All Means All

Text: Matt. 3:13-17

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            When Naaman, the commander of the armies of Syria came to the prophet Elisha to be healed of leprosy, he was sent by the prophet’s word to the Jordan River to wash seven times. However, he was unimpressed with the brown muddy desert river and declared that the waters of the rivers in Damascus were better. However, his servants said, “If the prophet had told you do so some great thing, would you have not done it?” If it had been some great and challenging work, Naaman would have gladly gone out of his way in order to be healed. But when it was a small thing, easy to receive, he looked down upon it. In a similar way, when Jesus washed His disciples’ feet on the night He was betrayed, Peter would have refused this small act of service. But then when Jesus told Him that if He did not wash Peter, then Peter would have no share with him, the disciple moved to bigger and bolder works: “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!” If something small and humble is good, then something big and bold must be better, or so Peter thought. Fallen mortals, from Naaman to Peter to us have an instinct that there needs to be some great, impressive work attached to being saved, being rescued, having a share in Jesus. We feel the need to add to what the Lord has said is necessary. Naaman wanted a better river or some epic task to accomplish. Peter wanted to expand upon what Jesus was doing. We want to add our own works, our own decisions, our own faithfulness or obedience or whatever attributes we like about ourselves to God’s work, to make it a little shinier, a little better, a little more complete.

            This is your old fallen nature. From the moment Eve was tempted and felt the need to add to God’s command about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, adding that they weren’t to even touch it when God had only commanded them not to eat of it—from that moment on, the fallen nature we’ve inherited from our first parents will always want to add to God’s Word and work. The Pharisees added to the commands God gave from Mount Sinai so that they could be purer than others. The Judaizers in the early Church wanted to add the statutes of the Jews to the lives of Gentile Christians to make sure that they were really saved. And we do the same. We want to add, to enhance, to polish what God has said and done so that it looks more like what our old Adam thinks it should look like. You’ve heard it, you may have even said it—to be a real Christian you have to look and act a certain way, speak a certain way, vote a certain way, post online a certain way, be nice to the right people, be mean to the right targets.

            But when our Lord comes to save His people, He does it in His own perfect way. He brings all that He is and all that He has. When Jesus came to the Jordan River—that same, slow moving muddy murky river that Naaman washed in to be healed—He tells His cousin John the Baptist “Thus it is fitting to fulfill all righteousness.” He brings His own perfect righteousness, all righteousness, with Him down into that water; the very same water where the sins of the tax collectors, corrupt bully soldiers, prostitutes, and sinners had confessed their transgressions in hope of forgiveness.

            Notice though that even John the Baptizer tries to pump the brakes. He would have prevented Jesus from doing this, trying to make it about mortal works: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus will not be dissuaded. He has always done His own work of perfect righteousness as He knows it needs to be done, as His own perfect wisdom decrees. So He granted healing to Naaman, He granted Peter a share in Himself, and He was baptized by John and began His road to the cross that would redeem the entire world. He would indeed fulfill all righteousness, doing everything that had been required by the Law, on the cross taking on every punishment that every child of Adam and Eve had earned, giving perfect holiness to all, fulfilling all righteousness.

            And look what happens when it’s left to Jesus alone and His work, rather than the work of fallen humans: “Behold, the heavens were opened to him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” When it all rests of Jesus’ righteousness—not on what we think is necessary or proper or fitting or the way it should be—when it’s about Jesus fulfilling it all on our behalf, then the heavens are opened to Him. And we who have been given a share with Him enter those gates with Him. The Holy Spirit comes down and rests upon Him. And we who have a share with Him have the Spirit rest on us too, giving us faith and renewal and a continual new start. The Father looks at Jesus and says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” And we, who have a share with Him, who are united to Him in Baptism, have the same words spoken about us: “This is my beloved Child, with whom I am well pleased.” All this because we are covered in Jesus’ righteousness, because He has fulfilled it all and shared it with us in the waters of our Baptism, in His body and blood, in the promises of His Word.

            And here’s the twist: Although it’s Jesus’ work, He allows us to be a part of it. When He fulfills all righteousness in His Baptism, His fasting, His holy life, His precious death, His glorious resurrection—when He does it all for us, then we get what humanity has struggled to try to do and failed: we do righteous things. That is, we’re given the privilege of becoming part of Jesus’ ongoing work. Not because we’re doing such great things already, but because Jesus, having cleansed and renewed us, brings us along in His great things.

            Jesus is baptized to fulfill all righteousness. But He allows John the Baptist to be the one who applies the water. He grants Peter a share with Himself, and then He allows Peter to go and preach that washing and renewal by granting Him the words to preach and to write in letters to the Church. And Jesus brings you along with Him as well, to live in acts of love and service for those around you, sharing the love of Christ with the people He has surrounded you with.

            You live a baptized life, baptized into Jesus. As St. Paul taught us this morning, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” You have a new life, continually renewed by your Baptism that sticks with you your entire time in this world. You have heaven opened to you. The Holy Spirit comes to you. God says He is pleased with you and that you are His child. That equips you to walk along with your Lord as He continues to do good and righteous things—not because you need to do them to be saved, but because you’re already saved, so now they can be done alongside your Savior. This is all because Jesus has fulfilled all righteousness for you. It’s complete. It’s whole. Or, as we will hear at the moment He fulfills the last of it on the cross: “It is finished.” In the name of Jesus, who has baptized and cleansed us, Amen.