Jesus speaks to you all today saying,
In the Old Testament, God worked out His will on earth through
many things from giant fish, to burning bushes, to talking donkeys. There was
even a cloud, like the one showing up on the scene of Jesus’ baptism today. The
cloud was the means God used the longest as it was the mode of appearance God
chose when entering the Temple
for Divine Service each and every time a sacrifice was offered up for the
forgiveness of sins.
And that’s fine. We are not afraid of means. God, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit all work through means. Even if it is a dream, someone in
it is talking. And this is what we want to get at today. We want to say that
God can work in people’s lives however He wants, but in the baptism of our
Lord, we see that He uses very limited means to do so.
Each and every time God appeared to a patriarch or a prophet
or a Joe Schmoe it was always as a man or as a part of a man doing something we
would recognize as human. Whether it was sitting or speaking, the Lord wanted
His appearances to be as human as possible. In fact, in the Bible, God’s
presence is almost always predicated by this phrase, “The Word of the Lord
appeared” to so and so.
Meaning, that when God was speaking, He could be seen in
some shape or form. It is never, “a voice came out of nowhere” or “I had a
dream about a visiting ghost”. When God speaks, He is always there. The
examples we have are numerous. As I said, every time God wants something done,
He appears and talks. Here are some examples:
In the Garden of Eden, Moses said God walked in the garden. Spirits
don’t walk. Feet and legs walk. In the Burning Bush incident, yes the Lord was
speaking out of the burning bush, but it wasn’t just the bush that was there.
There was also an angel there. No disembodiment; no mystical fire-whispering.
Later on, when Moses, Aaron, and 40 of Israel ’s elders
were on the mountain communing with God, they see His feet. Feet belong to a
body and the body was assumed to belong to God.
St. Joshua was about to engage Jericho , but in his way, in the middle of the
battlefield stood a Captain of the Lord’s army. “Captain” describes a person,
not a spirit or ghost. When St. Samuel heard
the Lord call him in his sleep, Samuel wasn’t talking to the wall, but it says
that the Lord appeared to Samuel. Samuel saw someone.
When the prophets start preaching, Scripture says that the
Word came through the prophets themselves. They became the mouth of the Lord; messengers
or angels. Angel means “messenger”. Finally, when king Belshazzar was being
judged in the book of St. Daniel, a hand appears and begins to write on the
wall that very judgment. A hand which is part of a body. And so on and so
forth.
Repent. The Word of God is known in His very own Body and is
now revealed to us as the only-begotten Son, the only one with Whom God is well
pleased and we will not see any other revelation of God’s presence nor will God
approach us in any other way except in the Body of His Son, Jesus Christ.
While we will not discount dreams and visions, the more sure
and certain word is God’s Word, Who is Jesus. Even the centurion standing guard
at the cross, spoke God’s word declaring for all the world to hear, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
We do not worship in spirit only. We do not serve a God who
is invisible and hidden only. We do not walk around on earth with our eyes and
ears closed and say, “We live by faith”. God is the one Who opens eyes and ears
to hear His Son speak of the forgiveness of sins, purchased and won by the
holy, innocent, bitter suffering and death of Jesus on the cross.
We could go on and on with example after example from the
Bible, showing that God was expected to show up. That His Messiah, with Whom He
was well pleased, would be the one to rescue Israel from their sins and usher in
the reign of the heavens upon the earth. And, that He would do it, in the
flesh.
It doesn’t matter if God is too infinite, He chose to live
in the finite. Its doesn’t matter if God is one, He is the Three in One. It
doesn’t matter if God is separate and holy, He chose to dwell among us. It
doesn’t matter if God is completely other, in Jesus we see that He is our
Father, our Brother, and our friend.
Why Christmass and Epiphany matter, is because when it comes
time to rescue humanity from their sins and shepherd them, God does so in such
a way that is near and dear to our hearts. So near, that He looks just like one
of us having a body and a soul. So that when He offers to serve us His forgiveness
and His righteousness, we are able to find it, recognize it, and enact it.
Sticking with Baptism, Jesus does not leave baptism up to a
metaphorical fire, nor does He mysteriously throw a spirit-baptism at us and
say, “good luck figuring that one out”. Instead, He places Himself in the
familiar forms and motions that we ourselves go through when we want to wash:
we take our bodies, we find water, and we wash.
When we, or anyone else, are seeking God, His Kingdom, and
His righteousness, we find all of it wrapped neatly in a man-shaped box. God
chooses to place Himself in a box and chooses to be baptized, not just as an
example for us to follow, but as an example we can easily follow and through it
receive God’s salvation. So that when we encounter God’s redemption and great
work of salvation, we see it as a man being washed in water, suffering and
dying, and rising again from the dead.
This means, that when we want that same salvation and
righteousness for ourselves, we need look no further than our own bodies. There
is no walking through fire or spiritual quest. We use the body we were born
with, the tools and environment we grew up with, and create heaven on earth.
Not through our own actions, but through the command and
Word of God. Baptism is not our idea. God being 100% man and 100% God is not
our idea, either, much less Holy Communion, the Church, or pastors. When God’s
Word commands us to baptized, it also commands water to be used. When it
commands that water be used, it necessarily requires that a man use the water
and the Word and that another man receive the water and the Word, in order to
fulfill all righteousness in us as well.
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