Mark 1:4-11
Today is an excellent time to bring to mind how important the baptism of our Lord is in our own lives as baptised children of God.
So it is important to celebrate and remember our baptisms today and recognise that our own baptisms are located back into the very baptism of Jesus Christ himself in the River Jordan, which we heard Mark’s brief account of this morning.
Now, baptism means different things to different people; for some, it is a traditional thing to do. For most it is the biblical next step after believing and becoming a part of the family of God. For others, it is about identifying with a particular church family.
In our baptism service though, we don’t baptise anybody into the Anglican Church, we are all baptised into the world-wide Church of God and become part of the body of Christ.
Water in Scripture often symbolises death, so what happens theologically is that we say before the congregation as witnesses, that we believe in the Creeds (specifically the Apostles Creed) as handed down to us from the early Church:
That the Lord God Almighty is one, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; that we reject all that is evil and die to sin, just as Jesus did on the cross, and rise up though death, which is what the waters of baptism symbolise, into new and eternal life. Just like Jesus did.
So it is an entirely Christ focussed ritual, and this is what I’d like us to think on this morning. What Jesus’ baptism tells us about him and how that relates to each one of us and what that tells us about who we are.
There are some specific points to focus on I think.
The first is that Jesus’ baptism revealed him as the Son of God. In v.11, we read that after Jesus came up out of the water, “a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” Jesus is the Son of God.
This is a unique claim that only Jesus Christ can make – to be the Son of God: the one and only, the first born of God, as the Creeds say, yet “begotten (like you and me), not made (like angels)”. And no one else can claim that for themselves.
Through our own baptism we participate directly in Jesus’ Sonship by becoming adopted daughters and sons of God. If Jesus were not God the Son, we could not have that most intimate of relationships with God our Father – that of his child!
To put it another way, just as a voice from heaven said of Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” That same voice says the same thing to us, “You are my daughter [son], the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Ponder that this week and marvel at it and be filled with joy, for it is the truth.
We become his adopted children and there is an intimacy available to us with God that is not mirrored in any other part of his created world. We are no longer just creatures, like the rest of creation.
We are intimate family. Through baptism, we become part of God’s family: brothers and sisters together under the fatherhood of the Lord God almighty.
And when we truly grasp that this is how God sees us – beautiful and beloved – then that knowledge and experience can truly transform the world. So we are children of God through Jesus’ baptism in the first instance, and then ours.
Secondly, Jesus’ baptism brought down the Spirit of God. “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him” (v,10).
The Spirit of God is the presence of God in creation; the same Spirit who swept across the primal waters in today’s Genesis reading. The same Spirit who spoke through the Old Testament prophets, the same Spirit who came upon King David.
And now this Spirit of God, this Holy Spirit, alights on Jesus in his baptism as the assurance of God’s presence with him, empowering him for the ministry that lies ahead.
Now Jesus was fully God and Lord at his birth, but this happened so that others could testify to it, and we would know that the same thing will happen to us as well.
Father, son, and Holy Spirit are one, so we can say that it was this same Holy Spirit that empowered Jesus to heal the sick and calm the storms and turn water into wine, and raise the dead, and multiply loaves and fishes.
The thing is this: the Holy Spirit alights on us and empowers each one of us to live for God too. We are empowered by God to meet the challenges we face in life. We are empowered by God to forgive others, to love others, to be reconciled.
We are empowered by God to live out his plan for us and become the people that he longs for us to be.
So like Jesus in his baptism, through our baptisms we become sons and daughters of the living God. We receive the power of the Holy Spirit to live for God.
And thirdly and finally, like Jesus, we receive the mandate (or the power and holy desire) to serve others through our baptism. This is the yoke of Christ (Matthew 11:29).
When Mark records God saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”, he was quoting from Isaiah 42, in which the suffering Servant is being described, the suffering Servant who carries the sins of the world.
And Jesus, of course, was that suffering Servant who carried the weight of our pains and sins and wrongdoings so that we could be put right with God. Of course, Jesus has done that – once for all – and we cannot be servants of the world in that way.
But each one of us, through our baptism, is called into a life of service. We are brought into the Body of Christ, the church, through our baptism, and the church is a servant community.
Jesus said of himself, “The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve.”
We are to serve those around us – friends, family, other members of the local community and do what we can to meet their needs in good times and in bad.
So Jesus’ baptism was a stand-alone event in one sense because he was absolutely unique as the Son of God, absolutely unique in how he was empowered by the Holy Spirit, and absolutely unique in how he served the world by dying for our sins.
But in all things, Jesus is the first fruits of the new creation. We are being ever changed to be more and more like him, so in all things Jesus is our role-model.
We too are adopted as God’s children through baptism. We too are empowered by the Holy Spirit through baptism. We too are called into a life of service through baptism.
And so, on this Sunday when we remember the baptism of Christ Jesus, we give thanks to God for our own baptisms and we recommit ourselves to living out our baptismal vows; to live faithfully as God’s children, in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the service of those in our community and the whole world. Let me pray...