January 11, 2026 Sermon
Sermon Title: “Jesus Gets Baptized”
Scripture: Matthew 3:13-17
(Other lectionary suggestions include Isaiah 42:1-9, Psalm 29, and Acts 10:34-43.)
Matthew 3:13-17
The Baptism of Jesus
13Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
The sermon title is “Jesus gets Baptized,” and I’m reminded of a sermon I heard before I went into the ministry. Harlane and I were attending a Presbyterian church in Santa Monica, and there was an Interim Minister whose name I don’t remember. But he preached on this topic, and he included the Bobby Darin song, “Splish-Splash, I was Takin’ a Bath!”. If you recall, the song ends with the words, “And everything was all right!” That was pretty good thinking on the part of this Interim Minister, because if you look at what we read this morning, “A voice from the heavens said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.;’”
God is “well pleased” with Jesus, and I think you could sing, “Everything was all right!”
On a more serious note, did you ever wonder why Jesus felt the need to get baptized? Even John the Baptist thought he should be baptized by Jesus, not the other way around. Jesus’s words to John are, “So that we may fulfill all righteousness.” What did he mean? One thing on his mind may have been the fact that Jesus did not want to appear “above it all” or somehow better than the people he was coming to save. In preparing this sermon, I discovered that all four Gospel stories have this account of Jesus getting baptized in them. So, the early church obviously thought Jesus’s getting baptized was important. By the way, in today’s liturgical calendar, the day is called “The Baptism of the Lord.” That’s one reason for the white stole. Maybe not the only reason, but one reason, for sure. Next Sunday the color is GREEN. But today it’s WHITE.
John the Baptist is surprised because he expects somebody with a winnowing fork in his hand. But instead, what he gets is Jesus, humbly identifying himself with God’s people, taking their place and sharing their penitence. He will live their life and ultimately die their death.
Have you ever thought that maybe John the Baptist didn’t get it? He wanted a tougher Messiah, and he was beheaded before he ever saw his cousin Jesus come into his glory. When Jesus gets baptized, what happens? Jesus comes up out of the water the way Israel did when it passed through the Red Sea. Israel was given the Law, confirming their status as God’s son, God’s firstborn. In the words of N. T. Wright, the British scholar and former Bishop of Durham, “Jesus came up from the water of baptism, and received God’s spirit, God’s wind, God’s breath, in a new way, declaring him to be God’s son, Israel-in-person.” What about the dove? What does it signify? Says Wright, the dove indicates “that the coming judgment will not be achieved through a warlike or vindictive spirit but will mean the making of peace.”
Wright goes on to say that “Part of the challenge of this passage is to learn afresh to be surprised by Jesus. He comes to fulfill God’s plans, not ours, and even his prophets sometimes seem to misunderstand what he is up to.”
God’s voice after Jesus’s baptism seemed to say that God was “well pleased” with Jesus. God can also be “well pleased” with you and me, too. Says Wright, “As we learn to put aside our own plans and submit to his, we may be granted moments of vision, glimpses of his greater reality. And at the center of that sudden sight we will find our loving father, affirming us as his children, equipping us, too, with his spirit so that our lives may be swept clean and made ready for use.” Amen. Again, maybe John the Baptist was one of the prophets who didn’t “get” what Jesus was about. What do YOU think?
Pastor Skip
