The baptism of Jesus is a story that the early church perhaps would not have told if they didn’t have to. Jesus' baptism was hard to explain and a little embarrassing. Why would the Christ, the child and Son of God, submit to John’s baptism of repentance? If John’s baptism was for the forgiveness of sins and Jesus is without sin, then what does Jesus' baptism mean? Matthew mentions that John himself was uneasy and hesitant. Luke makes as little of the event as possible, like 1 verse, not even precisely saying who did the baptizing. The church has always wrestled with understanding this story.

This story is discomforting in part because John the Baptist was discomforting. John stormed out of the wilderness, feeding on locusts, washing them down with wild honey, proclaiming a new kingdom, warning especially the religiously self-righteous of the wrath to come. John's baptism was revolutionary. He treated the religious like they treated pagans, calling them to repentance.

Surprisingly, crowds flocked to John to be baptized, but John didn't allow his popularity to detract from his mission. He knew his work was preparatory and partial. After him one would come who would baptize not in water but in Spirit.

Finally that One came to the river and into the muddy Jordan. When Jesus came up out of the water, he saw heaven split wide open and the Spirit descending. He heard the voice of God. Mark gives no indication that anyone but Jesus saw the Spirit or heard the voice. Those gathered on the shore had no idea what it all meant. They probably assumed that Jesus was now one of John's disciples. Without the rest of Jesus' life his baptism is incomprehensible.

The purpose and power of Jesus' baptism is revealed in the days and years that followed that afternoon at the Jordan. It's when we see Jesus ministering to hurting people and preaching to the needy masses that his baptism starts to make sense. Jesus' baptism in the Jordan foreshadowed his baptism to come on the cross. Baptism was Jesus' commissioning for ministry.

During the week before his death, Jesus was challenged by the leaders of the temple; "By what authority do you do these things?" Jesus answers with a reference to his baptism: "Was the baptism of John from heaven or not?" It was in the waters of baptism that Jesus heard the Spirit calling him, naming him as God’s Son, calling him to a mission.

A great theologian, Paul Tillich, said that Jesus is the only one who has ever been completely true to that voice. Jesus gave everything—his days and nights, his dreams and deeds, his labors and his life itself. Jesus gave himself to the world—sharing, ministering, healing, listening, dying, saving. When Jesus cried on the cross, "It is finished," it was his baptism that was complete.

Baptism is a beginning, and like all beginnings, it finds its fullest meaning after the event. Beginnings, by themselves, are often of little consequence. Beginning anything is usually easy. Finishing anything is usually hard. Bobby Knight, the basketball coach now at Texas Tech, was asked about a player who was doing a great job coming off the bench, "When will he get to start?" The coach responded, "You don't understand. It doesn't matter who starts. It matters who finishes."

A month before their wedding, glassy-eyed couples tell the pastor that they are the perfect couple. We pastors usually just wryly smile. On their wedding day almost every couple is capable of creating a life together filled with faith, hope and joy, and almost every couple on their wedding say is capable of creating something worse than their most horrendous nightmare. Marriages cannot be evaluated on the wedding day. In five or ten years or twenty years we can begin to see what they have done with it.

Beginning is usually much easier than finishing. Any husband can stand in the delivery room give his wife ice chips and say, "You're doing great, honey." Every father looks good holding a newborn. But fathers can't be evaluated only by their delivery room behavior. In ten or twenty years you can start to see how hard they've worked at it.

Rollo May writes, "The chief problem of our time is emptiness. As one person put it, `I'm just a collection of mirrors reflecting what everyone else expects of me. I don’t know who I am or what I want.'" People are unsettled when empty, so much so, we start looking frantically, all over the place, for something new to fill us: new job, new spouse, new home, new car, new toy, new this and new that! "What's new?" is not a bad question, but if we constantly pursue only what's new the result is an endless parade of trivia. Too many lives are spent looking for the new without ever fulfilling the old. We don't need new beginnings nearly so much as we need to fulfill the old beginnings.

Some of the people who think they need a new job perhaps need to fulfill the promise of their old job. What did it mean when you took your job? Does the job description you were handed before you began mean anything to you at all? The real significance is found every Monday morning. We may not need new starts. Perhaps what we need most is the empowerment to fulfill the promises of old ones.

Baptism is a beginning, the prologue to a book waiting to be written. Beginnings, all by themselves, lack significant meaning. Baptism calls for, begs for and waits for fulfillment.

For various reasons once in awhile, someone will ask to be re-baptized. They might say something about not remembering their baptism, or not being sincere, or they drifted away. My response usually is something like, "The problem is not with your baptism. Your beginning was fine. You need to live out what God started."

Baptism is the beginning of a journey, a journey that God started in Jesus Christ. At the beginning of the journey you were given a great deal. You were named God’s child. You were promised grace, forgiveness and God’s faithful presence. You were given a purpose and a mission. You were handed a map, but you were also called to take the trip. It takes your whole life to finish your baptism. Every day of your life is a commentary on your baptism. Repentance, conversion, and growth are a lifelong and repeating process. Just as Jesus' life gave meaning to his baptism, so our baptism waits to be fulfilled and given expression.

When Martin Luther was tempted to give up on following Christ and bag the whole faith thing, he would sit in his study and recite, almost as a mantra, "I am baptized. I am baptized. I am baptized." It was a powerful reminder that he was God’s child because God had called him, named him, chosen him, forgiven him and promised him his eternal presence.

Following his baptism, Jesus went into the wilderness where he was tempted to be any kind of messiah but a crucified one. Satan tempted him to be a bread messiah, a political messiah and wonder-working messiah. But he resisted those messianic temptations and began journey that would ultimately take him to a cross to be a crucified messiah. It was on the cross that His baptism was fulfilled. It was on that cross he died for your sins and mine. It is on that cross that the free gift of salvation is offered to all who believe - and your baptism finds its fulfillment in heeding his command to take up your cross and follow Him.

Another way to say it might be to say that your baptism comes to its fullest expression when you not only embrace the forgiving and unconditional love that flows from the cross, but when you commit your very life to become a conduit that carries it into the world.

In our kind of world, love gets crucified in little ways and big ways time and again; which means if we follow Jesus we will be crucified along with him. But is that a reason to stop loving and turn cynical? Is that a reason to stop living by grace and begin living by grudge? Those difficult and intense times when we are ready to give up and bag the faith thing, we need to return to our baptism, and with Luther, repeat the mantra as many times as it takes, "I am baptized; I am baptized" until we remember that God’s love does not fail, fizzle or wimp out, not even in the face of crucifixion, and so, neither do we.

Baptism was a beginning for Jesus. He is the only one who was unfailingly true to the voice that named him and put him on the road to the cross – the cross of your salvation and mine.