Witness and Withness: Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 - Baptism of Our Lord

 ¹⁵As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, ¹⁶John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

  ²¹Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, ²²and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (NRSV)

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It’s rare that I will watch a Steelers football game, especially with the way they’ve been playing lately. I watched parts of their tragic loss to Kansas City two weeks ago. Like many of you, I was aghast at how badly they played. But suddenly, it occurred to me, “who am I to say that ‘they played badly?’”

I’ve never played on a sports team. I haven’t thrown a football since eighth grade gym class, and the last Steelers game I attended was at Three Rivers Stadium! If you put me out there on the field, the best that I could do with the football is pray for it.

Now there are, of course, many people who know football inside and out. If they want to be armchair quarterbacks, more power to them—as long as they’re in church on Sunday morning. 

But have you ever noticed our tendency to play “armchair quarterback” with other people’s lives? You see a person standing at an intersection in the city, holding a cardboard sign asking for money; or someone so stricken with grief that they can barely get out of bed in the morning. Someone says, “they need to stop complaining, get a job, and move on.” “God only helps those who help themselves.” But do these words help, or do they hurt? Can one-liners and cliches they glue back together the pieces of a life shattered by the death of a loved one? Is it possible for someone to cure themselves of a physical or mental illness? Is it really as easy to find a good-paying job as it is to lose one?

Everyone needs a power greater than themselves to get through life, and especially, to get through hard times.

One of the fundamental confessions of our Lutheran faith is that it is impossible for someone to create their own faith. You cannot just decide, one day, “I’m going to be a Christian.” Sinners cannot make themselves right with a Holy God. Only a Holy God can make sinners righteous. Yet it takes a loving God for sinners to be in relationship with God. That means that God cannot stay up there in heaven. A loving God cannot do for you what a loving God longs to do unless God is with you. This is why God in Jesus Christ comes out to be baptized in the Jordan River by John. God cannot save; God cannot love—unless God is with. This is what the name Emmanuel, “God-with-us,” demands. Jesus cannot save you from it unless Jesus is with you in it.

And while that is good news, how can you know that Jesus is with you? Is it enough to simply hear the words, and believe?

For all the pervasiveness of social media and the fact that we are constantly connected to each other through our devices, we have never been more alone. Have you ever gone out to eat, and seen people sitting at a table together, but each one’s face is glued to their phones? I hate to admit it, but my family has been that family plenty of times. That’s how we live now!

Do you know your neighbors’ names, and do they know yours? If you got the sense that something was wrong at your neighbor’s home, would you feel comfortable knocking on the door and asking if everything’s okay? Or would you worry that you’d be told to mind your own business?

And the number one reason why we do not share quality time with friends and loved ones; why we do not know our neighbors; why we do not stop to help strangers in need is this: we don’t have time. Our cultural obsession with self-reliance is really nothing more than an excuse to think only of ourselves. It’s much easier to play armchair quarterback with someone else’s life than it is to actually be there with them. 

Yet if God intended for people to be entirely self-reliant, God wouldn’t have bothered coming to earth in Jesus. You cannot know someone, you cannot love someone, you cannot help someone—unless you are with them. Talking at people cannot heal. 

To truly know the love of Jesus is to know the love of his people. So many blessings flow when we go through life’s journeys with one another. Some of the best healers you will know are the people who’ve been through what you’re going through. This is what makes ministries like GriefShare, AA and NA, Celebrate Recovery, and others like them so effective—because they allow you to be present with people who are also present with you. You will always be stronger when others are stronger with you. 

We, as the Body of Christ, are a gift to God’s people. You, as you are right now, possess healing gifts. But if we are not with the people, if we are not with our neighbors, if we are not meeting strangers where they are, then we are closing the door to our own spiritual growth and the transformation of our communities. 

We’re all in this life together. We go through the same hardships, the same losses, the same challenges. We all tread the same troubled waters. And we have nothing to gain going through it all alone, but rather everything to lose. But to be with one another as Jesus has chosen to be with us, we open the door to resurrection. 

You are baptized into Christ—and Christ is baptized into you. We are baptized into each other; we are redeemed to live both with the baptized and the unbaptized. And there are so many more waiting to be baptized into the love and saving grace that turns darkness into light, that conquers evil with love, that creates new life out of death.