John didn’t look like a Messiah, didn’t act like a Messiah, but some thought that maybe he kind of spoke like a Messiah, so they wondered: Is John the Messiah?  John is quick to say he is not.  Don’t mistake him for the one who is coming.  All he did, the only work that John could do, was the work of proclamation and preparation.  We’re the same.  Let us proclaim.  Let us prepare.  Prepare what?  Prepare ourselves.  Discipleship is a journey of preparation.  By the end of the journey, I believe we will be able to say, honestly, that a blessed change has happened: we are not who we were when we began this walk.

Baptism is part of that proclamation and preparation.  We witnessed a baptism here not that long ago.  We see the water, hear the water.  Kolt felt the water.  John made plain that all he did was baptize with water.  This was a symbolic call to be reborn, reborn through repentance, reborn in the hope of the liberation that would come, that began with repentance.  Repentance is a word that we rarely hear outside of church, so we can begin to lose the sense of what this word we rarely hear, and almost never outside church, what this word means.  Repentance means a change of mind, a change of heart, a redirection, from one path that was leading to worse places, onto a path that leads to a better place, a better way, a better hope, a greater love.

Baptism is the greater way.  John speaks of The Greater one who is coming after him.  If people were wondering about the Messiah, the promised deliverer, the great king who would defeat the enemy and restore the people, what John is saying ought to pique their interest.  Coming, you say?  One greater than you is coming?  Who?  When?  Why wasn’t a question.  They knew why this promised deliverer needed to come.  Don’t you?  When you look around this world, when you hear the news, when you hear the stories of what is happening to people you know, people you love, when you take a look inside your own heart, your own mind, can you say that you don’t know why the promised one had to come?

What makes this greater one so great?  John tells us a few things about him.  The people came to John to be baptized with water, symbolically to affirm their intention and desire to go the right way, to signal their desire to be reborn.  The water on their skin did not make them go the right way.  That cold splash may have startled them into alertness, but it did not cause them to be born anew.  The Greater one will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Lk 3:16).  Jesus tells Nicodemus, in that hushed conversation in the dark of night, that we must be born again (Jn 3:3), born of water and the Spirit (Jn 3:5).  Not birth ourselves—this change of heart, this change of mind, repentance—does not originate with us but is God’s gift to us through the Holy Spirit.  No one is going to change his or her ways until the Holy Spirit breaks through: pray that the Holy Spirit will break through, beloved, in the lives of those who do not know Jesus, who have not received him, those who seem to devote themselves to their own destruction more than to true life and true love.

Our intention and desire to be born anew, to be reborn, comes to life in us through God, through God’s Word, through this promised one who has come and who has touched us: Jesus.  It’s the Holy Spirit that is guiding us from what we had only hoped for to the fulfillment of our hope.  We yearn for a changed heart, a changed life; the Holy Spirit leads us, and we discover along the way that our hearts are changing, our lives have changed.  From no hope to the realization of hope: a miracle!  Christ is the miracle that makes miracles possible.

He will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, as John tells those gathered around him.  Why fire?  What’s with the fire?  Beloved, fire brings about a change of state.  Fire consumes, transforms, purifies.  Fire destroys.  Now I don’t want to be destroyed, but I want the sin in me to be destroyed.  People knew enough to know that the Messiah would conquer their enemies.  They didn’t reflect candidly enough to identify the enemy: sin.  Who is our enemy: we are our enemy!  We have seen the enemy, and he is us: sin in us.

We know fire is used for purification.  Some of you have probably sterilized a needle or some other implement with a flame.  If you camp, you almost certainly make a campfire: for light, maybe for warmth, maybe to cook your food; we’ve heard that animals fear fire and want to keep away from it, so fire offers a sense of protection, too, protection from things that might harm us.  Fire is good.

Some of us have been burned by the flames of a fire: hair singed—that’s a nice smell, eh?  Anybody ever catch their clothes on fire?  Fire needs to be handled with wisdom and respect.  We make use of it, but we do not control it.  Fire can cause harm, too.  I wouldn’t want to be the metal ore, going into the furnace for refining.  Those fires are hot!  Yet what comes out of the process?  Pure metal: impurities burned away.

Baptism is a process, beloved.  It seems as if it happens in a moment and is done, but it isn’t: it is ongoing.  We are born again, but then what?  Infants must grow, learn, develop, and act.  The Spirit guides us, the fire guides us, purifies us—not always without discomfort!  Is there some little habit, some little thing, that you aren’t quite ready to give over to God, that you suspect, or know, isn’t really entirely pleasing to God?  Some internet habits that have grown up like weeds?  Some personality habits that seem to get you into more trouble than blessing?  God provides fire for a reason.  Do you love your phone more than your family?  Oh, no, of course not!  Well, ask them how they feel about it, if you can get them off their phone for a moment.  The Greater one, the Promised One, the Messiah—Jesus—came to effect a change in God’s people, to purify them, their dross to consume and their gold to refine, as the old hymn puts it.

So, God is at work in you, in blessed and holy ways, in ways that may not always feel pleasurable or pleasant in the moment, but always, beloved, in ways that will draw you closer, closer to the ready embrace of the loving arms of our magnificent God.

This is part of what John is proclaiming when he tells us the one coming after him, with the power to do what John only points to, this Promised One has his winnowing fork in his hand; he is coming to winnow, to gather.  The grain, the good, good grain, he will keep.  He will burn the chaff.  I’m not sure we often think of Jesus’ ministry in terms of winnowing.  Try it.  He has his winnowing fork, his pitch fork, in his hand: the winnowing fork of the Word; the pitchfork of grace.  He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire: to purify, to cleanse.  Create in me a clean, heart, O God, and renew a right Spirit within me (Ps 51:10).

Up he tosses the threshed grain: the fruit, heavy with goodness, what comes from God’s blessings and God’s design for us, comes to the ground once more, to be gathered, gathered to God, and the rest, the lighter, worthless material, the chaff?  The wind carries it off; the breath from God blows it away.  It had no substance, no weight, though it seemed to sit within us heavily enough, to weigh down our hearts, weigh down our souls.  And God lifts his arms, and what had weighed us down is lifted, and the Spirit carries it away, far away.

Emerging from the waters into which John had plunged him, Jesus prays.  Luke is very clear about that.  Jesus prays.  And the heaven was opened (3:21).  And who is praying for us?  Jesus.  What has Jesus been doing in heaven, all this time?  Among other things, beloved, he has been and is now praying: praying for you, praying for those you love, praying for those you do not love.  With the waters running over him and down like rain from heaven, a voice speaks: each of the accounts records this; this wasn’t made up later.  People there heard a voice.  “You are my own dear Son.  I am pleased with you” (3:22).  And the Father was so pleased with the Son that He allowed, indeed arranged, for His well-beloved Son to please Him all the way to a garden outside Jerusalem, and to a hill, to a cross, to the tomb . . . and to what happens, after.

The people were asking John about the Messiah.  If you’re not him, then who?  Who, what, is the Messiah?  John tells them the Messiah, whom they already believed to be a deliverer, a restorer—John tells them that the Messiah is also a winnower, a pitcher, a gatherer.  The Baptism of Jesus is a sign for us of what God means to do through the Messiah, do for us.  This baptism is another reminder that God loves us: He is not going through all of this because He hates us!  God hates no one, no one: God hates sin.

For us, Baptism is about our desire to devote ourselves to God’s purposes in this world: we could not have this desire apart from the Holy Spirit, already at work within us.  When we bring our children for baptism, we are saying something (hopefully we are aware of it), saying something about how we are going to raise our children.  We are saying, through baptism, that we mean to raise our children in devotion to Christ, in full-hearted commitment to God.  To do that, sisters and brothers, we ourselves must be so committed, so devoted.  Baptism is a richly symbolic, a deeply sacred way for us to say how we are going to live, now.

Beloved, along with Jesus, baptized not for himself but for us, let us remember our baptism; let us live, now, devoted to God, to God’s purposes, to God’s way.  Oh, the fire is there: to purify.  The Spirit is there, to bless and lead you into Life.  And the waters are there.  Come to the waters, and rejoice.  “And let everyone who is thirsty come.  Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift” (Rev 22:17).

To the God of all grace, who calls you to share His eternal glory in union with Christ, be the power forever!  Amen.