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.
Jesus received John’s baptism to dive into solidarity with us. He did it to submit to the mission before him. As people of faith, we also submit. We allow ourselves to be washed over and flooded by Jesus’ heart, Jesus’ compassion. His heart fills and rules our own. Through this we identify with our neighbor. We humbly walk in solidarity with them. We enter into their joys and sorrows. As we allow Jesus’ compassion to wash over and through us, we are given such priceless gifts: we discover our neighbor and we gain mission and purpose.
Back to the banks of the Jordan. All of Jesus’ future destiny was enveloped into this opening movement of baptism. He immersed himself in John’s baptism, he submitted to all that was to come.
And then from the waters he arose. And the Spirit rested upon him and he heard the divine affirmation, “This is my Son.”
Friends, we, too, have a baptism. Not John’s baptism, but our baptism into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this sacrament, we go down in the waters. It’s our drowning, our death. We are joined to Christ’s death. But then Christ’s rising becomes ours, too. We rise from the dead in Christ’s life, and we gain a new identity. We are a child of God. We belong to God.
Life is murky, my friends. What’s right? What’s wrong? What do others expect from me? What do I expect from myself? It’s not always clear. Am I walking right, or have I lost the way?
The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a poem entitled Who Am I. He wrote it while jailed in a Nazi prison. The poem depicts the conflicted feelings he endured. He describes the duality we have about ourselves. But in then end, he lands on the one thing that sustains him, his baptismal identity. Here is his poem:
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a Squire from his country house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectations of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!
In baptism, we receive the one sure, immovable thing: our identity. In that sacrament, the words echo over us, “You are my child, my beloved. In you I am well pleased.”
And that, that, my friends, will carry us through.
