Sermon: Baptism of Jesus - Year A

...it makes absolutely no theological sense for Jesus to be baptized. If he was sinless as we say he was, then he had nothing to repent of. If he was God Incarnate - the Word Made Flesh - as we proclaim, then John was right, Jesus should’ve been the one doing the baptizing.

But I wonder if the point of this passage not Jesus getting wet or God’s voice booming from the clouds, but the point of this story is that Jesus stands with us, poor sinners, to break us free of our bondage to sin, to see the world as God sees it.

Baptism is the red pill where we break free of the Matrix.

Eugene Petersen, writer of The Message, and a whack of other books, says that one thing that drove him crazy as a pastor was when some well-dressed, self-satisfied, self-made success story would shake his hand on the way out of church saying, “That was great, pastor, but now its back to the REAL world.”

Real world, indeed. More like...(the whole thing here)