The Lord, our Good Shepherd, began his public ministry on the banks of the Jordan River not by preaching a stunning sermon or performing a great sign but by getting into the river and letting his cousin, John the Baptist, dunk his body in a baptism of repentance. Jesus—God incarnate, fully human and fully perfect—chose to begin his entire ministry with an act of repentance that one would assume he didn’t need. Everything Jesus lived and did, he did to fully embody our humanness as an offering of trust and gratitude to the Father.
