Baptism and New Beginnings
Epiphany 1A | Matthew 3:13-17
Don’t you love that exchange between Jesus and John the Baptist? It so reminds me of two people holding the door for each other.
I insist!
No, I insist!
Nooo…I…insist.
They get increasingly frustrated because nobody is going through the door and they’re both still standing there. And now, just getting mad.
And much like that sort of exchange, there is something deeply rooted in it. Deference and service. Support and honor. Respect and dignity. One person trying to be generous to another.
But it also bears another character: it is hierarchical. Chivalry, like more ancient and modern honor codes, is predicated on hierarchy.
When two guys get frustrated with each other about holding a door, we can see that honoring and being honored are related. Especially when our desired place is to honor.
Honor
I know some of us here love to receive a compliment. It’s like catnip to us. Oh, tell me more about how awesome I am!
But some of us are really bad at it. We need it, but we don’t like it. It makes us uncomfortable. We want to compliment others. We don’t like being the subject of compliments. So we can get really funny about the whole thing. We can get unreasonably angry about.
This interaction, between Jesus and John is familiar because of all of this. This really human stuff we all know. And while some of us might shake our heads at it, others really get where John is coming from.
If Jesus is the Messiah, then what business do I have in baptizing him?
This is the central question of the Messianic project. For the Messiah is the true king. He is to be sovereign. Every head and knee shall bow. He is salvation, future, hope. Everything.
You hold the door for that dude. He doesn’t hold it for you. That is the rule. Always has been. Every culture. Era. People. You serve the king and the king does not serve you.
And Jesus’s first public act is subservience.
Jesus subverts honor.
In Jesus, the rules are overturned. He did what no king does. And he expects two things of us in return.
- To see how this changes the order of things.
- Submit to this new order.
This is doubly troubling for the mighty, isn’t it? People want liberation from the tyranny they are in. But Jesus is revealing that tyranny comes, not from individuals alone, or particular nations. Tyranny comes from those hierarchies themselves.
Tyranny comes from kings and kingdoms as we know them. A king full of kingly power can’t save you from tyranny: it is trying to douse fire with fire.
Which makes us weak in the knees because we think we need that power, that structure, that way of life. It’s even why Christians often prefer natural law to Jesus. Because we think this is how the world is supposed to be.
The Alternative
Jesus offers a different picture. His alternative to tyranny is service. To submit, not to a king’s authority, or even Jesus because he is king. But submit to God through Jesus who commands us to submit to each other.
In other words, don’t submit to a singular authority. Submit to submission instead of power. So that we might all share in this joy together.
Jesus doesn’t offer anarchy as an alternative to the order of kings, but generous equality. We all serve each other.
This is the vision that Jesus will preach over the coming chapters in the gospel of Matthew. We’ll see Jesus inviting us to see what he calls “The Kingdom of Heaven” as a direct contrast to what we might call “The Kingdoms of Earth”. He will lay out this vision as a genuine alternative. Full of hope, generosity, and courage.
Today, however, we get the smallest glimpse. A crack in the door. Because this is the entrance to such grace.
Jesus submits to be baptized. And John consents to baptize him.
New Beginnings
I love that we get the Baptism of Jesus at the beginning of the year. When we are thinking of new things. Our minds are turned toward change, growth, and new beginnings.
Which, of course, is what baptism is. A new beginning. We choose to turn in a new direction and take on a new cause.
New calendars and new journals give us this feeling. Everything is wide open. I can start something now. See how far I get.
It is also the one month we feel truly free to experiment. We say: I’m going to start exercising or eating better! And we give it a shot! Unlike in August, when we’re like, I’m so busy or I can’t start in the middle of the month! We let our excuses talk us out of it. But in early January, we’ll give it a shot.
We are genuinely more free in January because of that.
Resetting our Minds
Ever walk into the kitchen and forget why you’re there? There is a genuine psychological phenomenon at work here. When we walk through a door, our brains dump old info to prepare for the new experience.
Our brains are full of things relevant to the present experience. But we’re going somewhere else. So our brains say to themselves: Better empty the cache so we can make sense of that new environment! Delete! [pushes button]
This is why people who started working from home in 2020 found themselves putting in more work than before. Because they didn’t literally leave through the door at work, enter the solitary sanctuary of decompression through a car door, and walk through their door at home. Several resets along the way.
Our brains didn’t get regular resets.
So here’s the tip: if you need to remember something, remind yourself as you walk through the door. You are way more likely to remember it!
Moving into a new year offers the same opportunity. We reset. Turn to a clean page.
And this is also the promise of baptism.
In baptism, we turn the page.
We repent, which, we remember, means “to turn”. And so, we turn away from the kingdoms of Earth and toward God’s alternative: the Kin-dom of Heaven.
Which is salvation for those who are frustrated by kingdoms of Earth. Burdened by the toil of the way things are. The promise of turning away from that and toward a life of equity, hope, and justice is really good news.
But my favorite part of the turn is that it offers a clean page. That the sins of our past are not only forgiven, but no longer remain our burden. Our lives are not imprisoned by nostalgia or preservation of old ways that no longer bring joy, hope, or freedom to the people today.
When we turn the page, we are clean. Free. And full of opportunity, promise, and hope.
And even though we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus around the first of the year, this promise is not tied to this week, this month, or this season. We are free to turn and return as often as we need to.
Because God is so generous. And we are freed to be so generous too.