A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on January 10, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Mark 1:4-11. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Mark, the first chapter:
John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
It's a strange thing that we've gone from Jesus' birth to Jesus in the temple at 12 years old and, with Epiphany having been celebrated this week, the wise men appearing, we should suddenly go forward to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Shouldn't we dwell a little bit more in the birth of our savior? Well, I will save you the trouble of pondering it: the answer is probably no and the reaSon for that, very simply, is because the church has always done this. We've celebrated the baptism of Our Lord right after Epiphany and we need to consider why that would be. We are now in the church year a whole month. The rest of the world just celebrated its New Year, but we’ve already been there and that's good for us. Now we are in a time of the church year that focuses on the Life of Christ and it is good for us. We should dwell on Incarnation, true. This is the great mystery that God was made flesh to dwell with us and among us, but then we move very quickly towards our Lord's passion. Really everything is moving toward that Good Friday when our Lord gave up his life for your sake that you may be forgiven of all of your sins. From there, we quickly turn to Easter, where he was resurrected to give to you everlasting life.
But why do we start this church year with his baptism? Certainly, there were a lot of things that he did and said, and if you follow the lectionary, there's a lot that we kind of skip in our normal readings. It’s not that it’s not important, but that it is expected we know the Bible well and study it often. But, why do we go to his baptism?
Because his baptism is where we find the information that we need to understand Good Friday and Easter and, yes, even Christmas. Nowhere in the Christmas story is it proclaimed that Jesus is the second perSon of the Trinity. Now he is referred to as God's own Son, we know this, but that there is a subordination, the Father and the Son and then to the Holy Spirit, this we see truly for the first time in Jesus’ baptism and it gives us the clues, the information we need to begin to understand this concept of the Trinity. It's a strange thing. It's not Holy Trinity Sunday, but still the baptism of Jesus displays the Trinity for us in a way that we have never yet considered–that Jesus is the Son of the Father and from them comes the Holy Spirit.
The truth is you need this revelation because it displays the Trinity for you. The Trinity is revealed for you. We must consider this doctrine to better understand our Lord’s baptism today. Let's begin there. Why is the sinless Son of God baptized in the River Jordan? After all, is not baptism for the repentance and the forgiveness of sins? Don't people go down into the water, especially here with John, and we see it in our own font that people go into the water confessing their sins, confessing that they need Jesus, confessing that they need salvation and they cannot win it for themselves? Yes. That's what baptism is for, of course, but why would Jesus go into the water? Why would the perfect Lamb of God choose to be counted among the sinners?
To understand that you need to understand that Jesus’ entire mission is to be counted among the sinners. And, in fact, to be counted as the greatest sinner of all time. It is not that Jesus ever committed sin, but that in his life and death and resurrection, we see that he has drawn all sin in the world to himself and there crucified it upon the cross.
It begins in his baptism. It begins by Jesus going into the water and taking the sin of the world. There, just as when we go into the water, we leave our sin, but take the perfect righteousness of Christ out of it. It's an amazing thing to think that Jesus went in and took all of the sins of the world. Think about it. He died for adultery. He died for theft. He died for murder. He died for coveting. He died for lust. He died for all these bizarre sins that we see in our world today. He died For Those who commit abortions. He died for those who have abortions. He died for those who are so gung-ho on the LGBTQ agenda. He died for those who struggle with same-sex attraction. He died for transgendered people. He died for the sin of removing from their bodies that which God gave them. He died for all these sins. And even this week, we watched as our capital in Washington DC was taken over by people who were so mistaken in their in their deeds and their political opinions that they committed sins. They assaulted police officers. They assaulted each other. They even got a woman killed. Yes, Jesus died even for those sins and all of those sins came to him in the waters of the Jordan as he went down and was baptized by his cousin John.
And there in his baptism for you, where the heavens opened, we begin to see the picture of the Trinity. The heavens begin to open and we see the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And very quickly, this does not mean that the Spirit appeared as a dove, though we certainly often portray this as the Spirit coming down looking like a dove. It means that the Spirit descended on him as a dove would descend. Where else have we seen this? I'd like for you to remember the story of Noah and the Ark.
When Noah, waiting out the flood, sends out the birds to figure out if the land is safe to dwell upon. He sends out a dove and one point it comes back with the branch of an olive tree, showing that well the trees are now visible again. He sends out one more and the dove never returns, for it has finally found its resting place in this world, having awaited the condemnation of God to be over. And so it is with Jesus, that the Holy Spirit descends on him as a dove does, realizing that this here is life, realizing this is the life of the world, realizing that in him the safety and love of God is found and the condemnation of God cannot be there. Christ did not come into this world, He says to condemn the world, but he came that the world might be saved through him. The condemnation of God is gone and we find then this picture of the Spirit showing us that.
Then the voice of his Father and our Father speaks from Heaven, This is my beloved Son. You are my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Did you notice that in our introit today? That whole psalm is summed up in these words, You are my beloved Son in you I am well pleased. Those words are not said for Jesus. Jesus knows that his Father is pleased with him. Jesus is the perfect spotless Lamb of God. There is no question as to who he is or what he's doing. There is no doubt in his mind.
There is no need for him to repent and yet still for us God the Father speaks one of the very few places in Scripture that he does and says to you. This Jesus is my beloved Son, in him I have put all of my deity and him I have put the hope of the world. In him, I have put my mercy and grace. And him I have put salvation and everlasting life. In him I am well pleased. How could God not be well pleased with Jesus? Truly in all of his works and in all of his deeds, He never sinned but kept the commandments to love God with all of his heart and with all of his mind and with all of his strength and to love his neighbor as himself.
We find then, in Jesus, the perfect fulfillment of the law of God, the fulfillment that we could never hope to accomplish, the fulfillment that we see we never can even match up to. But we find it in Jesus, and God the Father speaks from Heaven that you may know for certain that this is true–that in Jesus, you have all that you need and all that you have ever truly wanted. You need look no where else to find your salvation, for in Jesus, God is well pleased.
You see, Jesus’ baptism serves as an introduction into the Trinity. Everything in all creation has always been the work of the Trinity, for everything God has done is to point to Jesus. The Father speaks about the Son, the Spirit descends on him. From the very beginning, when God created the heavens and the Earth, to the very end, when Christ will come again to judge between the living and the dead, the Trinity's work has pointed to Jesus for you.
You need this, you need to be pointed to Jesus. You are too great a sinner to even consider saving yourself. The sins that you have committed, again, adultery, theft, murder, lust, insurrection, trusting in princes and kings and presidents, whatever it may be, Jesus Christ has come to take those sins away from you. You may be the greatest sinner that you've ever met, but I can tell you that one was counted greater than your sin and that is Jesus. God the Father looked down on him another time, at his crucifixion, and he said, You are my Son and now you shall face my wrath, and Jesus said, It is finished. Then Jesus hung his head and died.
And there we find the true culmination of his work, your salvation, your everlasting life, your life with him and with all the saints who have believed in him. That truly is what Jesus has come to do and it is what he has accomplished and we begin to understand it first in this moment, at his baptism. It seems in his baptism, when his public Ministry was given out into the world, all Judea and Jerusalem would see this Jesus and hear John and now also the Father and the Holy Spirit point to him as the only Son of God. Yet, not all believed. Do not be like those who gathered on the River Jordan that day and shield your eyes and your ears from God's pronouncement. This is your savior, this tiny little boy born in a manger in Bethlehem, this boy who grew to be a man. And as he grew, he lived a perfect life and began his ministry teaching amongst the people the doctrines of God that they might believe and be saved. They heard his teachings and believed.
And it is what we do still today in the church. We follow in our Lord's footsteps, not just in his baptism, but trying to work our lives toward that perfect goal. Though we know we cannot achieve it because of our sin, we still try not to sin and we try to live righteously. Paul asks if we should we go on sinning that grace may abound. By no means! You have been baptized into Christ, my friends. You have been baptized into his death and have been raised into his life forever. And though we may not see it fully with our eyes now, the day is coming when we will comprehend it fully by seeing Jesus in his face and we shall know that he is indeed the Son of God in whom he is well pleased, The Son of God who bore the wrath of God for you, the Son of God who will deliver you into your salvation forever. Cloud not your eyes, but trust in him, in the one given to you in your baptism, that you may have the confidence in the hope that you need to to sustain you through this life amidst all of its doubts and uncertainties. Trust in our Lord Jesus, that he has taken your sin away. This is what our Father speaks this day to you, that in Jesus, he is now also well-pleased with you.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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