Matthew 3:13-17
January 11, 2026
Muscle memory. This is a term I hear
and use often, but when I gave this phrase some thought I wasn’t sure if I
fully understood what muscle memory means. According to the Cleveland Clinic,
it refers to “the process by which repeated physical actions become ingrained
in our neural networks allowing us to perform them with less conscious thought
over time. It is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating
specific motor tasks into memory through repetition enabling automatic
movements without the need for conscious thought.”
Muscle memory is essential for
becoming proficient at an instrument or at a sport or an athletic endeavor.
Muscle memory is what Brent builds when he sits down and plays the guitar at
night while we’re watching television or just talking, or what Zach is building
when he practices scales on the piano repeatedly. They are both building muscle
memory.
This makes me wonder if there is an
emotional muscle memory as well. The last time my brother came down to see us
from Minnesota, he brought some more things that belonged to my mom; things
that I had asked to keep but wasn’t able to get home the last time I was in
Minnesota. Some of the things he brought were some of mom’s aprons. She had one
apron that when I saw it again, I told my brother,
“Seeing that apron is like muscle
memory. It is an ingrained part of mom and all my memories of her”
My brother understood what I meant
and agreed. This was my mom’s Christmas apron, and she donned it every
Christmas when she was getting our big family meal on the table. Maybe she wore
it at other times too, but to me it will always be Mom at Christmas. I don’t
have memories of every moment, every Christmas that she wore that apron, but I
don’t have to have them. Seeing her in that apron is so deeply ingrained in my
mind, my memories, my emotions, that it is part of my emotional muscle memory –
even if that isn’t a real thing. So, as I was getting our Christmas meal
together this year, I put on my mom’s apron and added again to my emotional muscle
memory.
If there is physiological muscle
memory and maybe an emotional muscle memory, then I also wonder if there is
spiritual muscle memory. We are encouraged by scripture and by spiritual
practitioners alike to make spiritual practices and devotions part of our daily
lives. Daily practice makes for daily habits. But I also think that they become
embedded in our psyches. They become grooves in spiritual muscle creating
muscle memory. These muscle making practices include our sacraments of the
Lord’s Supper and baptism.
Baptism is the overarching theme of
our worship today. In the church calendar, this is the traditional day we
celebrate the Baptism of our Lord. And on this Sunday, we also remember our own
baptisms by reaffirming them as a congregation.
Matthew’s account of Jesus being
baptized in the river Jordan begins at verse 13. However, we need to go back a
few verses to grasp the larger picture of this story. In verse 11, John was
calling the people to repentance, to turn around and reorient themselves to
God, to be washed clean of their sins and their transgressions. He promises
them that one would come who will baptize them not with water but with the Holy
Spirit. So they must repent.
Right after John said this, practically
in the next breath, Jesus shows up. He wades into that water, asking for
baptism along with everybody else. It is understandable why John hesitated to
do this. It would be like a renowned musician asking a first time student to
teach her how to play a scale.
John must have felt this way because
he tells Jesus, “You need to baptize me, Jesus.
There’s no way I can baptize you!”
But Jesus responds,
“Let
it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all
righteousness.”
“Let it be so now.” In other words,
Jesus was saying, No, John. This must happen now. Jesus’s message to John was
that his baptism was not something that could wait. The time is now.
Righteousness in this context conveys a sense of discipleship, more than a
moral judgment. Jesus wants John to
understand that the time for his baptism is now, this moment. It is critical
for discipleship that he be baptized. So John does what he is asked to do. John
is obedient to God’s will, just as Jesus is. He consents and baptizes Jesus
there in the river.
When Jesus rises from the water, the
heavens suddenly open. The Spirit of God is seen descending to Jesus like a
dove, and it lights upon him. A voice is heard, and unlike the other gospels,
we infer from Matthew’s text that everyone there could hear this voice. It is
the voice of God saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well
pleased.”
Matthew’s gospel calls to mind the
Genesis story. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters, calling creation out
of chaos. The Spirit of God descends upon Jesus as he stands there in the
waters of his baptism. Jesus is not newly created in this act, but he is
confirmed. His identity is clear. This is my Son. This is God’s Son. This is
the kingdom of heaven drawn near and embodied in the identity of this man.
Jack
Kingsbury, a preeminent Matthean scholar and one of the most frightening
teachers I’ve ever experienced in seminary or otherwise, says that the whole
first part of Matthew’s gospel is asking the question, “Who is Jesus?” In this
story, we have our answer. Jesus is God’s Son, the Beloved.
One of my colleagues in our
preaching group reminded us that John’s baptism was not a Christian baptism.
John was performing a ritual baptism, a ritual cleansing, and those were practiced
long before Jesus came to the Jordan that day. But John’s call for repentance
gave a new twist to these ritual cleansings, and Jesus’ baptism signified a greater
change in the understanding of baptism. Baptism now created a new path for new
life. It wasn’t just the water alone. It was the water and the Word. This
informs our Christian understanding of baptism. The waters of baptism, whether
we are sprinkled or immersed, cleanse us. Spiritually speaking, they wash us
clean. In theological terms, we see baptism as our way of symbolically dying
and rising with Christ. We go into the water and into his death. We rise from
the water and we rise into new life. Baptism is a sign of our adoption into
Christ. Whenever I baptize someone, I am acutely aware that baptism joins this
person with a larger family. Not only are we born into a family, mother,
father, siblings, through our baptisms we become members of the family of God.
Our baptisms are the sign and seal of God’s grace, love and adoption.
Jesus was baptized, as many
commentators and scholars say, so that we could truly be baptized. It wasn’t
just that he was modeling baptism as a good thing to do. Jesus, that real human
being who was also God incarnate, waded into those waters, and through the
power of the Holy Spirit changed them and us.
But one big question always rises
from this story. Did Jesus himself need to be baptized? We are baptized for all the reasons I
mentioned above. But even as we claim Jesus to be truly human, a real flesh and
blood person, we also believe that Jesus was without sin. There were no
transgressions on his part. He had no need to repent. John wasn’t making his
call for repentance, for turning back to God, to Jesus. He was leveling those
words at the others who had gathered at the river that day. As I said before, I
completely understand John’s hesitation to baptize Jesus. It should be Jesus
baptizing John. But remember Jesus responds to John by saying the time is
now. Now is the time for this baptism.
Now is the time that righteousness is fulfilled.
For Jesus his baptism was the
confirmation of his identity as God’s son. And as one commentator puts it, it
was also his launching. His baptism was a key step in Jesus becoming ready to
serve. In southern terms, we’d say that Jesus being baptized meant that he was fixin
to go out into the world, to launch his public ministry, to do God’s
will. Jesus waded into the waters of the River Jordan to be baptized because it
was time. It was time to publicly serve God and live out God’s will.
Don’t our baptisms do the same? In
our baptisms our identity as children of God is formed. In our baptisms, we are
called, even when we are baptized as infants, we are called. We are sent into
the world, sent out on a path of discipleship that will be lifelong. In our
baptisms, we experience the sign and seal of God’s grace. So, we remember our
baptisms every time we worship with one another – even if we can’t physically
remember them, they are part of our spiritual muscle memory. We remember our
baptisms when we witness the baptism of another, when we covenant to pray for
the newly baptized one, to love them, to guide them, to help and hold them just
as others promised to do the same for us. And we remember our baptisms when we
come forward and touch the water and take a stone. Each time we remember our
baptism, we add to our spiritual muscle memory. We embed our identities more
completely with Jesus. We remember again that we are called and that we are
sent – out. We are sent out into the world to love and forgive and repent and
witness and work. We are sent out into the world to be, as a billboard I read
recently proclaimed, the reason someone believes God is good.
We remember our baptisms so that we
remember God’s promise, God’s call, God’s sending. We remember our baptisms
because they are part and parcel of our spiritual muscle memory. We remember
our baptisms because we remember the one who was baptized to make all things
new, to fulfill all righteousness. We remember. Thanks be to God.
Let all of God’s children say,
“Alleluia.”
Amen and amen.
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