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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Even in what was a shorter than expected time for me back in Kilgore this past week, I had conversations both with a non-member whose spouse is on a ventilator because of the coronavirus and with a non-member who is suffering from cancer for yet another time. You can imagine for what their desires and prayers were: namely, for physical healing. If we were in their situations, no doubt our desires and prayers likewise would be for physical healing. We might be content if that physical healing were to take place over time under doctors’ care, but we might be more impressed if God Himself dramatically tore open the heavens and came down to heal us in person. In fact, one of our Advent hymns, based in part on a passage from Isaiah that is used in Advent (Isaiah 64:1, part of the Old Testament Reading for Advent 1B), specifically asks, “O Savior, rend the heavens wide; / Come down, come down with mighty stride” (Lutheran Service Book 355:1). But, God does not necessarily rend the heavens and come down the way that others or we ourselves might imagine; He does not necessarily act the way that others or we might want or expect. And, such was even the case with the Baptism of Our Lord, as we know from St. Matthew’s account, which tells us that John the Baptizer would have prevented Jesus from being baptized, until Jesus told him to permit it in order to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3:14-15). While all three of the Synoptic Gospel accounts of the Baptism of Our Lord tell of the heavens’ opening, only St. Mark’s account that we heard as today’s Third Reading uses the particular Greek word for the heavens’ harsh tearing open (confer Marcus ad loc Mark 1:10, p.159). And, considering that Third Reading, this morning we realize that “The heavens are torn open for us”.
St. Mark’s Divinely‑inspired account of the Baptism of Our Lord admittedly is shorter than St. Matthew’s account of the event, and St. Mark’s account focuses more on what Jesus saw and heard (confer Marcus, ad loc Mark 1:10-11, p.164). Jesus saw the heavens being torn open, which suggests “irreversible cosmic change” (Marcus, ad loc Mark 1:10-11, p.165), or a “turning‑point” in the history of God’s people (Maurer, TDNT, 7:962). And Jesus saw the Spirit descending on Him like a dove, which, by recalling the creation account we heard in today’s First Reading (Genesis 1:1-5; confer Taylor, ad loc Mark 1:10, p.160), suggests a moment of re‑creation or new creation. And, Jesus heard God the Father call Him His beloved Son with Whom He is well-pleased. Altogether, Jesus is, as one writer put it, “the Bringer of acts of God [that] have not been perceived from all eternity and [that] no eye has yet seen nor ear heard” (Maurer, TDNT, 7:962, apparently referring to Isaiah 64:9 and quoted in 1 Corinthians 2:9). What happened at Jesus’s baptism had never happened before with anyone else, and it happened at a time when the Spirit had long been silent (Schweizer, TDNT 6:400-401).
And, what happened at Jesus’s baptism in a sense needed to happen, because our way to the heavens was arguably blocked—remember, for example, God’s placing at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim and a flaming sword turning every way to guard the way to the tree of life after the first man and woman’s fall into sin (Genesis 3:24). They were not satisfied with what God had revealed to them, and so they plunged themselves and all of us their descendants into that same dissatisfaction. We may be dissatisfied when God does not act the way that we might want or expect Him to act, or we may be dissatisfied with the way that God has acted in the past or the ways that God says He will act in the future. If we do not think that we sin in those ways, then we certainly sin in countless other ways, and, on account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin we deserve both death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, unless we repent of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin and trust God to forgive them for Jesus’s sake.
Jesus was baptized at least in part to identify Himself with sinners like us and all people (Oepke, TDNT, 1:538). True God in human flesh, Jesus had no sin of His own of which to confess and be baptized, but in His baptismal waters He took on the sins of the whole world. And, His identifying with sinners “culminates on the cross” (Kilcrease, CLD II:60), where He paid the ultimate price for the sins of the whole world—every sin that ever has been committed, is being committed now, or ever will be committed. Jesus died on the cross for us, in our place, the death that we deserved. And, Jesus did not stay dead but rose from the grave, showing that God the Father had accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. Out of His great love, mercy, and grace, the same Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—Who was present and active at the Baptism of Our Lord was present and active on the cross, as Jesus offered Himself through the eternal Spirit to God the Father (Hebrews 9:14; confer Luke 34:46 and Kilcrease, CLD II:60). Such redemption is part of the context of the repentant call recorded in Isaiah for the Lord to rend the heavens and come down, recalling God’s former deliverance, through shepherds like Moses, through the sea, through the placing of the Holy Spirit, and on account of God’s Fatherhood (Isaiah 63:11-19; confer Marcus, ad loc Mark 1:10‑11, p.165).
For us, our repentance leads to our redemption, our present deliverance, through pastors whom God calls to serve and to save us through the water of our Holy Baptism (1 Peter 3:21; Titus 3:5), the rending of the heavens for us, the giving to us of the Holy Spirit, and the Lord’s voice speaking over the waters (Psalm 29:3) as He adopts us as His children. As we heard in today’s Second Reading (Romans 6:1-11), by Holy Baptism we are buried with Christ Jesus into death, in order that, just as He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we, too, might walk in newness of life. When we repent of our sins and trust God to forgive them for Jesus’s sake, then, through His Means of Grace, we have all the blessings that Baptism, individual Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar offer us.
At the Altar there may be a dramatic division of groups of people, like unto the heavens’ being torn open (confer Acts 14:4; 23:7), but such divisions are necessary in order that those who are genuine believers may be recognized (1 Corinthians 11:19). People may not like and so may object to such divisions or to how God works through His Means of Grace, but the Supper is the Lord’s and He Himself chooses how He will work. And, the same goes for us in our lives. While there is nothing wrong with our praying for physical healing, we should pray for physical healing if it is God’s will, and we should not object or otherwise be disappointed if God chooses to deliver a faithful believer of his or her suffering in this world by taking the believer’s soul from this world, eventually to be reunited with a resurrected and glorified body on the Last Day. That is the ultimate deliverance and healing. That is the real reason the heavens were being torn open at the Baptism of Our Lord. The “irreversible cosmic change” and the “turning-point in the history of God’s people” is for us. “The heavens are torn open for us.”
That Advent hymn I mentioned at the beginning understands all that rightly, as it calls for the Savior to “Unlock the gates, the doors break down; / Unbar the way to heaven’s crown” (LSB 355:1). And that is essentially what Jesus does in His Baptism by identifying with us repentant sinners. He, as that hymn puts it, “leads us with mighty hand / From exile to our promised land” (LSB 355:6). And, as the hymn concludes, addressing the Savior (LSB 355:7):
“There shall we all our praises bring / And sing to You, our Savior King;
There shall we laud you and adore / Forever and forevermore.”
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +