A Thought For The Week Of March 23

"John tried to stop him. He said, `I need to be baptized by you. Why do you come to me to be baptized?'" (Matthew 3:14) John might have been the Baptist, but he didn't want to baptize Jesus. That much is clear - and it's even understandable. Why would Jesus need John's baptism? It was, after all, "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin" - and Jesus was without sin. Except that, on the cross, well, Paul would later write that Jesus "became sin" in order that sin could be finally defeated. Jesus may not have had anything to repent of, and he may not have committed any sin, but sin would play a huge part in his earthly life, nevertheless. So, perhaps Jesus' motives for wanting to be baptized aren't that much different than the symbolism John spoke of, or the symbolism we use today when we baptize - baptism represents the cleansing from sin - past and future. For Jesus, sin would come - the sins of others, which would undoubtedly stain him, and eventually lead him to the cross and to an agonizing death. So, perhaps, rather than concerning ourselves with why Jesus needed to be baptized, we should ask why John was so reluctant? Didn't John understand the important role he was being asked to play? He may have - but apparently his problem was that he felt unworthy. Jesus could baptize him, but conceiving of things the other way around seemed foreign; unimaginable in fact. Sometimes, still today, we criticize people for not serving - or for not serving well enough, or for not serving long enough. There is an old saying that 10% of the people do 90% of the work. If true - and while that may be a bit extreme, it points to a truth - we need to ask why that is.Perhaps it's not that people aren't committed enough. Maybe they just don't feel worthy enough to serve Jesus. Maybe it's hard for them to conceive that Jesus needs our service. Maybe we're a bit like John the Baptist - who also didn't feel worthy to do what Jesus asked him to do. Jesus had to convince him. Perhaps people are demonstrating faith and trust (in a strange way) by not offering their service more generously, and perhaps the proper role of the church is to convince people that they do, indeed - every one of us - have a valuable service to offer to Jesus. After all, whatever we do for the least of those around us - we do for Jesus. It isn't what service we offer to Jesus, it's that we offer service to Jesus that counts.