Texts: Titus 3:4-8, Matthew 3:13-17
This sermon was originally preached on Sunday, January 12, 2025, at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas.
Today the Lord of all comes to the banks of the River Jordan to be baptized by the hand of John the Baptist.
Today the Sinless One receives the baptism declared to be necessary for sinners.
Today Our Lord emerges from thirty years of relative obscurity to commence his public ministry— a three-year period that will change the world forever.
The Baptism of Christ is an event so important that all four Gospels record it with great attention. Jesus comes from Galilee in the north to Judea in the south to be baptized by John. Jesus is, seemingly, just another person in the crowd, another person responding to John’s summons to repentance. And the rest of the crowd would not see anything extraordinary in Jesus coming to be baptized. After all, he’s just another man, no one famous.
But John knows who he is. Which is why he tries to prevent him. He knows Christ is sinless and so has no need to receive a baptism to wash away sins— it doesn’t seem right to treat Jesus like any of the other hundreds of peoples he’s baptized. And John also feels unworthy to touch the Lord— if he is not worthy to unloose the strap of his sandals, surely, he’s unworthy to baptize the Lord. As John says, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?”
But the Lord insists, because this baptism is necessary for Christ to show his solidarity with sinful humanity… a solidarity that will ultimately lead him to the Cross.
So John consents and baptizes Christ. And the heavens are opened, and the Spirit of God descends like a dove and rests on Jesus; and a voice from heaven thunders, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
The Baptism of Christ is a manifestation of the Holy Trinity. At once, there appears the voice of the Father, the Son who is baptized, and the Spirit, who descends like a dove.
This moment, this Event, is the prototype for all future baptisms. In the Baptism of Christ, we see what happens in every baptism. Whether it takes place at a grand cathedral, in the muddy waters of a lake, or in the humble parish church, at every baptism, the heavens open, the Spirit descends on the baptized, and the voice of the Father declares, “This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
The Baptism of Christ announces the will of the Father for every human being. God wills for every person he has made to receive the Holy Spirit, to become a beloved son of God. God desires for the Holy Spirit to descend and rest on each one of you, so that you too might become the beloved children of God. And He begins to accomplish this through Holy Baptism.
Baptism is a work of God. It is God’s gift to us. When we are baptized, we are clothed with Christ, we “put him on.” We are given the right to stand where Jesus stands, to cry out to God with his voice, with his Spirit.
Baptism is God laying hold of us, not because of works we had done in righteousness, but because of his mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit. And this is something to especially remember when we bring our children to be baptized.
The great Anglican priest-poet George Herbert expresses this beautifully in his poem on Holy Baptism:
Since, Lord, to thee
A narrow way and little gate
Is all the passage, on mine infancy
Thou didst lay hold, and antedate
My faith in me.
When we are baptized as young children, God lays hold on us and marks us as His own before we articulate our faith. He gives us this grace before we ask for it, for narrow is the way, and we need all the help we can get.
And that’s why baptism can occur before we articulate our faith or after. Within the context of the covenantal community, timing is not so important. Life with God is not primarily about doing things in the right order. It’s not primarily about doing things. Life with God is about God reaching out to us and giving us His life, and calling forth our response, enabling our freedom to respond to God. God freely gives us his grace, so that we might freely respond in love. Freely. For God does not want robots but sons.
And part of being a son of God is the knowledge of His great love for us. One of the great consolations of life in Christ is that throughout your life as a baptized person, you will hear over and over, in infinitely varying ways, the voice of God declaring to you, “You are my son, my beloved. With you I am well pleased.” And this is a consolation that not everyone in this world experiences. So many people go through life without any sense that someone is in their corner. So many go through life isolated, feeling that no one really cares about them, that no one is advocating for them. And this is not true of course, because God loves all people and is looking out for everyone.
But as baptized Christians, we know that there is One who loves us, who cares for us, who is advocating for us, even if no one else is. We know the voice of the Father declaring to us, “You are my beloved.” We know that God is for us. And if God is for us, who can be against us?
Baptism, then, is a source of great comfort for us throughout our lives. It is an enduring sign and pledge of God’s undying love for us. Baptism is not primarily about what we do, not primarily about what we express, it’s about what God does and what God expresses. In Baptism, God expresses His promise to us that He will never abandon us, that He will always love us, that He will always draw to Himself his baptized children.
Yet while it’s true that baptism is a work of God, it is also a work that calls forth a response. Baptism is not magic. It does not infallibly guarantee our salvation. It does not eliminate the need for personal faith or make unnecessary the struggle to live a Christian life.
The Christian life is a journey, a journey into God– further up and further in, as C.S. Lewis would say. And Baptism is only the beginning of the journey, it’s not the end. Baptism purifies us and sanctifies us as we start out on our pilgrimage to God, and it will remain as the constant call to make this faith our own, to engage in our own struggles to be faithful to Christ.
As Lola, Loretta, and Callahan grow up, they will continue their spiritual journey with the help of their families, their church, and the wider Christian community. And they will need to make their own the commitments essential to Christian life. They will need to make their own the renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. They will need to confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. They will need to come to a sound understanding of Christian doctrine, as it’s laid out in the Creed. And they will need to integrate into their lives the essential practices of the Christian faith: worship, fellowship, repentance, evangelization, and service to others.
Baptism does not eliminate the need for our response to Christ. It calls forth our response.
So Baptism is not something that is all about what we do, without God’s contribution, nor is it something that only God does without our needing to follow up in any way. Like so many things in the Christian life, it’s not one or the other, it’s both, and to the utmost.
Today the Lord comes to be baptized in the Jordan. And today these beloved children of God come to the waters to be baptized. Convinced of God’s love for Lola, Loretta, and Callahan, we bring them to the waters so that God may lay hold on them and give them His Spirit and adopt them as His beloved children. And empowered by the grace of this baptism, these children will start out on the great adventure, the great journey of life in Christ. May God receive them, and us, at the last, into His all-loving embrace. Amen.
The Pulpit and the Altar 