"Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him." - Matthew 3:13

Matthew has an agenda in his telling the story of Jesus. He wants to show his Jewish audience how the story of Jesus is not just a story, but their story.

He begins with a genealogy that puts Jesus in the line of Abraham and David. He tells of a Joseph who takes Jesus down to Egypt and then, as he did with the people of Israel, God says "Out of Egypt, I have called my son."

And then we find Jesus, like Joshua before him, emerging from the water into the Promised Land on the banks of the Jordan. Jesus, annointed by John and the Spirit as the new bearer of God's hope for the people, the new fulfillment of God's promise -- a promise which at the end of Matthew's Gospel we discover is not just about the people of Israel but "all nations."

Jesus coming out of the Jordan was an intensely political act -- and we know by what happened to John later that the authorities were watching. John first and then Jesus were setting themselves directly against those in Jerusalem who used their power to oppress God's people.

A showdown was coming.

But Matthew has God anoint Jesus not as he did David. but with the opening stanzas of the song of the Suffering Servant. Jesus' leadership would not be a violent march to the throne but a loving journey to the cross and beyond.

That, Matthew says, is our story of promise.

That, Jesus says, is our journey, too.

More than one billion people live in extreme poverty. People for whom God's promise of abundant life meant for all is as much of a dream as freedom from oppression was for those people on Jordan's bank that day. 

Our embracing the Millennium Development Goals, our allying ourselves with those one billion-plus images of God, is our crossing the Jordan. It is us standing defiantly with Christ saying a new day is dawning and a showdown is coming.

But like Jesus, our way will not be the way of the crusade but the way of the cross. Like Jesus, what will convert the world is not our military might but our suffering servanthood. Our willingness to call ourselves first and the world second to humble repentance and joyful amendment of life.

A Jesus who rises out of the Jordan is not about making us feel more comfortable with the status quo of our lives, when so much of that status quo thrives on the backs of the poor. A Jesus who rises out of the Jordan is about challenging us to cast aside our own oppressive use of power and join him on his journey of humble servanthood.

As we renew our baptismal covenant this Sunday, let us recognize the crossing we are making together.

Let's make our congregations places of self-examination and mutual support through the difficult process of repentance and amendment of life.

Let's make our congregations places of joyful celebration and prophetic heralding of the abundant life into which we enter when we make this journey together.

Let's open our congregations up to being places where the world can see and hear God's Spirit proclaiming, "This is my Son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased."