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When I was an elementary school student, I attended one-room, one-teacher public schools in rural communities in Iowa and Missouri. I think I must have been about the last generation of children to attend such schools. After that, such small schools were consolidated to form larger, multi-classroom schools in central locations. I have always thought I was blessed to attend the elementary schools I did. Such schools, which might include about twenty children in eight grades, all taught by one teacher in one room, were like being educated within a family. At recess, as I recall, when the weather allowed, the whole school would play softball, with the teacher usually serving as pitcher for both teams and as umpire. The teacher would appoint two students to choose the sides, with every student being–eventually–chosen to play. In this way, both teams would be as evenly matched as possible. Sometimes the teacher would appoint two of the youngest students, say, two first-graders, to serve as captains and to choose the members of the team. Of course, that young child would most likely choose the oldest, strongest, most athletically talented boy as the first pick, whereupon that boy would advise the captain in choosing the others.
Athletic teams, on all levels, are usually dominated by a few particularly-talented players. The performance of those players often make the difference between winning and losing. There is a sense in which we are members of a team with one outstanding player. As you might guess, the team I am referring to is the Holy Christian Church, the communion of saints. And the star player who makes the difference between winning and losing is Jesus. Now, you may think this illustration is far-fetched and perhaps even frivolous, and perhaps it is. But let me try it.
We are all familiar, I would suppose, with John the Baptizer. John was a relative of Jesus but may well have seen little or nothing of Jesus until Jesus showed up one day among the crowds coming to John to be baptized in the Jordan River. John and Jesus, though about the same age, grew up in widely separated parts of the Holy Land, and their lives were much different from one another. John’s father, Zechariah, was a priest who served in the temple in Jerusalem, while Joseph was a carpenter who, with Mary and Jesus, lived in Nazareth of Galilee. At an early age the Holy Spirit called John to begin a ministry greatly different from that of his priestly father. John became a prophet living in a sparsely populated desert. He dressed in rough garments and lived on what he could find. He was a stern, fiery preacher, demanding repentance and baptism in preparation for the imminent arrival of the Messiah, the Savior God had promised for thousands of years. Despite his isolated location, John attracted a growing number of hearers, who streamed out of the surrounding towns and villages and even from the great city of Jerusalem to confess their sins and to be baptized by John for the forgiveness of their sins. Even the theologians and clergy of Judaism came out to John, though many of them not in repentance but to stealthily examine and criticize John’s message, and these John harshly scolded as hypocrites and refused to baptize, warning them that they stood under a damning judgment.
And suddenly, among the crowds stepping into the river for baptism came Jesus. Now, John may or may not have known Jesus personally, but he was no doubt well acquainted with who Jesus was. John’s parents had no doubt told John of the remarkable circumstances of his own birth and of the even more remarkable circumstances of Jesus’s birth. John knew that in Jesus God had fulfilled His promises to send the Messiah, the Savior. And so, when John found Jesus standing before him ready to be baptized, John pulled up short and did not want to baptize Jesus–not for the reason John refused to baptize those who would not confess and repent of their sins but, for the very opposite reason, because here was One who had no need to repent, One without sin, One holy and righteous. John, himself a sinner, was standing face to face with the sinless One. John said: “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” (verse 14).
Jesus simply replied, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (verse 15). John knew what Jesus meant, and he immediately agreed to baptize Jesus. But do we know? Do we know what Jesus meant when He said that “it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness”? I think you do know. I think you know that Jesus had come into this world to save sinners by giving His own precious life as the atonement for sin. I think you know that Jesus came not only to stand with us before God but to stand for us before God, to take upon Himself the burden of guilt for sin–for all the sin of all the sinners–and, loaded down with that sin, to stand under the blast of God’s wrath against sin and to take the punishment sin deserves. I think you know what the Prophet Isaiah had said about Jesus hundreds of years before Jesus stepped into the river with John: “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned– every one–to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Is. 53:4-6). I think you know what John meant when he declared the very next day, when John saw Jesus walking by, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) and then on the next day again, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36).
You know. You know that Jesus came to join our team and, in fact, to win the game for us. He came to win victory over sin, death, and hell–victory not for Himself, but victory for us. In Him we are winners, and we get to hold the trophy, the trophy of life, life forever in God’s glorious kingdom, all for the sake and because of Jesus our Champion. His victory is our victory, for Jesus joined our team by His baptism, and now we are joined to His team, the winning team, in our baptism. An ancient Irish hymn, found among the baptismal hymns in our hymn book, is attributed to Patrick, the well-known missionary to Ireland in the fourth and fifth centuries:
I bind unto myself today / The strong name of the Trinity
By invocation of the same, / The Three in One and One in Three.
I bind this day to me forever, / By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation,
His Baptism in the Jordan River, / His cross of death for my salvation,
His bursting from the spiced tomb, / His riding up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom, / I bind unto myself today.
I bind unto myself today / The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay, / His ear to hearken to my need,
The wisdom of my God to teach, / His hand to guide, His shield to ward,
The Word of God to give me speech, / His heavenly host to be my guard.
Against the demon snares of sin, / The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within, / The hostile foes that mar my course,
Or few or many, far or nigh, / In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility, / I bind to me those holy powers.
I bind unto myself the name, / The strong name of the Trinity
By invocation of the same, / The Three in One and One in Three,
Of whom all nature has creation, / Eternal Father, Spirit, Word,
Praise to the Lord for my salvation; / Salvation is of Christ the Lord!
(Lutheran Service Book, 604).
And, to that, with Patrick and all the baptized people of the baptized Christ, we speak a glad “Amen.”