“Faithfully Serving the Lord”

Matthew 3:13-17

While serving a small church in Virginia I encountered a lady who refused to say the phrase “he descended into hell” while reciting The Apostles Creed. The basis of her refusal was her inability to come to grips with the reality of a sinless Christ going to hell, a place of eternal damnation for sinners.

I never could get her to understand the Reformed understanding of the phrase. When we say we believe that Jesus descended into hell what we are saying is that on the cross Jesus experienced abandonment by God. Hell is damnation. Damnation is an existence cut off from God.

We all deserve damnation for our sins. There is a price to be paid for them. On the cross Jesus paid it for us. To quote Isaiah 53, “… he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed…the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” That in a nutshell is the Doctrine of Atonement.

What does this have to do with the baptism of Jesus? From its earliest days the church has wrestled with the notion of a sinless Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. This baptism was, by John’s own words, a baptism of repentance. What did Jesus have to repent? Nothing. In fact John the Baptist tells Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you…”

Besides the reality of the total absence of sin in the life and person of Jesus, there was also another bothersome issue. In the act of baptism as those first century Judeans understood it, the baptizer assumed the superior position while the one being baptized took the inferior one. John the Baptist was in no way the superior of Jesus. As he said of Jesus, “… one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.” John clearly understood Jesus to be his superior. This too was a factor in his reluctance to baptize Jesus. He didn’t want folks to misunderstand his relationship with Jesus.

Jesus’ response, in the words of William Barclay’s translation, was, “For the present, let it be so, for the right thing for us to do is to do everything a good man ought to do.” Jesus was intent on modeling the righteousness that was required by the Law and Prophets that he had come to fulfill. Baptism was a sign of the righteousness that Jesus was to live, model, and then die on the cross that we might attain it. Being baptized was part of his mission.

His mission was to be the Suffering Servant Messiah. The true Servant of God was to be obedient even unto death. The true Servant was to model humility. The true Servant was to fully surrender his life to the Lord God, his Master. In his baptism Jesus modeled obedience, humility, and surrender in a very real and tangible way. In his baptism Jesus began making clear just what kind of Messiah he had come to be.

And in the aftermath of that baptism, his Messiahship was confirmed as the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, alit upon him, and as God the Father spoke these words, words used by Israel in the crowning of their kings, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” At his baptism Jesus was confirmed as the Messiah even as he began modeling the Messiah that he was called to be: the Suffering Servant of God upon whom would our iniquities would be laid.

At that moment the words of Isaiah 42 were fulfilled: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench…”

Reginald Fuller wrote of Jesus’ baptism, “Jesus’ submission to John’s baptism was part of God’s plan, so that Jesus could be manifested as the servant of [The Lord], now about to embark upon his mission.” As William Barclay summarizes the affects of Jesus’ baptism, “So in the baptism there came to Jesus two certainties – the certainty that he was indeed the chosen One of God, and the certainty that the way in front of him was the way of the Cross. In that moment he knew that he was chosen to be King, but he also knew that his throne must be a Cross. In that moment he knew that he was destined to be a conqueror, but that his conquest must have as its only weapon the power of suffering love. In that moment there was set before Jesus both his task and the only way to fulfilling it.”

Those who were there that day were probably pretty quick to catch the allusions to Jesus’ Messiahship. What they were slow to grasp was the reality that he would be a Suffering Servant Messiah instead of the great conquering hero King that they expected. One of the reasons why they were slow to grasp the reality of a Suffering Servant Messiah was that over the years the people of Israel had tended to ignore Isaiah’s prophetic hymns about the Suffering Servant. They found the notion of repentance by way of suffering repugnant.

That’s why later on the Apostle Paul would write to the Corinthians, “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing… Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles…” The notion of an humble servant Messiah willing to suffer and die on a cross was utter foolishness to most of the first century world.

Israel never could see either itself or the Messiah as agents of salvation by way of suffering. Greeks struggled with the idea of a God who would, one: deign to appear in human for, and two: be willing to suffer death and humiliation. For both the whole Incarnation/Atonement thing was a bit hard to swallow. Almighty God was not supposed to manifest himself in the world as a vulnerable human being. His Chosen One – his Son the Messiah – was not supposed to take upon himself the role of a slave and then willingly die on a cross. Or as that dear lady in Stuart, Virginia believed, innocent Saviors weren’t supposed to experience hell.

As Christians we have answered a call to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, footsteps that lead us in the Way of the Cross. I can say this no better that Jesus himself said it in Mark 8: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for me, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Nor can I better describe or model Christian servanthood than Jesus did on the night of his betrayal: “… [Jesus] got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet…” Jesus literally performed the task of a lowly house slave as he washed the filthy feet of his disciples.

There we have it. Following Jesus can involve suffering and sacrifice. Following Jesus requires a willingness to give up our very lives. Following Jesus requires humility, self-denial, and putting the needs of others ahead of our own. Following Jesus is an act of ongoing servanthood. As he obeyed his Father so must we.

That brings us directly back to what Jesus told John the Baptist prior to his baptism. Reading those words again from Barclay’s translation of Matthew 3:15, “For the present let it be so, for the right thing for us to do is to do everything a good man ought to do.” A truly good man or woman is someone who obeys the Lord their God, who lives as a faithful servant of the Lord. With Jesus Christ being our only model for such faithfulness, we do what Jesus did. We humbly and obediently become God’s servants in the world.

Karl Barth defined a Christian disciple as someone willing to do something foolish in a world of serious purposes. In a culture that measures success in terms of wealth, power, and influence; in a world where humility and true Christian meekness are laughed at; in an age that often defines leadership in terms of bending others to one’s will, servanthood is that foolish thing we do in this world of so-called serious purposes. The cross is still looked upon as utter foolishness. But it is in the Way of the Cross that we are to walk.

Such walking is a form of witness to the power of God. God manifested strength by becoming weak. He manifested wisdom by doing something utterly foolish. Sometimes when words won’t work it is such foolish behavior that wins people to Christ and moves people in the direction of God’s will. Sometimes when we die to ourselves in order to truly live the dying provides a means of life to those who oppose the Gospel.

Listen to what civil rights leader and martyr Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote about suffering as a form of witness in “Strength to Love.” “We will match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering… Be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.” Thus is the power of the suffering of love of Christ. Amen.