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| "Baptism...Now Saves You" (Luke 3:15-22) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen. Grace, mercy and peace be to you … When you think of Jesus, how do you like to picture Him? What does He look like? Like this famous picture from the 1940’s you may have seen… or may even have hanging in your house? Well, today we’re not thinking so much about Jesus’ portrait … but about how He looks in terms of how you see Him in the various accounts from Scripture. Do you see him as tall? Distinguished, somehow? … Perhaps wearing a more whitish robe while everyone else is in drab gray? Perhaps our mental images we have of Jesus have been a bit shaded by the portrayals we’ve seen of Him in the movies… So, our reading for this morning from Luke’s Gospel portrays Jesus perhaps a bit differently than what our minds might be used to. We see from Luke a time before Jesus’ calling of His disciples …a time before anyone knew Him other than Jesus from Nazareth --- the thirty-something-year-old carpenter’s son. And as Luke paints that picture for us today, we see Jesus, as Luke says, “with all the other people” … Essentially the picture we have is that of Jesus waiting in line with all the other people to be baptized by John the Baptizer. Any mental pictures we might have of Jesus arriving with some flourish, a bright white robe, or an entourage … come more from Hollywood than from Matthew, Mark or Luke. Jesus comes, just like the others. No different. And as He does, Jesus participates in something we all have been part of … waiting our turn in line. We, with everyone else, waiting at stop lights, waiting to be checked out … or checked in … or checked over, or, in these days, scanned And so, to be baptized, Jesus with everyone else … waits. And finally, He is Baptized like all the rest. But there the similarity ceases. At that point a difference is manifested … but not by Jesus … not like the sports players we might see do everything they can to call attention to themselves… We read, instead, that at His Baptism, Jesus simply prays. And what follows is one of those very rare occurrences when the heaven’s are opened. What would that be like? We don’t know, but odds are that would be hard to miss. And we read that at that point the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus, in the physical appearance of a dove. And a voice is heard from an open heaven … pronouncing God the Father’s love and approval. So, all of a sudden … here’s this young man from Nazareth and heaven stands open. But briefly, ever so briefly …with no press conferences and no interpretations …the Spirit immediately carries Jesus out into the desert to face a trial at the hands of Satan himself. But before we get ahead of ourselves … there is an epiphany here, a manifestation, which shows Jesus as the Anointed one, or the Christ, the very Messiah…and the approved and loved Son of God. That’s one of the reasons why Hollywood likes to portray Jesus a little taller or a little bit more distinguished in dress than the masses. To somehow to set Him apart from the rest of the people. But the irony is that Jesus came to do just the opposite. He came to do what was needed to be done so that those words of God the Father which were addressed to Him …could also be addressed to you, to me, to everyone. “You are my son, or my daughter, whom I love. And with You I am well pleased.” There are two huge concepts in these words from God… our Father. First, the concept of God recognizing us as one of His immediate family, a son or a daughter … and second, that of God approving of us, of who we are. Now … maybe we have, intellectually, up here, sort of embraced those concepts … that we are a son or daughter of God … and that, in Christ Jesus, because of what He has done for us, we do stand in His perfection … we stand before God in His righteousness. But here lies the rub: Even though, through our own Baptism, God may have declared us His child and even righteous in His sight … our daily experience we have in our dealings with Him … and in our dealings with one another … is anything but truly righteous … And, on top of that, we also have our own daily skirmishes with Satan’s temptations to contend with. And quite frankly, the end result is that when we look at our own lives, and at our own behavior … often it looks like we’d never been Baptized. C.F.W. Walter, one of the founders of the our Church, the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, said once, that if we were not regularly confronted with God’s word, that we would soon be acting, in his words, like “the worst heathen!” So… we have our own reality drama going on in our lives … God’s word of promise declaring us pure, spotless and righteous in His sight … a son or daughter in whom He is well pleased … all of which is true … But at the same time our consciences condemn our words and our actions … and Satan is right there to reinforce our guilt. Now this dilemma can lead us into down and out despair. But more often than not … makes us think that it’s up to us to fix the problem! We begin to believe that We’ve got to be more faithful… we’ve got to “be better Christians” … we’ve got to work at living a more God-pleasing life … The danger in going down that path … when it’s all said and done … is that when we look at where we are and where we’ve been …we pride ourselves in our accomplishments. In other words, We think that we’ve made ourselves into better Christians because of the things we have done. And those things may even have been things like …Being here more regular and active in the church … or contributing more of our time, talent or treasures. What’s wrong with that? Well, the problem is … that we come to believe that our Baptism was a one-time event … something done some time ago in our dim, dark past. And other than planting a seed of faith in our hearts, which was all that it was. So then, we feel that God’s approval of us is based on how faithful we have been … or we have tried to be. And, if God were to ask us tonight why He should receive us into heaven … our answer might point pretty directly to how faithful we have been … or we’ve tried to be. But … is that what really counts in God’s eyes? Jesus didn’t wade into the Jordan River to show us, by example, how to act like faithful Christians. He waded in … to make us Christians! … to make us sons and daughters by faith, children of God who are inheritors of heaven. And faith, as we know, is not a matter of doing or trying. It is a gift of God. Which is what Jesus’ own Baptism was all about. You see … Jesus didn’t need to be Baptized to make Him a son of God … nor to have His non-existent sins forgiven. What Jesus did is connect Himself to each one of us… through the waters of baptism … As we are baptized … all our sins are washed off us …and onto Jesus. And at the same time, Jesus’ righteousness, His perfection before God, is transferred from Him to us … That’s been called the “Great Exchange.” Jesus dies the death my sins deserve … I get the heaven which is His inheritance. Now that has more than just an eternal, or end-of-life impact on us. Martin Luther reportedly told a friend who was depressed: “Say to yourself, ‘I am Baptized!’” You see, the gift of God in Baptism, Life and Salvation, makes all the difference. It’s not about how we exercise our faith, it’s not up to our own faithfulness. For as good as our faithfulness may be … and as great as our faith may grow, it will never ever, ever reflect the perfection only Christ Jesus manifested on this earth. For if we could do that, if we could somehow, some day, reach that point of perfection … then … Jesus would not have had to have been born … taken on our flesh, and our sins, and died for them on the Cross. We could, like the Pharisees who came out to mock John’s Baptism, ignore that gift, since there would be no need for it, as we all could earn it outright, by our own efforts. The truth is, a mustard seed of faith, just a spark … opens the doors to heaven. That’s how that road of minimizing our baptism and maximizing our faithfulness can get us into so much trouble … Satan loves it. Because just as we think we’re really on top of our Spirituality, just when we think we’re really making progress in our spiritual journey … bam. We blow it. And when we do, the Devil is right there to condemn us … And the next thing we know …we are despairing of God’s love for us … and perhaps even our own salvation. But, don’t despair … you have been baptized! The truth is, your faithfulness IS a response to God’s grace … not something you do to deserve it or earn it. We act like Christians, because we live to honor God … not to curry His favor in time or for eternity… So. What’s different in our lives? One word. Confidence. You know as certainly as the Sun rises in the East … that God loves you as His own Child. Even when you mess up. St. Paul wrote that nothing … can separate us from the Love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord. Even our own sins. And secondly we have this confidence as well … As St. Paul also wrote, “Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!” Even when you mess up. As someone put it … “God made you good in His sight! So now… go out and be who you are!” Think about that in the coming week. Think about the fact that your spirituality is something that God is working in you … rather than something you are working for God. Just like Your Baptism was something God did in You … not something you did for Him. You can’t save yourself, but Baptism does save you. Why? Because God is the one who does it! We receive God’s gifts in Baptism … son-ship/daughter-hood … and the great exchange of life and death through Jesus Christ… as God puts away our sins. Those thoughts … give you great confidence … in this New Year. In Him, Amen. |