The
Baptism of Our Lord – Series B (January 11, 2015)
“The Dawn
of a New Day” (Gen. 1:1-5; Rom. 6:1-11; Mark 1:4-11)
The New Year brings all kinds of
expectations. People make all kinds of
resolutions. Exercise more. Eat healthier food. Quit smoking.
Spend less time on the internet. But
after two Sundays into the New Year, some find that they couldn’t even hold out
that long. The temptations were too
strong.
Well, tomorrow is another day, isn’t
it? Whatever you failed to do today,
there is always tomorrow. It’s the dawn
of a new day. A NEW YOU! But you wake up, and the same OLD YOU stares
back at yourself in the mirror. The same
old failures. The same old
temptations. All the sins that haunt you
from the days past.
The Baptism of Jesus was the dawn of
a new day for all mankind. But first,
let’s go back to the dawn of the first day described for us in the book of
Genesis.
Before time began, God created the
heavens and the earth. At first, the
earth was empty, void, and dark … and God filled it with life and light. The Holy Spirit was present and active, too, hovering
over the face of the waters, breathing life into all creation. And the power of the Word of God to create
was evident, as well. God spoke … “Let
there be light.” And there was. And it was good. Perfect.
Just the way he planned it.
God separated the light from the
darkness, the day from the night, and there was evening and morning, the first
day. How can this be, when there was no
sun created yet? We’ll leave this to God
to figure out. He is the source of light. In the heavenly Jerusalem described at the
end of the book of Revelation, St. John writes, “They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God
will be their light” (Rev 22:5). Clearly,
it’s not hard for God to make night and day occur even when there
is no sun.
At some point after the seventh day,
mankind fell into sin. Although the sun continued
to rise with each new day, rebellious mankind was plunged into darkness in a
fallen world. Death was their destiny …
a life of decay and an eternity apart from God.
And although God promised to send a Savior, people were content to
remain in their sin. John 3:19 says, “the
light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light.” St. Paul, in Romans 1, says that “since they did not see fit to
acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be
done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness,
malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are
gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of
evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who
practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to
those who practice them” (Rom 1:28-32).
God had called his people Israel to
be a “light to the nations” (Is. 42:6; 49:5-6; 60:3). He also named Israel his “son.” In Exodus 4, the Lord told Moses to tell
Pharaoh, “Israel is my firstborn son … Let my son go that he may serve me” (Ex.
422-23). Through the prophet Hosea, the
Lord said, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my
son” (Hos. 11:1) … and of course, you know that those words were later applied
to Jesus when the Holy Family had to flee to Egypt due to Herod’s murderous
intentions.
Israel’s calling was to reveal the One
True God and his purposes to the world. But
Israel failed to do this. Like Adam and
Eve, they rebelled against God’s will for them.
They followed after the false gods of the nations around them. And God severely disciplined them, scattering
them and sending them off into exile far across the Jordan.
But God did not leave his people
helpless or hopeless. He sent his Divine
Son into the world to be the faithful Son that Israel was not.
The Baptism of Jesus was the dawn of
a new day. It was an Epiphany … a
manifestation of the Messiah. It was the
beginning of a new creation. Into a
world of sinful darkness, into a world void of perfection and holiness, God
enters to fill it and give light and life.
Jesus came to be the “light of the world” as he declares in John 8:12. Remember also how Simeon took the infant
Jesus in his arms and declared him to be “a light for revelation to the
Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:32). What Israel failed to do, Jesus came to do
perfectly.
Jesus stepped into the waters of the
Jordan where people were going to confess their sins and prepare for the coming
of the Savior. Jesus had no sins to
confess, but he came to bear the sins of the world, all the way to the cross. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters of
the Jordan, anointing Jesus to fulfill the words of Isaiah 42:1, “I have put my
Spirit upon him,” … and Isaiah 61:1, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Is.
61:1). And just as the king of Israel
was called God’s son in Psalm 2, “You are my son, today I have begotten you,” so
also the eternally begotten Son of God is publicly declared to be God’s Son in
the Jordan: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” The powerful Word of creation spoken from
heaven is now the Word made Flesh, plunged in the baptismal waters to rescue us
from the powers of darkness.
A missionary linguist was working in a
remote village in Laos. He was trying to
find a word to translate Savior. He
asked villagers the word they would use to describe the person who saved
someone from a tiger's attack, or a child from falling off a cliff.
“Pa,” they said.
A couple of days later, the
missionary set out on a raft with two women to cross a river. The water was turbulent, and the raft
flipped. The missionary grabbed the two
women and swam with them to shore.
The missionary asked them what word
they would use to describe saving them from drowning.
“Not pa, but che,”
they responded. “Pa is when you reach down to help someone from
above and che is when you were in the water yourself.”
That's what Jesus did. He went into the depths of the water [… both
literally in the Jordan and effectively through his entire life, death, and
resurrection … ] and pulled us out — a real Savior who became like us,
lived with us, and gave his life for us. [i]
Do you need to see the dawn of a new
day? Does the weight of your failed
resolutions, your falling to temptation, and the darkness of days past keep you
from looking forward to the rising of the sun in the morning? First of all, look to Jesus who entered the
waters for you. Jesus was drowned at the
cross, sunk under the weight of your sins, so that you could be set free of
your guilt and shame. Jesus took it all
for you.
Secondly, look to the day when you
entered the waters. Your Baptism was the
dawn of a new day for you. It was the
first day of a new creation for you. Into
a heart of sinful darkness, void of perfection and holiness, empty of belief,
God entered to fill you with light and life, to fill you with his Spirit and
faith. The Holy Spirit hovered over the
face of the waters of the font and connected you with the one who bore your
sins for you at the cross, as St. Paul writes, “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” (Rom 6:4).
And
finally, remember that your baptism has meaning for you every day. No matter what you have done, no matter what
others say about you, no matter what you think about yourself, God’s Word is
sure and certain. And his powerful,
creative Word in Holy Baptism has declared YOU to be a beloved son … a beloved
daughter. United to Jesus, all that he
inherited as the faithful Son is yours. You
are loved. You are forgiven. Heaven is opened to you. Each new day, you can walk in newness of life. By grace, every day is a brand new day.
Amen.
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