May the
words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight,
O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. AMEN.
Let us
pray! Father, Son and Holy Spirit
through the intimate connection of Water and Word, we have been baptized into
Jesus Christ life, death and resurrection.
Though our baptism pales in comparison to Jesus by John in the Jordan
that we celebrate today, the promise made was foretold in the story of the
Exodus of the people of Israel. By God’s
divine protection they walked through the waters on dry land protected by the
Ark of the Covenant, in essence Your presence.
By our baptism we are now covered by our covenant relationship through
Jesus Christ and made new creatures enabled to love, honor and serve as Christ
serves and saves all of mankind, including all of us saints gathered here at
Emmanuel this morning. AMEN.
As a child growing up we would watch
cartoons as entertainment and enjoyment.
Some of the cartoons that we would watch included “Road Runner”, “Bugs
Bunny”, “Daffy Duck” and “Yogi Bear”. As
you know some of these cartoons have had resurgence with feature length movies
or on television re-runs, but some because of the perception of violence have
been changed or adapted to be ‘less violent’ or more family or culturally
friendly. Do you remember some of the
cartoons that would either have the character ‘walk on air’ or ‘walk on
water’? For kids this is a magical
mystery that it seemed only could occur on the big screen, television or in
stories that would peak the curiosity and imagination of anyone listening. Yet as we grew older we’d try these feats of
screen legend ourselves and the reality would set in that this was only either
a ‘Hollywood’ thing or it was the stuff of legend and was not possible. Sometimes this was after broken bones or our
feeling of being invincible and ‘walking on water’ or ‘flying off the roof’
like Superman or Spiderman.
Enter
our Old Testament lesson this morning.
Joshua in writing how the Lord would fulfill His promise to give Canaan
as an inheritance to Israel is telling of the crossing of the Israelite people
across the Jordan River. In a similar
vein as the comics the story that Joshua tells is of a people who ‘walk on
water’ or better and more aptly said, walk without their feet getting wet. You see Joshua clearly is not telling
something of legend or absent of reality, but truly telling the story of the
people Israel and the promise that will be fulfilled by their God.
This
promise Joshua is telling about is a connection for us from last week where we
heard the promise of the Messiah and the coming of the three wise men. In this mornings lesson we hear the covenant
promise of God being with His people in the Ark of the Covenant. For Old Testament people God made His
presence known with His being and dwelling with the Ark. Entrusted to the Levitical priests the Ark
contained the stones that Moses brought from God that had inscribed on them the
Ten Commandments or Laws from God. The
Levitical priests were the ones who carried the Ark during the entire 40 year
journey in the wilderness. They were the
same group of men who set up the dwelling place of God, offered the sacrifices
and were ceremonially clean and the representative of the people to God. This line of priests extended from Moses time
to Zechariah, who was the Father of John the Baptist as well as to Jesus
Christ, the great High Priest.
With the
divine promise of God’s presence with the people of Israel, Joshua tells what
will occur when the Levitical priests feet touch the Jordan River. Joshua says, “It shall come about when the
soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all
the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan will be
cut off, and the waters which are flowing down from above will stand in one
heap.” In essence a miracle will occur
of epic proportions. Since usually at
this time of year of harvest the banks were over flowing, God would stop the
flow of water. It would not be by word
of a person, it would not be a sign from the sky, but simply by the soles of
the feet of the priest touching the water, that this miracle would occur.
Clearly
this is a miracle that isn’t of little consequence. God during the Old Testament time was very
active with His people. With the miracle
of walking across on dry land as fulfilled in the sight of the people and with
the priests feet who carried the Ark of the Covenant God was sending a clear
message for us today. God not only
fulfills His promise, He constantly looks out for us and keeps us safe on a
daily basis. This covenant promise we
remember even today.
With our
celebration today of Jesus Baptism this is a covenant God makes with each of us
the day we were baptized. When the Water
intimately connected with the Word of God is poured over our heads this is a
remembering of not only the water being stopped that we heard about from
Joshua, but a connection with the flood waters of Noah, the promise of the
rainbow and especially the covenant promise of the Messiah that we celebrated
on Christmas and last week of the three wise men. God clearly and consistently makes covenants
with His people and with us today and we are not only recipients of the
covenant, but partakers of the grace offered to and for us. The grace is of what God gives to each and
every one of us, not only His Son in the manger, but also His precious Body and
Blood that we received last week, but also the covenant promise of life and
salvation for all of mankind.
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