Scripture reading: Psalm 29.

Sermon text: Luke 3:15-22.

Authors use it as a key plot twist. Movies revolve around it. We often find ourselves mesmerized by its possibilities if it happened to us — until it does. Then, we often respond with disbelief or with annoyance.

Mistaken identity.

History gives us many examples of mistaken identity. One of my favorite involves the English king Alfred the Great, who ruled England during the ninth century. (It should say something about Alfred that, alone among all the English monarchs, he alone bears the moniker “The Great.”) Following a major defeat by the Danish Vikings rampaging through England at the time, Alfred fled and took refuge with a peasant woman who mistook him for a fellow peasant. The woman put Alfred to work watching her cakes bake on the hearth of her fire. Alfred, distracted by his problems with the Danes, failed to keep a close watch on the cakes and let them burn. The woman screamed at Alfred about her burned food — until she suddenly recognized him as the king of England. Alfred took his scolding in stride, telling the woman he should have paid attention to his duty.

Sometimes, mistaken identity proves only a nuisance. Other times, mistaken identity can involve far more serious consequences. We learned this past week that the terrorist who tried to bomb a flight on Christmas Day in Detroit had a valid visa to enter the nation. How did this happen? The visa was awarded because the man was entered on a watch list under a misspelled name. (You can find the story here.)

The sermon passage today records one of the most famous examples of mistaken identity. The Jews, fully aware of their prophecy, knew the time had come for their Messiah to appear. John the Baptist’s ministry seemed to fulfill their expectations. Some Jews began wondering, “Is John the Messiah?” John knew this case of mistaken identity would cause some major trouble. John quickly and clearly denied this rumor: “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”

We don’t know the origin of baptism, or immersion in a liquid to represent a changed life and a new commitment to maintain the changed life. Religions around the world have used baptism for millennia. In the Intertestamental Period, Judaism adopted baptism as a means of welcoming proselytes into the faith. The new converts underwent baptism as a sign they would live and worship according to the Mosaic Law.

Everyone coming to John understood baptism as a sign of a new identity as well. The people coming to John still lived according to the Law; they still attended the festivals at the appointed times. However, those baptized by John wished to demonstrate their resolve to repent of their sins and live more faithfully in their devotion to God.

John didn’t merely baptize people; he preached “good news” to all who came. Note John’s message: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” This doesn’t sound like good news to us! This sounds like judgment; this sounds like destruction! John’s message starkly reminded the Jews who expected the Messiah to cleanse the nation of the oppressive Romans that He would first cleanse His people. The Jews had firsthand experience with God’s judgment and “winnowing,” and this message brought a lot of bad memories from their history to mind. The last time God “winnowed” His people, their sins brought destruction and exile. However, for those who repented from their sins and accepted John’s baptism, their renewed commitment assured them God would forgive them and spare them from judgment.

The people held John in high regard because of his call for repentance. Many Jews (and Gentiles as well) came to John seeking baptism for repentance. John offered baptism as a sign of repentance for sins, but he would not allow anyone to mistake him for the coming Messiah. According to John, the Messiah so outranked him that he considered himself unworthy even to untie the strap of His sandals, a job considered slave work. John used water to baptize the people; The Messiah would use the “Holy Spirit” and “fire.” John could baptize people to demonstrate their repentance for their sins; the Messiah would baptize with the Holy Spirit as a promise of salvation, and with fire to cleanse the people of their sins.

John’s recognition of the Messiah’s greater baptism explains why he at first refused to baptize Jesus, the Messiah. St. Luke doesn’t record this, but St. Matthew reported that John said to Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” John couldn’t understand why Jesus would need baptism for repentance of sins; after all, why would the sinless Messiah need to show people His resolve to live a new life?

Jesus’ need for baptism makes sense if we remember what would happen after this event. In a real sense, Jesus used His baptism to demonstrate a new life. We don’t know Jesus’ occupation before His baptism, but His baptism signaled a distinct break from that life to a life of ministry. Whatever His identity before His baptism, John’s baptism of Jesus marked Him with a new identity.

God Himself eliminated any uncertainty of Jesus’ identity. When you read the record of Jesus’ baptism in the Synoptic Gospels, all 3 of them record a voice from heaven proclaiming Jesus’ true identity. In St. Luke’s account today, we find the words, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Many of us in the Church today fail to understand the significance of this event and the weight of these words on the Jews around Jesus at His baptism. Every first-century Jew (as with Jews today) learned the “Shema,” their statement of faith in God, from birth: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” The Jews knew God as their Creator, as their Redeemer, and as their covenant Lord.. They also knew instinctively that He alone was the true God. As C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, “[God] selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was — that there was only one of Him…. [T]he Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, “The Shocking Alternative”).

Now, after millennia of strict monotheism, God Himself identified Jesus as His Son at His baptism. How did the Jews understand this statement? Many of them probably remembered Psalm 2, where God spoke to David’s descendants at their ascension and said, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” God’s proclamation at Jesus’ baptism certainly identified Jesus as the Descendant of David, a claim St. Luke reinforced with the genealogy that follows his account of Jesus’ baptism.

Did God’s statement of Jesus’ identity mean nothing more than this? If the people had heard nothing more than the statement from heaven, it may have been possible. The Spirit’s descent (also recorded by St. John) revealed far more about Jesus’ identity.

The Holy Spirit of God had descended before on Jewish heroes in history. God had sent His Spirit onto David when Samuel anointed him king. The Spirit was promised to David’s descendants as long as they obeyed the covenant. (Read Psalm 2 again and notice again that God called each of David’s reigning descendants His “Son.”). When you read the Old Testament, you’ll notice that the Spirit rarely descended onto more than one person at a time, and the Spirit often departed from the person once God’s assignment for him was completed.

This time, though, the Holy Spirit descended “in bodily form, like a dove” onto Jesus. The people recognized this combination as unprecedented. Moses recorded that God had spoken to the people at Mt. Sinai; the Old Testament told the Jews the Holy Spirit had descended before (but it never mentions a bodily presence). This time, everyone present at Jesus’ baptism both heard the voice of God and saw the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus. This unprecedented combination gave Jesus’ ministry a very auspicious beginning.

The voice and the Spirit’s presence at His baptism also revealed Jesus as far more than merely the Descendant of David; it also marked Him as the Messiah promised by the Scriptures. Even more, it revealed Jesus as the true Son of God, God Himself come to earth in bodily form. This situation also proved unprecedented. The Jews expected a Messiah; they didn’t expect God Himself to appear as the Messiah, even though the Apostles in hindsight found Jesus’ true identity as God’s Son all throughout the Prophets. After Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, the Holy Spirit descended again, this time on all believers and this time to stay. The Holy Spirit Himself then revealed that the predictions of Jesus’ coming thoroughly permeated the Old Testament, beginning with Genesis and running all the way through Malachi.

The Church celebrated the feast day of Epiphany this past Wednesday. The season of Epiphany celebrates the recognition of Jesus as the Son of God, God made flesh. St. John wrote in his Gospel, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). At Jesus’ baptism, God Himself revealed Jesus’ identity. The Messiah had come.

In Genesis, Moses told the story of how God created Adam and Eve and put them in a perfect place, the Garden of Eden. The Garden contained the Tree of Life; anyone who ate the fruit of that tree would never die. The Garden also contained the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; anyone who ate the fruit of that tree would gain a knowledge that could lead only to death, because anyone with this knowledge without the wisdom to handle it would inevitably fall to the evil of pride. God, in His wisdom, told Adam and Eve not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the only commandment He gave them. Want to guess the first meal recorded in the Bible?

Adam and Eve willingly rebelled against God, breaking the relationship between humanity and our Creator. God began working even before the couple’s expulsion from the Garden, telling Eve that her Descendant would bring deliverance from the effects of her sin. God gave Eve’s descendant, Abraham, a promise that, through his descendant, “all the world will be blessed” (Genesis 12). God then confirmed that promise through His covenant with Abraham’s descendants, the Hebrews, at Mt. Sinai. In Jesus, God fulfilled that promise of salvation. In Jesus, God the Son came into His creation and lived with His people.

Humanity’s sin brought consequences, namely death. Jesus, the Son of God Himself, died for our salvation. Then, Jesus rose again to give us victory over death. Epiphany celebrates God’s proclamation of Jesus as His Son. Today, the Church proclaims the gospel: Jesus has died for our sins and rose again for our victory over death. All who confesses Jesus as Lord of their lives, believing in His resurrection, receives the assurance they will live forever.

When we confess Jesus as Lord, we receive assurance of the forgiveness of our sins. We then proclaim to the world that we have a new identity through the sacrament of Christian baptism. Baptism tells the world we’ve changed, that we serve Jesus as our Lord.

Christian baptism does more than proclaim our new identity to the world. Baptism also

Serves as the only true rite of initiation in the Body of Christ. We teach that all who confess Jesus as Lord must publicly declare their allegiance. Anyone who wishes to join the Church must experience baptism.

Some people have said, “I want to be a Christian, but I don’t want to go through baptism. I don’t want to participate in a public spectacle.”

This past week, fans of the University of Alabama celebrated as our Crimson Tide won our 13th national championship in college football. Tuscaloosa’s a wonderful place to live right now! All our fans are wearing our finest Crimson Tide clothing and meeting each other with our signature “Roll Tide!” All of Alabama’s fans are proudly and publicly proclaiming our loyalty to our beloved Crimson Tide.

Think about this for a moment. We’ll shout “Roll Tide!” at the proverbial drop of a hat right now because our team, a team that has existed less than 125 years, stands at the top of a game that has existed less than 175 years in a nation that has existed less than 250 years. Yet, people hesitate to declare their allegiance to Jesus, the Son of God whose death and resurrection secured their eternal salvation! Jesus was baptized publicly; He died publicly; more than 500 people saw Him after His resurrection. We owe it to Jesus to proclaim our allegiance to Him publicly through baptism.

Christian baptism does more than proclaim your new identity and serve as our initiation into the Church. Baptism also gives Christians an opportunity to rejoice as new members proclaim their allegiance to Christ and His Church. In his Confessions, St. Augustine wrote about  a famous professor in Rome who became a Christian and decided to submit to a public baptism:

1. [Victorinus] used to read, as Simplicianus said, the Holy Scripture, most studiously sought after and searched into all the Christian writings, and said to Simplicianus,—not openly, but secretly, and as a friend,—’Know thou that I am a Christian.’ To which he replied, ‘I will not believe it, nor will I rank you among the Christians unless I see you in the Church of Christ.’ For he was fearful of offending his friends, proud demon-worshippers, from the height of whose Babylonian dignity, as from cedars of Lebanon which had not yet been broken by the Lord, he thought a storm of enmity would descend upon him. But after that, from reading and inquiry, he had derived strength, and feared lest he should be denied by Christ before the holy angels if he now was afraid to confess Him before men, and appeared to himself guilty of a great fault in being ashamed of the of the humility of Thy word, and not being ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of those proud demons, whose pride he had imitated and their rites adopted, he became bold-faced against vanity, and shame-faced toward the truth, and suddenly and unexpectedly said to Simplicianus,—as he himself informed me,—“Let us go to the church; I wish to be made a Christian.” But he, not containing himself for joy, accompanied him. And having been admitted to the first sacraments of instruction, he not long after gave in his name, that he might be regenerated by baptism,—Rome marvelling, and the Church rejoicing. The proud saw, and were enraged; they gnashed with their teeth, and melted away! But the Lord God was the hope of Thy servant, and He regarded not vanities and lying madness.
   

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3. “Finally, when the hour arrived for him to make profession of his faith (which at Rome they who are about to approach Thy grace are wont to deliver from an elevated place, in view of the faithful people, in a set form of words learnt by heart), the presbyters, he said, offered Victorinus to make his profession more privately, as the custom was to do to those who were likely, through bashfulness, to be afraid; but he chose rather to profess his salvation in the presence of the holy assembly. For it was not salvation that he taught in rhetoric, and yet he had publicly professed that. How much less, therefore, ought he, when pronouncing Thy word, to dread Thy meek flock, who, in the delivery of his own words, had not feared the mad multitudes! So, then, when he ascended to make his profession, all, as they recognised him, whispered his name one to the other, with a voice of congratulation. And who was there amongst them that did not know him? And there ran a low murmur through the mouths of all the rejoicing multitude, ‘Victorinus! Victorinus!’ Sudden was the burst of exultation at the sight of him; and suddenly were they hushed, that they might hear him. He pronounced the true faith with an excellent boldness, and all desired to take him to their very heart—yea, by their love and joy they took him thither; such were the hands with which they took him” (St. Augustine, Confessions, Book VIII, II.4-5)
   

At Jesus’ baptism, The Triune God rejoiced at the baptism of God the Son proclaimed His true identity to the world. What identity do you hold today? Do you hold the identity of a person living in rebellion against God because of your sin? If so, Jesus has paid your penalty with His death and achieved your victory over death with His resurrection; confess Him as Lord and proclaim your new identity as a believer in Christ. If you have already confessed Jesus as Lord, you must follow His example of baptism to proclaim your new identity to the world; follow His example and proclaim your new identity as a member of His Church.