A sermon preached at Holy Cross Cathedral Geraldton 17th January 2021
The Bishop asked me to follow on from where he was preaching Matthew’s Christmas story. It’s a big jump from Jesus’ infancy to that time in his early thirties when he went to join the crowds around John the Baptist. It made sense to Matthew: the Christmas stories give us an idea who Jesus really is and what he has come to do, but this next episode thirty years later is where the action begins. Today we learn about how Jesus’ ministry began.
Jesus has spent years dreaming about his job and wondering when God would give him his marching orders; I don’t think he knew it was about to happen now, when he made the decision to join the crowds which were going to hear his cousin John, who was preaching up a storm down at the Jordan. John was like something they had never heard before. It’s a rare preacher who can get under your skin and reach your soul. The people listening to John knew God was speaking to them. God’s kingdom was about to break in on them and if they were not ready it would mean judgement. John pictured a woodsman coming into the forest: over his shoulder he carries his axe. He has filed it sharp. He throws it down at the base of a tree. He sits on a log and lights a cigarette. When he is finished he will get up and start chopping: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire.” And the people believed him and trembled—those who knew the true state of their life. They may have gone to church, but for the most part their thoughts and actions were a long way from God. John would ask if they wanted to change, and if they did, to signal it by coming into the river and being baptized. Baptism was the way to request forgiveness, and God’s way of promising that Messiah would spare you when he came to destroy the wicked and gather the righteous into his kingdom. And that was close, said John.
What John is doing interests Jesus intensely. He is preparing the nation for the kingdom of God. And Jesus knows that establishing the kingdom is Messiah’s job—his job, in other words. He can’t have been ignorant of the excitement at the time of his birth. His mother must have told him he was going to be the king—that’s what the messengers had said. Mary stored it all up in her heart. She must have explained to him that he would bring down the mighty invaders and exalt the poor of Israel. At synagogue school he learned what it all meant. I don’t think he doubted that was his destiny. But knowing what you will one day be called upon to do is different to having the task now. For the moment Jesus is supporting his mother’s family and probably working as a small town builder.
Another thing about Jesus: he loved God. All his life he had this knowledge that he was God’s child, and always that had been first for him. He had never stepped away. His heart was with God, and he walked with God. So, what to do with John and his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins? I don’t think Jesus went to John just to join the excited crowds; tens of thousands from all over the country were doing just that. It became such a thing that the government would have John arrested and put away; Herod was afraid of revolution. But that was later. Jesus has to decide what he will do with John’s baptism. He doesn’t need to repent; he has no sins. Yet he goes, and he goes forward for baptism. Why?
The journey from Nazareth to where John was preaching took two days. He stands with the crowd and listens. He watches them go forward. And now he is striding forward himself—into the water to where John was pushing people under the water—Jesus presents himself to be baptized. And John recognizes him, and now he has a problem. He knows Jesus is a very good man, and he is not. He needs forgiveness as much as the people he is baptizing, but not Jesus. So, he is confused. “No,” he says, “you should baptize me.”
I should stop and explain something here. John does not know Jesus is the promised Messiah. The Fourth Gospel makes that clear. This is strange, because his mother too had told him stories about his own miraculous birth, and about the prophecies that were given then about Jesus. But that was many years ago, and God has said nothing to him about that, although he has told him that the kingdom is near and the future Messiah is waiting in the wings. John must have wondered about Jesus, but he just didn’t look like a possibility. Messiah would need an army, he would need influence, money. He is a king, after all, and Jesus didn’t look anything like that. But he was a good man—John knew that, and now here he is wanting John to baptize him.
Jesus says an odd thing: “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” I think this means that before he set out Jesus has carefully considered the problem and decided that if he is truly to be the king of this people he will need in some way to shoulder their guilt. If the nation is about to face judgement and he is to be its king, then he too must face that judgement. He cannot stand back from them: “You are sinners, but I am not.” If they are his people he must stand with them and identify, so that in some way their guilt becomes his guilt. He is about to take his first step towards the cross.
I am guessing, but I imagine that is about as far as it went. Jesus went down into the water and came out, with no other thought than it was right for him to identify with the people like: if he was ever to stand before God as their king, he would be the representative of sinners.
I say he had no other thought; what I mean is that he didn’t know God was about to speak and commission him as the promised King. It is important to understand that John did not anoint him by his baptism. But God intended that at just that moment he would anoint him with the Holy Spirit and appoint him as the King- Messiah. He spoke from heaven. We read that the sky was split open, that Jesus saw something like a dove flying down and landing on him—it didn’t ever fly away—and there was the voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well-pleased.” Jesus heard these words clearly and the meaning was plain to him.
In many places in his Bible Israel’s king is called God’s son. This was because of the special relationship the king had with God. He was the representative of God to the people and of the people to God. We tend to read the Christmas stories and think Jesus was always the Messiah. That is a mistake. The Christmas stories tell us what he will be, but until God commissions him he is an ordinary citizen. All his life he has been a nobody, but at this moment God appoints him as Israel’s king. Read Psalm 2: “You are my Son; this day have I begotten you.” Read on in the psalm and you will see that this Son of God, the King-Messiah, is going to be the king of all the nations. God was appointing Jesus to be the king of the world.
Psalm 2 doesn’t make it clear whether the kingdom is going to be presented to the Messiah on a plate, or whether this king is to be involved in the actual business of becoming king. Will he have to struggle to establish his kingdom? The answer to that question is found in that little phrase, “In you I am well-pleased.” In Jesus’ Bible that describes the Servant of the Lord, who will suffer but eventually succeed in establishing God’s kingdom over the whole earth. Jesus is being told that from this moment on he is the promised king, but that he must now establish his kingdom, and suffer much in the process.
Today’s reading is just five verses long, a small passage, easily overlooked, but it is the key to all of Jesus’ ministry. What was his job? To conquer the world for God, and become its king. That is what he set out to do, without money or influence or army. All God gave him was his Spirit and his Word. As Matthew’s story goes on we will see that Jesus raises no army, as was expected, but teaches and heals and suffers. But we must never lose sight of the fact—Jesus never does— that his is his strategy to accomplish what God gave him to do that day, to establish the government of God over the whole world and to be its king.
This is all heavy stuff, and, as we are reminded, tomorrow is a Monday morning! We must all go to work at whatever the Lord may have given us to do, and I must think about what I am to do, however many months the Lord may give me here with you in Geraldton. It all seems far removed from the promised kingdom when Jesus will rule on earth and there will be no more death or crying or tears, but peace and beauty and enjoyable work and meaningful leisure. But it is connected! We are all engaged in a process that leads in one way or another to that magnificent new world, or to exclusion and everlasting regret. Jesus is building the kingdom of the future and we are involved.
If we are understand this, and know what to do, we need to look back to what happened that day at the Jordan River. That is when everything changed. That is when God appointed the King of the future. That is when Jesus began his kingdom-building mission. That is when he began to announce the kingdom’s arrival. That is when he began to invite people to enter his kingdom. That is when the opposition started which led in three short years to his public execution, but then God raised him up, and he ascended into heaven, and God gave him the place of highest authority in the universe—to continue his mission. Then came the Holy Spirit, and the Church, and the mission to the world, which we are part of. We don’t have to look past the current crisis in the US to see that the world still has a problem with leadership, that the kingdom of God is not yet here in its fulness, that Jesus is still at his work. But Christians know that one day the last of the lost will be found, and the kingdoms of the world will be the kingdom of our God and of his Messiah, and he shall rule for ever and ever. “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
At this point we must make up our minds: Will we accept Jesus as King—as king of the world, but also as our king— or will we hang on in our state of rebellion. There is no third way. Either we belong to the King and are engaged with him in his mission, or we are against the King and are struggling against his kingdom. It is difficult to see things in such stark terms, but that is how it is. Jesus says, “Whoever is with me gathers, and whoever is not with me scatters.” In one way or another we are either pointing and encouraging people towards the Lord Jesus, or pointing to something else and encouraging them to stay away. Have you ever thought that just your being at church today is saying something? Someone knows you are here and probably thinks you are crazy, but you are actually pointing them to Jesus. Those who stay away are also saying something: it doesn’t matter about God! I am willing to bet that in the week ahead each one of us will face a situation in which we can take a step towards God’s kingdom. or step away; there are a million ways we can cooperate with Christ in his mission to save sinners, or obstruct. There is no way any of us can sit on the fence.