“THE SON HOLIES YOU WITH WATER AND IS PLEASED”
Saint Mark 1: 4-11
The Baptism of our Lord: 10 January Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
Left to your own devices, as studies prove of people living entirely alone and isolated, you would simply get dirtier and more foul. You would stop washing, putting on clean clothes, and even brushing your teeth. Left to your own devices you are filthy and smell bad—hence your need, not want, to shower every morning to remove the stench of death. The wilderness is full of arid land, sand sometimes, but always dry and cracked earth with little or no water.
The Lord made Eden but your sin has turned paradise into desert. Christ comes to the wilderness and preaches. God came in the preaching of Moses, Jonah, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. God came in the preaching of His voice John the Baptist.
The Baptist preached “the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” The Baptist preached Law and Gospel, that is—sin and its damning dirtying effects, and Grace filled sacrificial love and its loosing and cleansing life! It’s all the Lords work.
John was correct, he was not worthy to untie the Messias’ sandals, no one is, not you or I. And yet The Lord requested that John treat Him (The God/Man) like a dirty, sinful, fellow inhabitant of “the land of Judaea and of Jerusalem,” a fellow enfleshed being, and baptize Him in the Jordan. John consented to fulfill “all righteousness” that is, to be conformed to the will of The Righteous One.
The Godhead, The Holy Trinity—Three in One and One in Three—is Holy, hence the “Holy” Trinity. The word in Latin is Sanctus, it’s what you sing with the Seraphim when you sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” in the Communion liturgy. To be made sanctified, or holy, is to be claimed, adopted, absorbed into love, and “set apart” by God for Himself. What The Lord simply IS, by nature, is what He makes all of you by will and purpose. He ‘holies’ you by His person and work. He holies you by keeping perfect the Holy Law of God which you break. He holies you by giving you His Holy Spirit through His Words and Holy Things (the Sacraments, i.e. the Holy Things). God speaks and it is. The Lord’s Word does what it commands, demands, creates, and bestows. He says “light” and there is light. He says “be still” to the storm on Gennesaret and there is calm. He says be loosed and the dumb man’s tongue can speak. He says be clean and belong to me—and one is Baptized.
‘Within the Jordan’s crystal flood in meekness stands the Lamb of God. And, sinless, sanctifies the wave, mankind from sin to cleanse and save.’ [TLH 131.3] The Lord as a living God radiates love and mercy and healing the way a rod of plutonium exudes radiation. Only the Christ’s veiling of His divinity during His state of Humiliation kept everything from being restored—the full restoration—the resurrection of all flesh and the life of the world to come—comes at His final advent. But when the Holy hands of The Holy One touched blind eyes they were opened, when they touched the corpse of the Widow’s son (Nain) he was vivified. Even when the woman with a “flow of blood” touched the Christ’s garments His holiness flowed to her in a healing flood. Jesus steps into the Jordan to soak up the people’s sins and sin, and to impart The Word of forgiveness to the earthly element of water. Jesus holied you at the + font and holies, sanctifies, every babe that is washed in Him—His water and Word.
The dove is a symbol of peace and concord—of restoration and life—the Noahic flood, the cleansing of all that was dirty, evil, and sinful, is over and the dove brings back a green branch of life. The Holy Ghost descends on Jesus in the Jordan because wherever The Word is, then and now, and forever, there too is The Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost brings salvation to you by bringing you the same Holy Son of God with His Word of absolution and mercy. As His Father spoke, not so much to Him, as to John, the Disciples, and the repentant crowd, so too The Father speaks to you this morning: “you by dear children, are my children in my only-begotten Son’s restorative Water of forgiveness…the Water and Blood flowing from His pierced side; from Calvary to Augsburg’s font and Chalice.” “You all are now, in Him, by beloved sons, in whom I am well pleased.”
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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