Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.

Matthew 3:13

It's a fair question. One that the Gospel writers themselves struggled with. Mark gets the ball rolling with the briefest account of this event. In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Plain and simple. No dialogue, no commentary, minimal facts.

Luke's not quite so comfortable with the proceedings. He refuses to name John as the Baptizer, and talks about the event in the past tense… when Jesus had been baptized and was praying, the heavens opened.

The gospel writer John is so scared of the subject he seems almost evasive. He has John the Baptist confessing that he saw a dove descending on Jesus, but there's no mention of the actual baptism at all.

For his part, Matthew takes this aversion one step further. As we just heard in our reading for today, he has John try to talk Jesus out of it. John would have prevented him , it says.

But what about us? What's your take on this story? If John's baptism was for the remission of sins, what are we to make of this event?

Some of us find probably find it hard to imagine why Jesus was out there with the unwashed masses, willing to go through this same rite as a common street thief.

Others of us, I know, don't much like thinking about sin at all. Why look at the dark side of humanity when it's so clear that we are fearfully and wonderfully made? We're not so much sinners looking for redemption as we are vulnerable, beautiful souls looking for love.

I understand that perspective, but the point is that, at least in Matthew's story, these people thought of themselves as sinners. They'd done stuff to sully their inner beauty, that sullied their reputations and piqued their conscience. And they were honest enough to say so, and brave enough to do something about it.

Maybe they were tired of letting their past have so much sway over them, dominating their present with feelings of guilt or shame.

Maybe they just felt plain old remorse for cheating that old man in the market out of his last drachma, or selling what they knew was bad meat to that sweet young housewife.

Maybe their list of mistakes had gotten so long they wanted to push the "redo" button on their lives or their relationships. Whatever their individual reasons, there they were, waiting to take that bath.

And suddenly, into that crowd walks the Son of God. No one knows that fact about him yet. Maybe he doesn't even know that about himself yet. The text doesn't tell us what's going on in Jesus' mind, or in his heart.

We only know that he turns up in the midst of all those dirty, unwashed people and utters the first words he speaks in the entire Bible:

"Let it be so now."

I think it's no accident that these words echo his mother's famous line. "Let it be with me according to your word," she replies to the angel in response to the astonishing news that she will bear this child.

If it is your voice that is calling to me, O God, then let it be, let me be the bearer of your purpose in the world.

In this scene we don't know exactly what Jesus was thinking or feeling, but we do know this: This was his first public appearance, his first official act before his ministry began in earnest. It was, in effect, his service of ordination and installation. From this point on he's marked for a particular purpose.

And that purpose begins the moment he comes up out of that water. For as we noted a moment ago, the place was teeming with sinners, which is to say, it was teeming with people, with ordinary people, just like you and me.

And the first thing he says to them, the first thing he declares, is this: I am one of you. Your pains are my pains, your losses are my losses. Your joys and your sorrows are my joys and my sorrows.

And he goes on saying this to the very last moment of his life. Today you will be with me in paradise , he says to the thief hanging there on the cross beside him.

Maybe there's another reason he consented to this dunking. Maybe it's because water can be so wild. And maybe that's a symbol for how life can be.

I remember our youth raft trip a couple of summers ago. On the very last rapid, the guide somehow let the raft get turned and it slammed into a rock, tossing most of the passengers into the swirling, class III rapids.

One member of our group that day had a particularly rough time of it. She went down under the water and banged her knee. And good thing she had a helmet on cause she banged her head, too, such that when she came up her glasses were bent.

Obviously her swim through that roiling chaos shook her up, and even hurt her a bit. And if that's not a metaphor for life, I don't know what is. You're floating through life happy as a clam and bang, just like that your boat hits a rock lurking just beneath the surface of things, and suddenly you're plunged into chaos and swimming for your life.

So maybe that's also why Jesus lets himself be dunked. If he's going to be Emmanuel, if he's going to be God with us and for us, then he's going to be God's with us in the mud and the water and the chaos.

Maybe that's also why the dove is there. For it's an echo of an older story, isn't it. Remember how the story of the flood ends? Noah releases a dove, and it comes back with an olive branch in its beak. After 40 days and 40 nights of tumult and chaos, the dove delivers a promise that everything's gonna be okay.

The bottom line is sometimes the waters are gonna rise. Sometimes you'll find yourself at sea, tossed by the waves and at the mercy of the wind; sometimes you'll find yourself in over your head, swimming in chaos.

But the promise of the story is that in the end it'll be okay. We will grieve and we will lament and in the end peace will come on the wings of a dove.

And the reason for that is built into the very liturgy we say when we are baptized. We pick up that child or spinkle water and we declare, Cathy or Fred or Mary K or Alma, you are a child of the covenant and you belong to God forever.

It's what the whole story is about, from the waters of the flood to the waters of baptism.: that in life and in death we belong to God.

There's another thing that comes on the wings of a dove, something that's central to Christ's ministry, central to our experience today.

Listen again to these words from Matthew's story:

And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

For centuries, indeed, for two millennia, Christians have followed Jesus into the waters of baptism, for it tells us who we are and to whom we belong. It marks us as members of God's own community, a gathering of people in which God's love is made real to us in a loving touch, a bowl of soup delivered to our doorstep when we're too sick to move.

Where we lay ourselves open to God's transforming power, and where we lay ourselves open to one another. Where we cry together and sing together. Where we grieve together and where we pray and worship together.

Where we believe, and where we know, that the dove will come and that in the end all will be well.

Amen