is grounded in human experience. God invites us to pay attention to the world around us and to observe how people behave and misbehave. What is the problem? What is the pattern in the problem? What is the process in the pattern? What is the habitual action and reaction in the process? What is the underlying cause?

The Bible gives us its conclusion and it is unique. The problem is separation. We commit sin because we have chosen to separate from God. We commit sin because we are lost in fear, anger and pride.

If this conclusion is correct then the solution can only be one thing. If this conclusion is correction, that separation is the underlying problem that results in sin and death, then reunification with God is the only solution. Only God himself can be the solution.

John knew that Jesus had never sinned. He knew Jesus did not need to enter into the waters as a sign of his repentance. John knew that Jesus never sinned because he knew that Jesus never separated from the Father.

Yet, Jesus asks John to baptize him in order to fulfill all righteousness.
As sin is a consequence of a broken relationship so righteousness is the restoration of a right relationship. Righteousness is not just right thought or right action. These things evolve from right relationship.

Jesus had come to reunify a separated humanity with God by offering us a right relationship with God. Jesus is God reaching out to all people everywhere with the unconditional invitation to regain the original blessing of love, holiness and life.
The Bible observes very carefully that those who choose separation are lost. We are not only lost we do not want to be found. We are trapped in self will and enslaved by our own will to power. Jesus is the way God seeks the lost, finds the lost and restores the lost to God’s eternal life and God’s eternal love.

This is the second part of Jesus’ baptism. The first part is the clarification of the problem facing humanity. The second part is God’s solution.

In the solution God manifests the Divine Mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation. At Jesus’ baptism, in the presence of the last of the prophets and a crowd of thousands who had come to listen to John, God the Father speaks audibly and God the Holy Spirit reveals himself visibly.

It is the moment when Jesus leaves his life of quiet obscurity as a carpenter. It is the moment when Jesus enters into his public life of preaching, teaching and healing. And, it is the first moment in history when God explicitly reveals that the one God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is the moment when God publically declares Jesus to be The Beloved, his Son.

“The Beloved” is a title we seldom hear attributed to Jesus. Yet, it is the descriptive name the Father uses twice in Jesus’ life. It is the reality nearly everyone in that generation missed. And, it the reality so many people today struggle to understand.

As the Father is love so Jesus is The Beloved. In his divinity Jesus is co-eternal with the Father just as The Beloved is co-eternal with Love. It is that Great Mystery of an active dynamic eternal unconditional holy Love in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that is made manifest in Jesus at his baptism.

In the baptism of the Beloved, God assures us that he wants to be known. God pledges to us that he will make himself known. God reveals to us and to all people that he is fully present to us and with us in Jesus Christ.

Jesus fulfills all righteousness, all right relationship, in the manifestation of divine love and holiness. The Father audibly declares Jesus to be the coeternal Beloved. The Holy Spirit takes visible form to alight upon Jesus.

Jesus enters the waters as an obscure carpenter. He emerges from the waters to manifest the Great Mystery of the Eternal Trinity and the Incarnation.
In Jesus Christ God promises to us that we, all of us- each of us, are the beloved of the co-eternal Beloved. You are he, you are she, whom God the Father specifically and uniquely created by the personal presence and power of God the Holy Spirit to be the forever friend and companion of God the Beloved Son.

As the Triune God manifests his glory in the outward visible and audible circumstances of Jesus baptism so he reveals the inward and spiritual reality of human existence. You are not a mistake. You are not an accident. You are uniquely who God created you to be. God himself has given you a meaning and a purpose to your life.

At his baptism, Jesus fulfills the meaning and purpose we abandoned and lost. Jesus fulfills all righteousness, all right relationship. Jesus fulfills this relationship and now offers it back to us as a gift. The gift is the truth of a new life. The gift is a new way of living. It is life in the Great Mystery of the Triune God here and now and now and forever.

It is in that Great Mystery that God offers to restore the relationship we rejected. It is in that Great Mystery that God invites us to receive a new life and a new way of living as the beloved of the co-eternal Beloved, Jesus Christ.