It is so easy to see abortion and other life issues as political. That is how they are framed in our media and in our culture. But that is a grave mistake, a misunderstanding of the issue, and even idolatry. A political issue can be dealt with by an election, a new law, a Supreme Court reversal. We think that if we elect the right people and pass the right laws, we have done our good deed to protect life. And there is some truth to that; the evil of abortion is protected by law, and so the law must be changed. But life is much more fundamental than politics; a human being deprived of life is excluded from politics. Life comes before, it stands above politics. Trusting in princes and presidents, in laws and court decisions is nothing else than idolatry. Only God can change hearts, and He changes them one at a time, through His Word.
God loves life, and He protects and preserves life in the same way that He preserves and protects all other good gifts, through Law and Gospel. Christians are obligated to declare to the culture, as I have done this week, that abortion is a great evil. Mothers and fathers considering abortion, and all those who support the abortion culture, are to be called to repentance, they are to be told that the Fifth Commandment applies also to the human being within the womb. But the Law can only rail against sin, it cannot change individuals or society. Only the Gospel can do that. To those broken by the Law, who see their great sin, we proclaim the Gospel. Abortion isn’t an unforgiveable sin; even that great evil has been covered with Christ’s blood. Elections and laws are important, but only the Gospel changes hearts.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Sanctity of Life Sunday (Exodus 2:15-22)
“But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon on this fortieth anniversary of Roe vs. Wade is from the Old Testament lesson read a few moments ago from the first chapter of the book of Exodus. Dear friends in Christ, our God is a God of life. He loves life; He created it. We read in Genesis that “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” With love, with intimacy, with care, God literally stoops into the dirt to form man; He leans over to breathe into our nostrils the breath of life. And He has created with the same love and care ever since. The Psalmist declares, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” He loves life, every life, for he has created life, every life. He created and loves the life of the smallest embryo at the moment of conception, to the life of the one a breath away from death. He loves us despite the effects of sin in our lives; He loves the sick, the infirm, the aged; He loves the mentally and physically disabled. He loves us all; each and every human being, no matter the stage of development, no matter the age, no matter the disability, can confess with David: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”
It is this love for life, all life, that human beings, the crown of God’s creation, are to have in their own lives. Even before the Lord declared on Mount Sinai, “You shall not murder,” it was clear that God wanted people to respect the lives of their neighbors. The second sin recorded in the Bible is murder, and when Noah leaves the ark, the Lord reminds him, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.” This law was written on man’s heart, every person knew that innocent human life is sacred, it is to be respected and protected at all costs. It is this ingrained knowledge, this fundamental law, that Pharaoh violated. “Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.’” Out of fear, out of jealousy for Israel’s rapidly growing population, Pharaoh violated God’s ancient and firm command. And even worse, he didn’t target those who could fight back, but instead condemned the littlest, the most vulnerable, and condemned them to death.
The government declared that killing children was allowed; in fact, Pharaoh himself commanded it. The king had created a culture of death, where an entire classification of human beings was killed out of fear. But some rebelled; Shiphrah and Puah, those appointed to bring forth life, refused to be agents of death. They boldly stood for life in a culture of death. “But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.” The most powerful man in Egypt, the one who held all Israel in the iron grasp of bondage, was defied by these two women. They feared God more than they feared Pharaoh. They held to His command over the words of mere men. They put their lives on the line to protect life; in fact, far from killing the male children, the Hebrew text indicates that they redoubled their efforts to help them survive the rigors of birth. The government called on them to explain their beliefs, to discard their stand for life, but they refused. “So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and let the male children live?’ The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” They were called before kings for God’s sake, and they obeyed God rather than men, they refused to submit, and through them, many children were saved.
Infanticide was Egypt’s national sin, and their violation of God’s command would result in devastation by God’s mighty outstretched hand. America is little better; in fact, America is far worse. The children of Israel died because of the fear of one man. The children of America die because of the fear of their own mothers and fathers, encouraged by a whole host of medical personnel, politicians, and nearly half of the population, the citizens of our culture of death. Fifty-four million. That is the death toll after forty years of legalized abortion on demand. Fifty-four million. It is hard for us to get a handle on those kinds of numbers. Imagine Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota, all uninhabited. Every day, abortion kills as many unborn children as Al-Qaeda killed on 9/11.
Abraham Lincoln considered slavery to be America’s national sin, and he saw the Civil War as the deadly and destructive consequence of that sin. Abortion is our current national sin, and we are already seeing the consequences. A nation that has legalized the destruction of one class of human beings will have little trouble eliminating another class, and so the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled are all threatened. We are already seeing this in Europe, and the push for eliminating undesirables, those no longer deserving of life and precious resources, has begun to extend to our shores. Who knows what other consequences may follow? I am not saying that God will send judgment against America; I have no Word of God to say something so bold. I am simply saying that following God’s laws brings benefits in this world, and transgressing them carries grave consequences. America paid the price for treating a class of humans as sub-human before, as did ancient Egypt and Nazi Germany, and we may do so again.
Shiphrah and Puah are the patron saints of life; their bold stand for life in a culture of death is to be our pattern. They refused to give in, they feared God rather than men, and they acted in accord with their convictions. Their reverence for life came from their reverence for God, the One who gives life. They stood boldly for life, even before Pharaoh himself, regardless of the consequences. Unfortunately, we do not have the same boldness; forty years of legalized abortion on demand has lulled us to sleep. Abortion is our national sin, and we are all guilty, even if we never committed or encouraged an abortion. It has been our silence that has allowed this culture of death to reach epidemic proportions. We have been silent as television and movies separate sex from marriage; we have even been silent when sex outside of marriage enters our own families. We have been silent as politicians have opposed life or simply given it lip service; we have failed to hold them accountable and have let other issues take priority. We have been silent as women around us have entered crisis pregnancies, failing to give them the support they need; where we have been silent, the world has spoken, offering death as the solution. Our excuse cannot be that we didn’t know; abortion may occur behind closed doors, but the debate is right out in the open. We are called to boldly enter that debate, to take a stand for life with Shiphrah and Puah, regardless of the consequences; we are called upon to fear God rather than men. The time for fear is over, the time for action has come.
But even if we do follow the heroic example of Shiphrah and Puah, even if we boldly stand for life in a culture of death, we have no guarantee of success. Pharaoh, when confronted with the defiance of the Hebrew midwives, simply changed tactics. “Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.’” Their heroic stand didn’t end the slaughter, and neither may ours. But we are not discouraged. With them we stand for life and entrust the results to God; if our text teaches us anything, it teaches us that God remains in control, despite the sin and death that surrounds us.
For our God is a God of life. In Exodus chapter two we learn that God spared a child from Pharaoh’s murderous designs, a child named Moses, who would deliver his people from such tyranny. In our Gospel lesson, we learn of another child spared from death, a child named Jesus, who would deliver all people from the tyranny of death. Our culture of death is doomed to defeat, for our God is a God of life, and He spared Jesus so that He would go forth and win life for all. Herod and Pharaoh thought that they were in control, but they weren’t. God is in control, and He is truly a God of life. Life will triumph over death, for Jesus Himself triumphed over death. He walked the way of the cross, standing for life even to the point of death, and then rose victorious over death itself, robbing it of its power, winning forgiveness and eternal life for all.
It is this forgiveness and life won by Christ that is brought to a guilty people; grace everlasting, given freely to those corrupted by sin. And it is this forgiveness, this grace, this life that alone is the solution to our culture of death. Only forgiveness can heal hearts broken by abortion, only forgiveness can send forth Christians to proclaim life in their world. If you have committed or encouraged an abortion, hear today the only message that can bring healing, the only message that can comfort: I, as a called an ordained servant of the Word, forgive you of that sin and all others, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Christ has died even for that sin, He has died for you. You are His forgiven child. And for the rest of us, you and me who have the stain of our national sin upon us by our silence, Christ has forgiven that sin as well as all others. You are forgiven! The God of life sent His Son to die for all your sins. Life has the victory, even in the midst of death, even if abortion is never eliminated; life has the victory, God created it, and He redeemed it, with the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. In the Name of that Son, who won life, everlasting life, for you, for me, for all people, Amen.
It is this love for life, all life, that human beings, the crown of God’s creation, are to have in their own lives. Even before the Lord declared on Mount Sinai, “You shall not murder,” it was clear that God wanted people to respect the lives of their neighbors. The second sin recorded in the Bible is murder, and when Noah leaves the ark, the Lord reminds him, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.” This law was written on man’s heart, every person knew that innocent human life is sacred, it is to be respected and protected at all costs. It is this ingrained knowledge, this fundamental law, that Pharaoh violated. “Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.’” Out of fear, out of jealousy for Israel’s rapidly growing population, Pharaoh violated God’s ancient and firm command. And even worse, he didn’t target those who could fight back, but instead condemned the littlest, the most vulnerable, and condemned them to death.
The government declared that killing children was allowed; in fact, Pharaoh himself commanded it. The king had created a culture of death, where an entire classification of human beings was killed out of fear. But some rebelled; Shiphrah and Puah, those appointed to bring forth life, refused to be agents of death. They boldly stood for life in a culture of death. “But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.” The most powerful man in Egypt, the one who held all Israel in the iron grasp of bondage, was defied by these two women. They feared God more than they feared Pharaoh. They held to His command over the words of mere men. They put their lives on the line to protect life; in fact, far from killing the male children, the Hebrew text indicates that they redoubled their efforts to help them survive the rigors of birth. The government called on them to explain their beliefs, to discard their stand for life, but they refused. “So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and let the male children live?’ The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” They were called before kings for God’s sake, and they obeyed God rather than men, they refused to submit, and through them, many children were saved.
Infanticide was Egypt’s national sin, and their violation of God’s command would result in devastation by God’s mighty outstretched hand. America is little better; in fact, America is far worse. The children of Israel died because of the fear of one man. The children of America die because of the fear of their own mothers and fathers, encouraged by a whole host of medical personnel, politicians, and nearly half of the population, the citizens of our culture of death. Fifty-four million. That is the death toll after forty years of legalized abortion on demand. Fifty-four million. It is hard for us to get a handle on those kinds of numbers. Imagine Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, and North Dakota, all uninhabited. Every day, abortion kills as many unborn children as Al-Qaeda killed on 9/11.
Abraham Lincoln considered slavery to be America’s national sin, and he saw the Civil War as the deadly and destructive consequence of that sin. Abortion is our current national sin, and we are already seeing the consequences. A nation that has legalized the destruction of one class of human beings will have little trouble eliminating another class, and so the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled are all threatened. We are already seeing this in Europe, and the push for eliminating undesirables, those no longer deserving of life and precious resources, has begun to extend to our shores. Who knows what other consequences may follow? I am not saying that God will send judgment against America; I have no Word of God to say something so bold. I am simply saying that following God’s laws brings benefits in this world, and transgressing them carries grave consequences. America paid the price for treating a class of humans as sub-human before, as did ancient Egypt and Nazi Germany, and we may do so again.
Shiphrah and Puah are the patron saints of life; their bold stand for life in a culture of death is to be our pattern. They refused to give in, they feared God rather than men, and they acted in accord with their convictions. Their reverence for life came from their reverence for God, the One who gives life. They stood boldly for life, even before Pharaoh himself, regardless of the consequences. Unfortunately, we do not have the same boldness; forty years of legalized abortion on demand has lulled us to sleep. Abortion is our national sin, and we are all guilty, even if we never committed or encouraged an abortion. It has been our silence that has allowed this culture of death to reach epidemic proportions. We have been silent as television and movies separate sex from marriage; we have even been silent when sex outside of marriage enters our own families. We have been silent as politicians have opposed life or simply given it lip service; we have failed to hold them accountable and have let other issues take priority. We have been silent as women around us have entered crisis pregnancies, failing to give them the support they need; where we have been silent, the world has spoken, offering death as the solution. Our excuse cannot be that we didn’t know; abortion may occur behind closed doors, but the debate is right out in the open. We are called to boldly enter that debate, to take a stand for life with Shiphrah and Puah, regardless of the consequences; we are called upon to fear God rather than men. The time for fear is over, the time for action has come.
But even if we do follow the heroic example of Shiphrah and Puah, even if we boldly stand for life in a culture of death, we have no guarantee of success. Pharaoh, when confronted with the defiance of the Hebrew midwives, simply changed tactics. “Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.’” Their heroic stand didn’t end the slaughter, and neither may ours. But we are not discouraged. With them we stand for life and entrust the results to God; if our text teaches us anything, it teaches us that God remains in control, despite the sin and death that surrounds us.
For our God is a God of life. In Exodus chapter two we learn that God spared a child from Pharaoh’s murderous designs, a child named Moses, who would deliver his people from such tyranny. In our Gospel lesson, we learn of another child spared from death, a child named Jesus, who would deliver all people from the tyranny of death. Our culture of death is doomed to defeat, for our God is a God of life, and He spared Jesus so that He would go forth and win life for all. Herod and Pharaoh thought that they were in control, but they weren’t. God is in control, and He is truly a God of life. Life will triumph over death, for Jesus Himself triumphed over death. He walked the way of the cross, standing for life even to the point of death, and then rose victorious over death itself, robbing it of its power, winning forgiveness and eternal life for all.
It is this forgiveness and life won by Christ that is brought to a guilty people; grace everlasting, given freely to those corrupted by sin. And it is this forgiveness, this grace, this life that alone is the solution to our culture of death. Only forgiveness can heal hearts broken by abortion, only forgiveness can send forth Christians to proclaim life in their world. If you have committed or encouraged an abortion, hear today the only message that can bring healing, the only message that can comfort: I, as a called an ordained servant of the Word, forgive you of that sin and all others, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Christ has died even for that sin, He has died for you. You are His forgiven child. And for the rest of us, you and me who have the stain of our national sin upon us by our silence, Christ has forgiven that sin as well as all others. You are forgiven! The God of life sent His Son to die for all your sins. Life has the victory, even in the midst of death, even if abortion is never eliminated; life has the victory, God created it, and He redeemed it, with the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. In the Name of that Son, who won life, everlasting life, for you, for me, for all people, Amen.
Reflections on 40 years of Roe vs. Wade--Part 4
If abortion is America’s national sin, then none of us are clean, none of us are exempt. We all have participated either actively or by standing on the sidelines. We have allowed our culture to divorce sex from marriage and sex from children, with a whole host of consequences, not least the destruction of fifty-four million innocent lives. The shows we watch, the movies we see, all encourage a culture that makes abortion possible, even necessary. We have unthinkingly accepted contraception, forgetting that abortion and contraception goes together; you cannot have one without the other. We have allowed other issues to take priority; we haven’t held our leaders accountable for this evil, especially our so-called ‘pro-life’ leaders. And on the most basic, personal level, we have failed to give pregnant women the support that they need, especially those in crisis situations.
God loves life, and He uses people like you and me to protect and preserve it. We are on the front lines, and we are called upon to speak. The patron saints of life are Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives found in the first chapter of Exodus. These courageous women stood up for life, defying Pharaoh in word and deed. “The midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.” They obeyed God rather than men, their bold stand is an example to us all. We are called on to stand for life, to support life, to speak up against evil. We pray for forgiveness for our silence, our inability or refusal to stand up for life, and Christ’s blood covers that sin, as it even covers the sin of abortion itself. Then, forgiven and redeemed, we speak boldly for the most vulnerable among us.
God loves life, and He uses people like you and me to protect and preserve it. We are on the front lines, and we are called upon to speak. The patron saints of life are Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives found in the first chapter of Exodus. These courageous women stood up for life, defying Pharaoh in word and deed. “The midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.” They obeyed God rather than men, their bold stand is an example to us all. We are called on to stand for life, to support life, to speak up against evil. We pray for forgiveness for our silence, our inability or refusal to stand up for life, and Christ’s blood covers that sin, as it even covers the sin of abortion itself. Then, forgiven and redeemed, we speak boldly for the most vulnerable among us.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Reflections on 40 years of Roe vs. Wade--Part 3
Forgive me if I take the issue of abortion personally. It’s hard not to; Roe vs. Wade was ten years old when I was born, which means that I am missing peers, classmates, and friends. In fact, Roe vs. Wade declared that it was permissable to kill me. So, I apologize for taking abortion so personally, but for me and all those who dwelt in the womb in the past forty years, it is personal. That is really the point. We aren’t talking about globs of tissue or some other creature, we are talking about human beings. That is simple science; when conception happens, you have a new life, a new human being. And every human being should be protected. If the child in the womb isn’t a human being, then no justification for abortion is needed. If the child in the womb is a human being (and it is!) then no justification is sufficient. A hard case, when the life of a mother is in jeopardy, then is the difficult ethical choice between the lives of two human beings. But even that decision respects the life of both child and mother, declaring that every human being should be protected.
God loves every individual life; He loves you and me. The psalmist declares, “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” Every life has value, because every life has been formed and shaped by God. The stage of development doesn’t matter; old and young, embryo and elderly, are all protected. The effects of sin don’t matter; the disabled and the infirm are all worthy of dignity, respect, and life.
God loves every individual life; He loves you and me. The psalmist declares, “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” Every life has value, because every life has been formed and shaped by God. The stage of development doesn’t matter; old and young, embryo and elderly, are all protected. The effects of sin don’t matter; the disabled and the infirm are all worthy of dignity, respect, and life.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Reflections on 40 years of Roe vs. Wade--Part 2
Abortion is America’s national sin. Abraham Lincoln considered slavery to be a stain upon his nation, a sin for which there was the accounting of the Civil War. He was right, not in the sense that God directly sent this war in response to the evil of slavery; we have no Word from God to make that declaration. But a nation that flaunts God’s Law will find that there are consequences to such evil. God doesn’t just arbitrarily make laws, He declares laws for our good, for the betterment of society as a whole. And so our national sin has consequences, and it is already happening. You cannot devalue life, declaring that an entire classification of human beings can be killed for any reason, and expect it to have no effect. Whether we like it or not, this world is ordered according to God’s holy Law.
God created life, and so He acts to protect it. The Fifth Commandment is God’s definitive statement on the value of life, for there God declares, “You shall not murder.” Luther gives us the explanation: “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.” God created life, and He expects that the crown of His creation, the human race, would have the same respect for such life that He does. The Fifth Commandment calls abortion what it is: a sin, a great evil, perhaps the greatest evil this world has ever known. The Fifth Commandment calls on us to help and support our neighbor in his or her physical needs; it call us out on our silence. But what the Fifth Commandment ultimately does is drive us to Jesus, for forgiveness, for grace, and He will provide; even the sin of abortion, even the sin of quietism, is nailed to the tree.
God created life, and so He acts to protect it. The Fifth Commandment is God’s definitive statement on the value of life, for there God declares, “You shall not murder.” Luther gives us the explanation: “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.” God created life, and He expects that the crown of His creation, the human race, would have the same respect for such life that He does. The Fifth Commandment calls abortion what it is: a sin, a great evil, perhaps the greatest evil this world has ever known. The Fifth Commandment calls on us to help and support our neighbor in his or her physical needs; it call us out on our silence. But what the Fifth Commandment ultimately does is drive us to Jesus, for forgiveness, for grace, and He will provide; even the sin of abortion, even the sin of quietism, is nailed to the tree.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Reflections on 40 years of Roe vs. Wade--Part 1
It has been almost exactly forty years since Roe vs. Wade, the most famous and controversial Supreme Court decision in our nation’s history. For forty years the killing of unborn children has been legal, for any reason, or no reason at all. We live in a nation of abortion on demand, a culture of death. There are days that I think I’m living in a nightmare, that someday I will wake up; the one thing that all people should agree on, regardless of religion or political preference, is that we should not kill our children! The scourge of abortion is so evil, so wicked, so ridiculous, that I can hardly believe that any society allows it to happen. But still we do. We need anniversaries like this to throw a bucket of cold water over our face, to wake us up to the reality of what is happening around us. The lives of the most vulnerable among us is being threatened and taken each and every day. This cannot continue.
God loves life; He created it. All other creatures, the heavenly bodies, and even the earth itself were created with a powerful Word from His lips, but when it came to man, the crown of His creation, God stooped down and got His hands dirty. We read in Genesis two: “Then the Lord formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” See the intimacy that God has with us! His love, His care, His compassion is shown to humanity, so that the David can sing, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Life is God’s gift, His loving and intimate gift to us. He formed you and me in the womb, He shaped us there to be His own unique creation. The womb is God’s workshop, the location of His creating love.
God loves life; He created it. All other creatures, the heavenly bodies, and even the earth itself were created with a powerful Word from His lips, but when it came to man, the crown of His creation, God stooped down and got His hands dirty. We read in Genesis two: “Then the Lord formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” See the intimacy that God has with us! His love, His care, His compassion is shown to humanity, so that the David can sing, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Life is God’s gift, His loving and intimate gift to us. He formed you and me in the womb, He shaped us there to be His own unique creation. The womb is God’s workshop, the location of His creating love.
Monday, January 14, 2013
The Baptism of our Lord (Luke 3:15-22)
“Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’” Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our sermon on this, the Baptism of our Lord comes from the Gospel lesson read a few moments ago from the third chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Dear friends in Christ: of all people, surely Jesus didn’t need to be baptized. Dirty people need to be washed, not the clean. Baptism is for you and me, people who are sinful, filthy with corruption. John’s baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins is for those who lie, who cheat, who lust, who hate, who rebel against God. John baptizes those who see their sin, this scum that clings to their skin and bones, and in repentance cry out for cleansing. The ones coming to the river to be washed by that desert prophet are those who see the needs of their neighbors and ignore them. Yes, John’s baptism is even for the self-righteous, if they could stop gazing at their own navels long enough to listen to his call for repentance. We need to be baptized because God is not pleased with us, not in the least.
John’s baptism is for you and for me, poor miserable sinners, it isn’t for Jesus. Jesus is perfect, clean, pure, and holy. He is more than simply a nice guy, a great teacher; He is God Himself in the flesh. The first two chapters of Luke teach us that Jesus is the last person on this planet who needs to be baptized by John. The Baptist himself says it: Jesus is the coming one, the one who is mightier than he, “the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” A perfect man, a holy man, a man who is also true God, has no need of baptism.
But yet, Jesus is baptized. He walks into the Jordan, the river where the people of Israel were washing away their sins, and submits to the baptism of John. He is baptized, with the multitude of others, sinners all, and He is praying. Then all heaven breaks loose; the heavens themselves are opened, the veil is torn, the curtain pulled back, the great divide between earth and heaven, between God and His creation, is done away with, if only for a moment. And something comes down from the opened heavens: “The Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, like a dove.” If that wasn’t enough, the Father, the Lord, the Creator of the universe preaches a sermon: “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” With this sermon, we have Epiphany; the entire Trinity is revealed to us at Jordan’s stream. The Father speaks from heaven, the Spirit descends as a dove, and the voice of God tells us that this Jesus of Nazareth, this man standing in the river, is the eternally begotten Son of the Father, the one with whom He is truly well-pleased, and He has been anointed for salvation.
John declared about Him, “His winnowing fork is in His hand, to clear His threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” The Father’s voice proclaims that this Jesus has come to gather in the harvest, to burn the chaff of sin away. He has come to do battle with sin by carrying it within His own body and doing away with it. Most people wash in order to become clean; Jesus washes so that He can become dirty. He washes, identified with sinners, as the sin bearer, the One who will carry all sin. His baptism by the Holy Spirit anoints Him for the task that is ahead of Him; it prepares Him for another baptism that is yet to come.
The Father is well-pleased with Jesus because He willingly became the sin-bearer, to take the heavy weight of humanity’s sin upon Himself. But Jesus carries that burden only so that He may be rid of it; the Father is well-pleased with Jesus because He willingly submitted to another baptism: a baptism of fire upon the cross. At the cross, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan found its fulfillment in Christ’s suffering and death under the fires of God’s wrath. At the cross, the Father who declared, “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased,” abandoned that Son to the very fires of hell. There the Son, so gloriously anointed in the Jordan, cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He who was baptized with water, identifying with sinners, with you and me, is baptized with fire, in your place. He dies under God’s fiery wrath, God’s righteous judgment, as the sin bearer, as the One carrying your sin and mine upon His beaten and bloodied shoulders. This was the only path of salvation, the only way that you and I could be delivered from sin, death, and hell. And so in love Jesus submitted to a baptism by the Holy Spirit in the Jordan, and in love He submitted to a baptism by fire upon the cross. There was no voice from heaven that day, but as Jesus cried out “It is finished!” the Father said, “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.”
God proved the truth of those words three days later, when Jesus came forth from the tomb. He had passed through the baptism of fire and had left sin behind, burned and consumed by the Father’s righteous wrath. Now the crucified one was the risen one; as He came up out of the waters of Jordan’s stream to an opened heaven and the Father’s voice, so He came up from the tomb to an opened heaven and the Father’s approval. Jesus ascended into that opened heaven, to take His rightful place at the right hand of the throne of God. Now He commences the work that the Baptist prophesied He would do: “John answered them all, saying, ‘I baptize you with water, but He who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
Jesus Himself was baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire; at the Jordan and at the cross. He sends forth the Church to baptize you and me with the Holy Spirit and with fire; at the font you were baptized into His fiery death, as Saint Paul declares: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” Our sinful nature was crucified in a baptism of fire. “We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” In baptism you died to sin! It was drowned in those waters, consumed by God’s holy fire. And make no mistake; you needed to die. You needed to die to all of your sinful desires, your desires to satisfy your own needs above those of all others, your desire to place other things ahead of God. You needed to die to your rebellion against your Creator, your disregard of His Law, your lack of love for Him and for your neighbor. Your sinful nature cannot be reformed, it cannot be better trained, it cannot be improved; it must be put to death! Sin cannot be dealt with in any other way.
Every baptism includes death, but every baptism also includes resurrection: “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him.” Christ died in His baptism of fire on the cross, but was then raised up on the third day victorious over death. You, too, die in your baptism, and then you rise. “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Your old nature is put to death in the fire, and from those fires emerges a new nature, a new man or woman to live before Him in righteousness and purity. Death and resurrection is the pattern of your life; each and every day Christ returns you to the font in faith, putting your sinful nature to death once again in repentance and raising up in you a new nature. Death and resurrection is the pattern of your life; as you have died and risen in your baptism, you will rise, to newness of life, forever. You will follow the pattern that Christ set, in His death, in His resurrection, in His baptism.
For at your baptism, the heavens were opened just as they were at Christ’s. No one could see it with their physical eyes, but as your head was held over the font and the pastor applied water “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” heaven itself was opened to you. The division between earth and heaven, between God and you, was erased, done away with, forever. Heaven was opened to you never to be closed again. Christ has torn down the curtain, He has opened up heaven, for all the baptized. From that opened heaven came the Holy Spirit, Christ’s gift to you, come to dwell within you, come to create and sustain faith. You were anointed with the Holy Spirit, anointed as God’s own beloved child, adopted by His grace through Christ. And then the Father preached. He preached as powerfully as He preached that day when Jesus came up from the Jordan, saying now to you: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” He is well pleased with you because of Christ, because Jesus has joined you with His death and resurrection. He is well-pleased with you because He is well pleased with His Son, who submitted to John’s baptism in your place, who submitted to the baptism of fire for your salvation. You are His beloved child; with you He is well pleased!
You hear these same blessed words whenever you receive the Absolution. When your sins are forgiven by the pastor as by Christ Himself, God says to you, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” You hear them when you receive the Lord’s Supper. When you depart from this altar, having partaken of Christ’s own Body and Blood, God says to you, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” And you will hear it once more; on the Last Day, when your crucified and risen Lord appears, you will stand before your Creator and He will say to you, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” And then your baptism will be brought to its completion; your sinful nature will be completely destroyed, and you will follow Christ’s pattern in glory, in honor, in resurrection, forever. In the Name of the One baptized for you, who baptizes you into His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
John’s baptism is for you and for me, poor miserable sinners, it isn’t for Jesus. Jesus is perfect, clean, pure, and holy. He is more than simply a nice guy, a great teacher; He is God Himself in the flesh. The first two chapters of Luke teach us that Jesus is the last person on this planet who needs to be baptized by John. The Baptist himself says it: Jesus is the coming one, the one who is mightier than he, “the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” A perfect man, a holy man, a man who is also true God, has no need of baptism.
But yet, Jesus is baptized. He walks into the Jordan, the river where the people of Israel were washing away their sins, and submits to the baptism of John. He is baptized, with the multitude of others, sinners all, and He is praying. Then all heaven breaks loose; the heavens themselves are opened, the veil is torn, the curtain pulled back, the great divide between earth and heaven, between God and His creation, is done away with, if only for a moment. And something comes down from the opened heavens: “The Holy Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, like a dove.” If that wasn’t enough, the Father, the Lord, the Creator of the universe preaches a sermon: “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” With this sermon, we have Epiphany; the entire Trinity is revealed to us at Jordan’s stream. The Father speaks from heaven, the Spirit descends as a dove, and the voice of God tells us that this Jesus of Nazareth, this man standing in the river, is the eternally begotten Son of the Father, the one with whom He is truly well-pleased, and He has been anointed for salvation.
John declared about Him, “His winnowing fork is in His hand, to clear His threshing floor and to gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” The Father’s voice proclaims that this Jesus has come to gather in the harvest, to burn the chaff of sin away. He has come to do battle with sin by carrying it within His own body and doing away with it. Most people wash in order to become clean; Jesus washes so that He can become dirty. He washes, identified with sinners, as the sin bearer, the One who will carry all sin. His baptism by the Holy Spirit anoints Him for the task that is ahead of Him; it prepares Him for another baptism that is yet to come.
The Father is well-pleased with Jesus because He willingly became the sin-bearer, to take the heavy weight of humanity’s sin upon Himself. But Jesus carries that burden only so that He may be rid of it; the Father is well-pleased with Jesus because He willingly submitted to another baptism: a baptism of fire upon the cross. At the cross, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan found its fulfillment in Christ’s suffering and death under the fires of God’s wrath. At the cross, the Father who declared, “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased,” abandoned that Son to the very fires of hell. There the Son, so gloriously anointed in the Jordan, cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He who was baptized with water, identifying with sinners, with you and me, is baptized with fire, in your place. He dies under God’s fiery wrath, God’s righteous judgment, as the sin bearer, as the One carrying your sin and mine upon His beaten and bloodied shoulders. This was the only path of salvation, the only way that you and I could be delivered from sin, death, and hell. And so in love Jesus submitted to a baptism by the Holy Spirit in the Jordan, and in love He submitted to a baptism by fire upon the cross. There was no voice from heaven that day, but as Jesus cried out “It is finished!” the Father said, “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.”
God proved the truth of those words three days later, when Jesus came forth from the tomb. He had passed through the baptism of fire and had left sin behind, burned and consumed by the Father’s righteous wrath. Now the crucified one was the risen one; as He came up out of the waters of Jordan’s stream to an opened heaven and the Father’s voice, so He came up from the tomb to an opened heaven and the Father’s approval. Jesus ascended into that opened heaven, to take His rightful place at the right hand of the throne of God. Now He commences the work that the Baptist prophesied He would do: “John answered them all, saying, ‘I baptize you with water, but He who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
Jesus Himself was baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire; at the Jordan and at the cross. He sends forth the Church to baptize you and me with the Holy Spirit and with fire; at the font you were baptized into His fiery death, as Saint Paul declares: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” Our sinful nature was crucified in a baptism of fire. “We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” In baptism you died to sin! It was drowned in those waters, consumed by God’s holy fire. And make no mistake; you needed to die. You needed to die to all of your sinful desires, your desires to satisfy your own needs above those of all others, your desire to place other things ahead of God. You needed to die to your rebellion against your Creator, your disregard of His Law, your lack of love for Him and for your neighbor. Your sinful nature cannot be reformed, it cannot be better trained, it cannot be improved; it must be put to death! Sin cannot be dealt with in any other way.
Every baptism includes death, but every baptism also includes resurrection: “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him.” Christ died in His baptism of fire on the cross, but was then raised up on the third day victorious over death. You, too, die in your baptism, and then you rise. “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Your old nature is put to death in the fire, and from those fires emerges a new nature, a new man or woman to live before Him in righteousness and purity. Death and resurrection is the pattern of your life; each and every day Christ returns you to the font in faith, putting your sinful nature to death once again in repentance and raising up in you a new nature. Death and resurrection is the pattern of your life; as you have died and risen in your baptism, you will rise, to newness of life, forever. You will follow the pattern that Christ set, in His death, in His resurrection, in His baptism.
For at your baptism, the heavens were opened just as they were at Christ’s. No one could see it with their physical eyes, but as your head was held over the font and the pastor applied water “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” heaven itself was opened to you. The division between earth and heaven, between God and you, was erased, done away with, forever. Heaven was opened to you never to be closed again. Christ has torn down the curtain, He has opened up heaven, for all the baptized. From that opened heaven came the Holy Spirit, Christ’s gift to you, come to dwell within you, come to create and sustain faith. You were anointed with the Holy Spirit, anointed as God’s own beloved child, adopted by His grace through Christ. And then the Father preached. He preached as powerfully as He preached that day when Jesus came up from the Jordan, saying now to you: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” He is well pleased with you because of Christ, because Jesus has joined you with His death and resurrection. He is well-pleased with you because He is well pleased with His Son, who submitted to John’s baptism in your place, who submitted to the baptism of fire for your salvation. You are His beloved child; with you He is well pleased!
You hear these same blessed words whenever you receive the Absolution. When your sins are forgiven by the pastor as by Christ Himself, God says to you, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” You hear them when you receive the Lord’s Supper. When you depart from this altar, having partaken of Christ’s own Body and Blood, God says to you, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” And you will hear it once more; on the Last Day, when your crucified and risen Lord appears, you will stand before your Creator and He will say to you, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” And then your baptism will be brought to its completion; your sinful nature will be completely destroyed, and you will follow Christ’s pattern in glory, in honor, in resurrection, forever. In the Name of the One baptized for you, who baptizes you into His death and resurrection, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
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