This is one of those odd times in the church calendar year. Last week Jesus was an infant, lying in a manger with three sages from the east paying him homage, having been born two weeks before. Today Jesus is around 30 years old and being baptized by John the Baptist. Well, that's an acceleration of one's life that is quite extraordinary and shocking. I have always wanted to know more about that middle time in Jesus' life, before he stepped up to the plate, so to speak. But alas, we are not granted that information and today we are given for our thoughts and consideration: baptism.

Joan Baez wrote a lyric that has some applicability to today's Gospel reading:

You are Amazing Grace....You are a Precious Jewel.

You - - Special....miraculous....unrepeatable....fragile....fearful....tender....lost.

Sparkling Ruby....emerald jewel....rainbow splendor....Person.

We witnessed the miracle of the sacrament of baptism last week, taking place right there in our center aisle with water poured down on the little head of Shelby and the shape of a cross marked on her head with scented oil. And today we hear about Jesus' own baptism in the waters of the Jordan River at the hands of John the Baptist. In the Gospel of Matthew this is the first appearance of the adult Jesus and this is the first time we hear him speak. And such enigmatic words Jesus utters: "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." My initial reaction to reading these words was to say "huh"? There has been a huge amount of discussion about what Jesus means in his first words spoken here, with lots of interpretations about Jesus' motivations, as well as what Matthew is trying to accomplish with his Christology for this Gospel by the particular phraseology of these words. As enticing as that exploration might be, I do not want to address those things today.  

There is another aspect of this account of Jesus' baptism that intrigues me. And that has to do with why Jesus wanted to be baptized in the first place and tied to that, I am struck by the importance of the symbolism of water in this Gospel account.

So why did Jesus get baptized? After all, Jesus was a Jew, raised by devout parents, he was presented in the synagogue and as he was about 30 years old at the time of today's incident he had apparently lived as a Jew all this time. We need to understand that baptism was not something new to Judaism. Baptism was an ancient practice for the Jews. But baptism was for people who wanted to become Jews: baptism was historically for converts, not for people who were already Jewish, who were born Jewish as Jesus was.