“Collective Sin, Collective Redemption” on Luke 3:21-23 by Joe Ellis — January 12, 2025

The first part of this sermon is going to be review, so bear with me. In the past, we’ve looked at John’s baptism as a symbolic action, a way of showing to God that our hearts are ready for Him to lead us on this new epoch of history, often referred to as the New Exodus.

Remember, the first story of the Exodus. God’s people were bound in slavery under Pharaoh in Egypt. After a display of God’s mighty power, God leads the people of Israel through the Red Sea, through the wilderness, across the River Jordan to live in fellowship with Him in Canaan, the Promised Land. And that was how it was supposed to be. The people of Israel were to live under God’s rule in the land of Canaan — later known as Israel.

Yet, over the centuries, this vision of fellowship between God and Israel began to unravel. Just as a marriage between husband and wife unravels and breaks down when one partner continues to violate their wedding vows. That was how God experienced his people Israel, breaking the sacred vows that had bound Israel to God as their people. There was idolatry, there was exploitation of the poor, there was a refusal to trust in God’s deliverance. So this covenant between God and the people was subject to violation after violation — until the nation of Israel fell under God’s judgment. They were conquered by foreign nations, they lost their land, Solomon’s temple was utterly destroyed. And that is the way the people of Israel tell their story — not for a second did they believe they were conquered because the neighbouring nations were so much stronger. They were conquered as a sign of God’s judgment due to his people’s violation of the Covenant.

Yet in passage after passage in the Old Testament, God promises a New Exodus, a restoration of this covenant relationship between God and His people. A restoration to what was before — no, exceeding the days before. John the Baptist had received word from God that the moment of the New Exodus was now and his role was to get the people’s hearts ready. So John invites the people into a powerful symbolic action of repentance. Inviting the people to reflect on the actions that brought their people into this humble place of judgment — and John calls the people, as one, to show God a repentant heart, a humble heart, a heart begging God to lead them into the new future, a future of restored relationship.

Notice that this is not simply an individual act of repentance that people are undertaking. This is a mental shift for modern, western Christians. We view sin and actions of our faith mainly on the individual level — as our faith largely takes place between God and the individual. Yet, our individualistic bent has not historically been the most dominant aspect of the people of faith.

No doubt, there was an individual component for those participating in John’s baptism of repentance. Yet that individual component would have been framed collectively. After all, broken individuals contribute to a broken whole. So, in wading into the water — the baptized were not only repenting of their individual sins — but a repentance of the sins of their people, the whole people together. Once again, remember the Jewish people at that time believed they were in this situation (being occupied by Rome) because of the sins of their ancestors. So, they were repenting of not only individual sin, but of a collective sin as well.

I think we are uneasy about this in our own culture. We hear about mass graves being dug up at residential schools — The truth and reconciliation commission has found records of 4037 deaths of children at residential schools. Murder and criminal neglect were not the only crimes perpetrated at residential schools. Like it or not, this legacy follows those of us who have the same skin colour and same faith as the ones who perpetrated these heinous acts. An unclean feeling follows us. Those with the same faith and skin colour as the perpetrators aren’t sure what to do with this collective guilt. We have politicians who offer apologies, denominational churches have written letters of apology, court systems have issued judgments — is that sufficient to wash us clean?

How do we reckon with collective guilt? We see John the Baptist providing a way for the people of Israel to reckon with individual and collective guilt. The collective action of wading into the water is an action of reckoning with collective guilt, as well as the individual sins that contribute to that collective guilt — we see this in John the Baptist’s preaching. His preaching calls individuals away from their particular actions that contributed to the collective problem. Tax Collecting was a collective problem. Soldiers extorting money was a collective problem. John the Baptist challenges each to live into righteousness in a way that goes against the sinful collective.

And into that situation, Luke tells us that Jesus chooses to be baptized. For me, this collective piece I’ve been talking about really helps me to understand why Jesus was getting into the water. After all, John’s was a baptism of repentance yet Jesus was and is sinless. So Jesus’ participating in John’s baptism cannot be about Jesus repenting of his own sin. Jesus is not making a clean go of it before starting his ministry. So why is Jesus being baptized? Was his baptism just a humble act of faking repentance? Of course not. Jesus lived with integrity.

I’m going to suggest that in getting into the water, Jesus was immersing himself in the collective sins of his people. Jesus was immersing himself into his people’s guilt, his people’s wrongdoings, his people’s sickness, his people’s confusion, blindness and captivity to sin.

That is true even now. How does that sit with you? Let’s continue sitting with the residential school system. How does it sit with you that Jesus would actually take on the guilt of our people? That he would step into our waters and become tarnished with our guilt? After all, that is certainly what happened when people see the church as committing such disgusting atrocities — Jesus is tarnished. He becomes soiled with our collective sin. It must further be said that if Jesus becomes soiled with our sin, he died in solidarity with victims of the residential school — He who was held down against his will and pierced by sinful men in authority.

Jesus willingly becomes stained with our collective guilt. This hits home all the more in what happens when Jesus is baptized, as we hear the Father’s words, “You are my one dear Son; in you I take great delight.”

Let’s study those words a bit more in depth. The Father’s deeply affectionate words to His Son are powerful echoes of Old Testament Scripture. The Father’s words are echoes of scriptural passages in which God promises that King David’s son will forever occupy his throne. In 2 Samuel 7, (through the prophet Nathan) God said to David about his Son: “I will be his father and he will become my son.” In calling Jesus His Son, the Father is helping us connect the dots between the Jesus’ baptism and Nathan’s prophecy.

God the Father’s words at the baptism of Jesus also point to Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is a coronation Psalm — a Psalm that was read when one of David’s sons was crowned as King. In Psalm 2, the king recalls God saying to him: “You are my son! This very day I have become your father!” Again, the Father’s words connect the dots between Jesus’ baptism and this pronouncement of the King of Israel as God’s Son.

The Father’s words, and the action of sending the Spirit, echo Isaiah 42: “Here is my servant whom I support, my chosen one in whom I take pleasure. I have placed my Spirit on him.” Now the Servant in Isaiah is identified both as the nation Israel (cf. Isaiah 41:8) but also is a poetic depiction of the Messiah. And this brings us around to the individual/collectivist conversation.

The figure of the Servant in Isaiah is Israel — yet the Servant is also the Messiah. Throughout His ministry, Jesus identified himself explicitly as the Servant. So, the Servant in Isaiah 40 and 50 is both a nation and an individual. Not only that, throughout the Old Testament, the King of Israel always embodiment the people of Israel. What was true of the people was true of the King, what was true of the King was true of the people. Once again, the King is both individual and nation. So, in the baptism of Jesus, when the Father names Jesus as His unique and beloved Son — the Father is also inviting us to view His Son in this special Messianic role — that is, the Father is stating that the Son is the embodiment of God’s people. Jesus is both individual and nation — the New Testament further focuses this understanding when writers, like Paul, point to Jesus as both individual and the embodiment of the Church.

Which brings us back to the Jesus’ baptism on the river Jordan. What is Jesus doing in His baptism? Jesus joins a people in a collective act of repentance. They assessed their own guilt, the guilt of their community, the guilt of their ancestors and are coming together in a collective act of repentance. Jesus joins them in that collective act of repentance; that collective cry for mercy from God; that collective cry for forgiveness; that collective cry for restoration; that collective cry for healing; that collective cry for God to lead them out of that mire and lead them into new life. Jesus joins in those waters.

Once again, our culture prizes individualism, we often think of Jesus saving me from my sins, whatever they may be. Many of us get defensive at the suggestion that we should incur guilt for another person’s sin. Yet, do you have imagination for God saving us from our sins (with the emphasis on our)?. Do you have the imagination to think of Jesus embodying and taking on the collective sins of our people — these sins that are so much bigger than any particular one of us, whereby individual actions come together to create a toxic cocktail of death — nations at war, devastation of ecosystems and climate, rampant poverty, systems that perpetuate sexual abuse, an economy that exploits human labour and rapes the environment, polarizing politics that estrange families from one another, the legacy of residential schools and the 60s scoop? Could you imagine thousands of people gathering up and down the Bulkley River to wade in giving some indication to our God that we are sickened by the legacy of residential schools and the ongoing discord between First Nations and settlers? Could you imagine us settlers wading in the water together, a collective acknowledgement of guilt, begging God to show us a different way?

And could you imagine the Son of God coming up alongside us, in our midst? Could you imagine him standing with us, becoming one of us, becoming soiled with our guilt? Could you imagine him walking into the water on our behalf and seeing the heaven’s open, the Spirit descending and hearing the Father say, “You are my dear Son, in you I take great delight?” And through this act, and with those Words, the Father will say to us all, “My Son is taking you into Himself. He is the one who will undo what you have collectively done and are incapable of undoing. He is the One. Come into the Son. Inhabit Him. He will carry you through the waters of our collective Sins — sins which deserve death. Yes, they do. He will die to them with Us in Him.”

Jesus carries us in Him through the river, from one side to another. We begin on one side of the river calling for mercy and forgiveness. The Son takes this Sin on Himself. The despicable Sin kills Him. The Father brings us in the Son through to the other side.

And what happens on the other side of the river? The baptism of Jesus is a unique moment. It is the public moment of the Father anointing His Son to his vocation, his calling — that is, the Father is anointing Jesus as Messiah. The Father anoints His Son not only with water but with the Holy Spirit. After this anointing, we see Jesus move into living out His vocation of making His kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Now, as we are in the waters of our own collective guilt, and as Jesus wades into those water with us; as Jesus pulls us into Himself, including our collective guilt; as Jesus embodies us as He walks through the waters of death and dies for our collective sin — when we come out to the other side of the river with Jesus, we are not free to go our own way. We have His vocation on us as well. Jesus defined His vocation in this way:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

If we are in Jesus, His calling becomes our calling. So, where do we start? Perhaps we might begin to look at the collective guilt we have been washed clean of — and begin to undo the sins of our ancestors.