Preacher: Dana Cassell

Scripture: Matthew 3:13-17

Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ baptism well into the scene of John hanging out by the Jordan River. John has been out here in the Galilee, baptizing people from Jerusalem and Judea and all over the region for, he is preaching, the repentance of sins. People streamed out to the river, confessed their sins, and waded into the healing waters of the Jordan. John has even had a run-in with the temple officials who heard about what he was doing and came down to the river to chastise him. John has been out here in the river for a while before Jesus shows up.

And when Jesus does show up, John is just as scandalized as everyone else. John has been preaching a baptism for THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. People have been drawn to his preaching because they have sensed a deep need to confess their brokenness, their inadequacies, all the ways that they have not lived up to what they’ve been taught that God expects of them. This baptism that John has been called to initiate has been a practice for HUMANS – limited, conditional, contradictory beings who feel their smallness way down deep inside.

This baptism of water for repentance is not for divine beings. John was announcing the coming of the Lord, the one much more powerful than he, the one who would baptize all those hateful temple officials and oppressive political leaders “not with water but with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” John’s entire ministry has been about preparing the way for the Messiah, the one who has winnowing fork in hand, ready to separate the wheat from the chaff and burning up all the useless material with unquenchable fire.

That coming Lord is Jesus. John knows it – he encountered his own Lord while they were both in utero and their moms shared strength during difficult pregnancies. So when Jesus – the Lord, the one who is supposed to show up not TO BE baptized but to officiate an even more intense baptism himself – shows up down at the Jordan, John protests.

“I need to be baptized by YOU, Jesus! What are you doing getting in line and wading into this river with all these small humans?”

But Jesus – always the one to upend every possible expectation about what it is to be Lord and Savior – says “let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” So, John consents, Jesus steps out into the water, and John prays over him and dunks him (there have literally been long, involved arguments about whether or not John would have dunked Jesus forward or backward, whether he would have immersed him once or twice or three times, or whether John just splashed Jesus a little over his head and called it good…).

Jesus – the coming King and Lord for whom John was preparing the way, the one whose SANDALS John felt unworthy to carry – asked John to baptize him…for the repentance of sins. And John, after protesting and arguing, agreed.

What is up with that? Why did Jesus get baptized? In this story from Matthew, Jesus hasn’t even reached the part of his life where public ministry is a thing – all we know about Jesus up to this point is a spectacular birth and a couple of glimpses of precocious childhood. Surely Jesus didn’t need to CONFESS any SINS, right? Why does he wade into the water and insist that John baptize him?

I think a lot about this piece of Jesus’ story. About why it was important enough that the gospel writers included it in their accounts of his life, about what it means that Jesus insisted on joining the crowds at the Jordan and getting baptized. I don’t know what it means that Jesus got baptized for the repentance of sin. I don’t really understand what he might have had to confess or be cleansed of – just like I don’t really understand the inner workings of anybody else’s heart and mind. 

But I can tell you that it makes absolute and complete sense to me that Jesus would have watched all those people getting up and moving as one toward the river, being moved collectively toward this new thing that John was preaching about, finding communal meaning and purpose in it – that Jesus would have witnessed an entire community moved as one and known that he needed to be part of it.

The sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote, a hundred years ago, about a phenomenon that he called “collective effervescence.” He watched people participate in religious rituals and saw something that he described as “magical” happening: people experience connection, communal emotion and a sense of sacredness when we participate in things that are larger than our tiny, individual selves.

I thought about this as I watched people gather across the country this week in grief and protest of ICE’s murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. People pouring out into the streets with signs and banners and conviction, and intent on doing it together. People being drawn toward the sacred experience of connection and communal purpose. When we move together like this, what happens is downright magical.

I don’t really understand why Jesus chose to get baptized for the repentance of sins, but I definitely understand why he chose to show up in the midst of the crowd, why he decided to stand in line with the absolute mass of humanity down by the Jordan. Jesus came to be WITH us, right? The incarnation of God on earth is an impossible, incredible affirmation of the holiness of humanity, the goodness of flesh. Jesus showed up and immediately, obviously, indefatigably insisted on being where the people were.

I’m fairly certain that Jesus would find a way to join the teeming masses in the streets these days, not only because he would be heartbroken, his spirit deeply grieved by the violence of our country, but also because THAT’S WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE. And Jesus consistently shows up where the people are, where we’re moved to action together, where we find places and spaces to be honest and vulnerable about what’s happening to us and around us, where we can shout with joy and weep with pain and even, sometimes, confess our complicity in it all.

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Why in the world did Jesus – savior of the world, the one coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire – show up down at the river and get in line for John’s baptism?

Asking why Jesus got in line and waded into the Jordan with all those other broken Galilean humans, is really asking why God would become human at all.

And it seems to me that part of the answer to that question is that God desperately wants to be with us, alongside us, among us, WITH US. 

And here’s the extra grace of the story: because Jesus was willing to get in line and wade into the waters of baptism with us, we also get to witness and share in God’s reaction to it.

Jesus emerges from those waters, the heavens open and the Spirit, in the form of a dove, swoops down and perches on his shoulder. And a voice, from heaven, says clearly: “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

That’s what God says when Jesus decided to join the crowd, stand in line, acknowledge that he was one of us, that he didn’t need to be set apart or installed on a throne, when he quietly walked up and became part of the masses because he couldn’t bear not to be where we were.

God isn’t disappointed that Jesus didn’t stand on a hill and watch the poor people practice some weird ritual, that he didn’t gather his cloak and hightail it off to some far-away throne to rule from a distant place of power.

God isn’t upset that Jesus got all emotional and participatory instead of offering to relieve John of his post and be the baptizer instead of the baptized.

God is not pissed off that Jesus chose to be a brother instead of The Savior of the World.

No, instead, God is WELL PLEASED with this kind of behavior. God LOVES Jesus, and God LOVES us – especially when we find the courage to show up with our siblings, when we allow ourselves to experience collective effervescence, when we acknowledge how sacred it is to be part of a collective.

God is well pleased in us when we choose to walk with each other.

God is well pleased when we get in line with everyone else and expect to be simply a part of the crowd.

God is well pleased when we allow others to offer us care.

God is well pleased when we admit that we can’t do it alone.

God is well pleased when we learn that we are contingent beings, dependent on God and on one another for every bit of our life.

And that is good news, my friends. Thanks be to God.

Photo credit to John Locher in Minneapolis