Jordan: There are two key Old Testament moments that point to the Jordan River. First, Elisha tells a high-ranking government official named Naaman to wash in the Jordan to be healed of his leprosy. He does and becomes a new man with a new identity. Second, Joshua leads the Hebrews from the wilderness to the Promised Land over the Jordan. They cross and become a new people with a new identity. Is it any surprise, then, that John the Baptist comes baptizing at the same spot—the Jordan River?
Jesus: Matthew writes, “Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him … And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” [1] When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, the streams of history converged. “This was the moment,” writes N.T. Wright, “that would ever after define the people of God. The new covenant people were to be known as Jesus’s people.”
Beginning: His act of baptism, however, was not an ending; it was a beginning. It marked the start of his public ministry, not the consummation of it. And the same goes for us. “Baptism is our common beginning,” Wright continues. “It defines us as the covenant family of the one true God. With every Eucharist, as we say the Creed, we repeat the words that were spoken at our baptism, when, like Naaman coming up out of the water and finding himself cured, we declare that there is no God in all the earth except this one. And then, as we feast together at the family table, we discover that the God who called us into pilgrimage, and defined us as his sons and daughters in the waters of baptism, signifying our sharing in the death and resurrection of Jesus, now gives us the appropriate food to strengthen us on our way.”
Prayer: Lord, Baptism is our beginning. As we will read tomorrow, immediately after Jesus was baptized, he was tempted. This is our story, too. By the Spirit, we become new people with new identities, but then we have to live in our bodies and in this world. Therefore, we pray that you would root us firmly in our new identity in Christ. Amen.
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