The Jordan is a mighty river. We have heard about it in ancient stories, sung of it in our songs. The Jordan holds a central place in the geography and imagination of our faith.
Not many of us have seen it in person, and, until a few years ago, I hadn’t either. Then I went to Israel with a group of Jewish leaders and fellow pastors from Nashville. It was a touching and transformative experience—the conversations, the encounters with Israelis and Palestinians, the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, the food, and the very land itself: to stand on the Mount of Olives and look at the old city of Jerusalem and the temple mount, and not just to stand there with the made-for-Instagram view, but to walk down the slope, across the Kidron valley, and to enter the city through one of its ancient gates, and to realize that my feet were touching the same stone pavement that had been there in the days of Jesus; and to see the hills of Galilee, to look across lake Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, and feel the wind blowing across its waves. The pilgrimage churches of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Capernaum paled in contrast to the land itself.
As to the Jordan, I was prepared for a little disappointment. I had heard it wouldn’t be nearly as impressive as it was in my imagination. When you picture the river, don’t think Mississippi or even Cumberland, think Harpeth in August. But size is not the measure of its significance. The Jordan is one of the few rivers in that very dry region that actually flow year-round, turning the valley into a lush, fertile band in an otherwise rather dusty landscape. More importantly, the Jordan marks the border between Israel’s wilderness wanderings and the land of promise.
It was in the plains of Moab, in the wilderness beyond the Jordan, where Moses expounded one last time the covenant commandments before the people crossed the river, committed to living as God’s people, according to God’s will, on God’s land. It was near Jericho, that the waters of the river parted before the ark of the covenant, and the people walked across. The Jordan has been a mighty river in the memory of God’s people, because crossing it means entering freedom and fulfillment. The river flows between wilderness and home, between fleeing and resting. Enslaved Africans and their descendants in the United States who fled the terror of the South didn’t have their geography mixed up when they sang of the Ohio, Deep river, my home is over Jordan; deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into campground … that promised land where all is peace. Jordan river may be distant and wide, chilly and cold, but the Lord would make a way for God’s people to cross over into the promised land. The Lord would make a way.
John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea and proclaimed, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” John reminded God’s people who they were, and he challenged them to reaffirm that they did indeed want to live as God’s people, according to God’s will and purpose, on God’s land. They came from Jerusalem and the surrounding region, and they headed down to the river to listen to John’s preaching and to be baptized by him, confessing their sins. One by one they stepped into the water. One by one they said what needed to be said. One by one he plunged them beneath the surface, into the silent depth of the old river. Their ancestors had crossed this river to enter the promised land, and now they passed through these waters because they wanted to be worthy of being counted among God’s people, worthy to live in the coming kingdom of God. They prayed that the river would wash away their transgressions and their shame—so they would climb up the bank refreshed, renewed and presentable.
“I baptize you with water for repentance,” the Baptist said, “but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” A mightier one would come, John declared, and he would bring the fire of judgment. Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan—not to baptize, but to be baptized. He came like the rest of them had come, walking the same dusty roads and down the same rocky paths to the river’s edge, waiting in line in the heat of the day, and finally stepping into the water.
John looked at Jesus, and somehow he knew that the days of preparation and repentance were now over: the day of fire and truth had come. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” he asked. The first words Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Matthew are spoken here, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” He acts in complete obedience to God’s will and in complete solidarity with us. He gets in the water with all who have come to the river for a bath of mercy and fresh commitment, for a new beginning. We step into the river hoping that it will carry away all that weighs on us, our failures and our worries, our broken promises and our self-condemnation, all that keeps us from living lives that are faithful and God-pleasing. We get into the water, and Jesus gets in with us. He steps into the river and is baptized along with all who gather there, not because he needs to repent, but because he wants to be with us.
This is what righteousness fulfilled looks like. Obedient to God’s will and purpose, Jesus is baptized in solidarity with us. He is Immanuel, God with us in our broken humanity. He gives himself to the murky water of our wrongs and regrets, trusting that the river of God’s grace will carry him, and not only him, but all of us with him. Stepping into the water with us, he commits himself to the path of humble servanthood, a path that would lead him to the cross where the flood wave of our sin would drown him.
This brief scene at the river is like a sketch of his entire life and ministry. When Jesus rose from the water, newness erupted: the heavens were opened, the Spirit descended, and a voice from heaven declared, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
When Jesus got in the water with us, something wonderful happened to that old river that marks the border between wilderness and home. In his baptism, Jesus made our lot his own: he let himself be immersed in our alienation from God, our lives far from the kingdom, our trouble with doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly and obediently with God. In his baptism, Jesus made our life his own. And in our baptism, his beautiful, faithful life becomes ours in the forgiveness of our sins, in our reconciliation with God and with each other, and in our call to participate in his mission.
“Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights,” God spoke through the prophet Isaiah.
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; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.[1]
John expected one more powerful than himself. What he didn’t expect was one who would faithfully bring forth justice by not breaking a bruised reed and not quenching a dimly burning wick—one who would show us the face of God through a life marked by humility, compassion, and astonishing faithfulness.
Some of you may remember how cold the water was when you were baptized, and how you felt like a whole new person, or how you didn’t really feel all that different. Some of us, including myself, can’t recall that moment because we were babies when we were baptized. Christians have fought long and hard over when and how to baptize people properly, and it took us generations to realize that the church of God is big enough to hold a variety of traditions and practices. No matter what particular form of baptism we undergo, in it we testify that God has claimed us as children: In our own bodies, we receive and proclaim the good news that our lives are made whole in the life and death of Christ and in the hope of our resurrection with him. Whether we were immersed in a river or had a little water poured over our head, when we were baptized we let ourselves be plunged into the river of God’s grace, we let the life of Jesus become our life, his story our story, and his way our way.
Tertullian was a Christian author from Carthage in north Africa. Around the turn from the second to the third century, he wrote about baptism,
When we are going to enter the water, but a little before, in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, and his pomp, and his angels. Hereupon we are thrice immersed, making a somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the Gospel. Then when we are taken up (as new-born children), we taste first of all a mixture of milk and honey.
The nourishment the newly baptized were given was milk and honey—the sweet taste of the promised land, the taste of freedom and fulfillment. Tertullian concluded that baptism paragraph telling his readers, “and from that day we refrain from the daily bath for a whole week.”[2] A whole week without bathing—to let the memory sink in? I don’t know. Why not remember our baptism every time we bathe? Why not remember every time water touches our skin, how in astonishing faithfulness Christ has made us his own to save us?
[1] Isaiah 42:1-4
[2] Tertullian, De Corona Militis, ch. 3 http://www.tertullian.org/anf/anf03/anf03-10.htm#P1019_415012