The Bible begins with the phrase, “In the beginning, God…” Let your mind wander and wonder over those words for a moment. Before there was anything – time, day and night, dark and light, land and ocean, microscopic organism to giant redwood tree, there was God. God – in all His fullness, holiness, and abiding presence. In the beginning, God. He has always been, always is, and always will be. He is infinite without beginning or end. And, He is also omnipotent, all powerful. Each piece of creation was spoken into existence, “Let there be,” and it was so and it was good. He took the wild, formless void – I like the way the Hebrew says it, the tohu wabohu – and organizes it from its nothingness to everything that exists, every piece, daily declared by God Himself to be good.
Have
you ever wondered why God made creation? Why make the birds and the bees and the
flowers and the trees and the moon up above? For that matter, why did God, in
His infinite wisdom, create something perfect, holy and good, that would be
contaminated by the sinfully disobedient bite from His pinnacle of creation? Because
God is love and He wanted an object of His love, something, someone to whom His
love would be directed. Don’t over anthropomorphize this: God wasn’t lonely or
desperate. Simply, He desired to show love and desired that that and those whom
He created would love Him in return. He created Man to be His Creation’s
caretaker, a partnership of love. Man needed to have a limited free will to
freely respond to God’s love, not be a robot only programmed to respond
appropriately. So, God took the dust, the Adamah, and formed it into
Adam, the man. You can say in a very real sense, Adam is God’s Son, created in God’s
image and likeness: holy, blameless, without sin; but, unlike God, given a
limited free will that allowed him to be tempted and fail.
And,
with the forbidden bite, there was again tohu wabohu – this time, not
the vast formless void of nothingness, but the wild chaos of a sin-stained,
death-smeared world. And it was not good. And there was evening, and there was
morning, and it was the first day of the fallen world.
What
do you do with a creation that has rebelled? Ask any Texan and they sing the praises
of the 180-odd men at the Alamo that Santa Anna branded them traitors and
rebels. We cheer Luke Skywalker but boo Darth Vader. To the victor belongs the
spoils and also the right to chose their names. In our world, rebels are either
to be put down or praised, depending on which side you are on. God does
neither: He does not praise rebellious mankind; He also does not destroy His
beloved Creation, including mankind. Instead, He chooses to redeem it. To
redeem is to buy back. God will buy back creation and all of mankind from the
eternal condemnation and eternal damnation that sin deserves.
He
will redeem creation through His Son. In the fulness of time, God sends His Son,
born of the Virgin Mary, in Bethlehem. God deigns to dwell among man – the very
people He must redeem. Jesus will take onto Himself our physical body with all
of our physical attributes. In His flesh, Jesus will know a beginning; He will
not know all things; He will experience the tohu wabohu of the fallen world
with all human emotion including hunger and pain; joy and sorrow; rest and
fatigue. He will be surrounded by people who love and praise Him; He will be
abandoned by everyone, including His own Heavenly Father.
He
will experience everything you know in this world, with one exception. The one
human experience he will not have is to sin. He will be tempted by those around
him, including the Jewish leaders, the crowds, His own disciples, even face to
face by Satan himself. Yet, the Scriptures tell us He is like us in every way
except without sin.
This
is what makes this morning’s Gospel reading so remarkable: John is baptizing in
the River Jordan. St. Mark is clear: “John appeared, baptizing in the
wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of
sins.”
Jesus
has no sins to confess. He has done nothing wrong. He is God and God is holy
and sinless. Yet, Jesus humbles himself, in flesh, to descend into the water to
be baptized. Remember: He is taking the place of every man. He steps into
humanity to take our place. It is the undoing of man’s unholiness. So, in His
baptism, instead of having his sins washed away, our sins are being washed onto
Jesus. Baptismal water, which washes our sins away, carries all of our sins and
pours them all onto the sinless son of God. God made Him who knew no sin to
become sin for us.
There
is an ancient technique for making delicate, silk veils. A pan is filled with
clean water. The artist then uses different colored oils and, carefully, drips
the oils into the desired pattern on the surface of the water. The veil maker
and their apprentice will then carefully lower the clean, white silk onto the
surface of the oiled water. Instantly, the oil bonds to the silk. They lift the
now-stained cloth up and it has taken the oil’s stain into itself. The water,
left behind in the pan, is clean and ready to be used again.
The
analogy is in your baptism, your sins were washed into the water. Unlike the
oils, you can’t see the sins in the water. But they are there. And Christ, the
pure, sinless son of God, takes up our sins into Himself. He, who knew no sin,
became sin for us.
This
is no analogy: your sins - Your trusting your bank account more than the saving
promises of God; Your casually fumbling God’s name in disgust when the receiver
drops the big pass; Your failure to study the Scriptures; your hateful speech
to your kids and your parents; your taking things that don’t belong to you, or
trying to figure out ways to get them; your ogling at movie screen with scantily clad movie stars that make your heart skip a beat and your mind wander and wonder; and so much more – all of your sins that deserve condemnation get
exactly what they deserve. Jesus, baptized into your sins, dies the sinner’s
death of condemnation and separation from God. He takes each and every one to
the Cross. He redeems you. He dies for you so you do not die eternally. He does
it out of His great love for you, while you were still a sinner, Christ died
for you.
You know, don’t you, that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into His death. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. (Romans 6: 3-5)
Do you understand what a remarkable gift this is? A wonderful exchange takes place in Baptism. With your sins removed from you, Christ’s righteousness rushes in. You are declared holy, washed clean in Christ. You are redeemed. All of your sins, removed from you in Christ. They can no longer be held against you. Baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, baptized into the death of Christ, the tohu wabohu - the darkness and void of your sins - has been filled instead with the Holy Spirit as He moved upon the waters. The debt is redeemed; the death price is paid in full.
Jesus public ministry is about to begin. He will enter the three years of public service of teaching and preaching, performing miracles, healing and raising the dead. He will call disciples to follow and enemies will rise against him. Through it all, the devil will work to derail Jesus purpose of being the world’s Savior. As Jesus climbs out of the riverbed, with the cross on the horizon, the Spirit descends on Him in the form of the dove and the Father’s voice is heard, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
We
are now beginning the season of Epiphany. It’s an oddity of the church year: we
don’t follow the life of Jesus, chronologically. Last week, Jesus was a baby;
this week, he is a man. Epiphany means “revealing,” that is, Christ being
revealed as Savior. The season also begins to show people’s response to Jesus
and His ministry. Those words serve to strengthen Him. No mere man; Jesus is
God’s own Son – with God in the Beginning, now beginning His earthly ministry
as Savior.
And you, you enter the season of Epiphany redeemed, buried with Christ, raised with Christ, redeemed by Christ, and you are called, in Christ, a Child of God. Blessed Epiphany-tide to all. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment