Acts 10:34-38 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
Epiphany 2 - the Baptism of Our Lord Sunday, January 12, 2019 “God Anointed Jesus of Nazareth”
It’s hard to know exactly what the number is, but it could be almost a million people each year who go to the Jordan River in order to be baptized. No doubt some of them have been baptized before, but for some reason they want to do it again. For almost all of them, we would assume, they have come to that place for one specific reason, because it is the place where Jesus was baptized. That event is recorded for is in today’s Gospel from Matthew 3. I happened like this: a man named John, who was hand-picked by God even before he was conceived to be the forerunner of the Savior, was out near the Jordan River. He preached a message to large crowds that they were sinners who needed to turn from their sinful ways. He preached a message that assured them that someone was coming who would do something about that problem. And the people who listened to the message, who took it to heart, were baptized there in the Jordan River. We tend to know John now as John the Baptist, because that was such an important aspect of his work. Well, the Baptist, the Baptizer, was surprised by a special guest one day. Jesus came to him. I don’t know exactly how things were set up. Maybe there was a line of people that were waiting to be baptized by John, slowly progressing toward him, and Jesus waited his turn until he was face-to-face with John. Whatever the case, Jesus did come face-to-face with John, and it was clear to the Baptizer that Jesus intended to be baptized. Only this didn’t make sense. John was preaching baptism for those who needed to repent of their sins, who needed their sins taken away. John knew that Jesus did not. He didn’t need sins to be taken away, because he had none. He didn’t need to be baptized, because he was perfect and holy. All along, John had been preaching about Jesus that he was worthy while John was not, and that he was the one John had come to tell the people about. John knew that Jesus didn’t need to be baptized by John, John needed to be baptized by Jesus. But Jesus insisted. John relented. He baptized Jesus there in the Jordan River. And the strange story of Jesus coming to be baptized became even stranger. No other baptism had been like this. For Jesus, heaven opened up. A dove came down on him, and a voice announced, “This is my Son, whom I love. I am well pleased with him.” (Matthew 3:17). This event was important. The way the account is shared with us makes that clear. But what is so important about it? Why is it so valuable? Why would it inspire so many to seek their own baptisms in the same place where this special one took place? And why would we revisit this event year after year after our celebration of Epiphany? For the answer to many of these questions, we turn to our verses from Acts 10. In just a few short verses, the Apostle Peter sums up what happened at the Jordan River. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth. He anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power. That’s how Peter describes it. Outside of church, we don’t really use that word, “anoint,” much at all. But the concept of anointing was very familiar to Old Testament Jews and to early Christians. They were very familiar, either from experience or from knowing the history, with kings and priests and prophets being anointed. By God’s special instruction these servants were anointed with oil. The oil had special perfuming spices in it, and it was poured over the head of the one being anointed. And this publicly signified that a choice had been made, that a person had been selected for a particular role. So it was with Jesus, only he was anointed with the Holy Spirit rather than with perfumed oil. He was chosen for a purpose. He was selected for a specific role, and placed into that role. No one who paid attention to what was going on at his baptism could have missed the message. This was someone special. This was the one that God had chosen. He was the Anointed One, capital letters, the one who had been