It All Comes Down To Baptism

January 11, 2026

Rev. Mary Erickson

University Lutheran Church

Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

It All Comes Down to Baptism

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

John sensed that something wasn’t right. He was conducting his ministry at the edge of the Jordan River. It was a baptism of repentance. But when Jesus came to be baptized, John knew immediately that something was out of place. JESUS should be baptizing JOHN, not the other way around.

It was backwards! Here was the Son of Man. He was in no need of baptismal cleansing or repentance. But John, now John was a sinner. If anyone should be presiding at the baptisms, it was Jesus.

But Jesus won’t hear of it. “No, John,” he said, “this has to be done. YOU need to baptize ME. I need this baptism.”

And then he explains why: “It’s the only way we can fulfill all righteousness.”

What an odd turn of phrase! The only way Jesus can fulfill all righteousness is to undergo this baptism of repentance in the muddy waters of the Jordan River.

How is something done properly? How does one fulfill all righteousness?

We have that expression, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Some things can be accomplished by several different means, and this expression reminds us that we shouldn’t be too locked in, too rigid about the process.

Like shoveling the driveway. I have my own way of approaching the snow in our driveway, but my husband Dale clears it quite differently than I do. After we moved into our current house, it made me nervous to watch him. He wasn’t starting where I start, and he moved the snow to other regions. But, hey, in the end, the snow was moved and the driveway was clean.

For many tasks, there are multiple ways of accomplishing them. However, there are other projects which must be accomplished in a very precise manner.

Like making an angel food cake. It’s all about the eggs. You have to separate the whites from the yolks. You can’t just simply crack them open and toss them in the batter, like you do with most cakes. No, you have to whip up the egg whites with cream of tartar and then mix in the sugar. And then, very gradually, you fold in the flour. If you prepare your angel food cake in any other way than this, you will not fulfill all righteousness.

This is what Jesus meant when he told John that HE needed to be baptized by JOHN. This was the proper way. It was the only way.

It’s because this is what Jesus came to do. He is Immanuel, God with us. Jesus came to live in solidarity with us, to live as we do, to experience our life, to feel all our human emotions. And in order to do this, he laid aside his divine privilege. He was born into a most humble manner, in a barn. Then he and his parents had to seek asylum in a foreign country and live as refugees. When they did return, Jesus lived a very blue-collar life, the son of a carpenter.

And how could it be any other way? How could he fully feel and appreciate the ambiguity of our days, the struggle of our daily living, together with the warmth of human connectivity and the joy and delight of this world?

And now he was about to start his ministry, his destiny as the servant spoken of by the prophet Isaiah. He was to nurture the dimly burning wick and bind up the bruised reed. He was going to open the eyes of the blind and release prisoners from their dungeons. He was about to usher in this very new thing in God’s plan for righting the world and all that is broken in it.

So Jesus needed this washing. He needed to descend into the murky, muddy waters of repentance. He needed the humility, the submission to something greater than himself.

Together he and John stepped from the bank and into the river. Jesus went down. He submitted to the baptism. He was all in, all in for whatever was to come, for the whole thing. He was all in for the whole ride, all the way to the cross. He would submit to it all, the betrayal, the arrest, the derision. He would submit to the nails piercing his hands, the heaving upward, the slow dying. And he would submit because he is God with us, Immanuel. He goes the whole way with us and our reality.

Jesus would walk in solidarity with us in death, in burial, and even more. Even to the depths of hell, to our lonely alienation, completely cut off from any glimmer of the divine, into our loneliest desolation. For this was the only way to accomplish our complete rescue, to bring us back from the abyss, out of the darkness and back into the light.