This post is based on my first sermon in the new congregation preached on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, 2019. Beginning with this sermon and continuing until Lent, I will be focusing on the Manifestation of Christ and the various ways in which Christ becomes known in the world.
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Every January just a few weeks after Christmas, many churches celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. This is a day of celebrating not only the fact of his Baptism, but also one of the moments of Christ's revelation to the world. The gospel readings for this celebration rotate through the first three gospels in the New Testament, each of which attest to this moment in Christ's life.
In the Gospel of Luke, we have just five verses appointed for the day (Luke 3:15-17, 21-22), which seems like not very much for our commemoration of the day that Jesus was baptized. Obviously we are stepping into the middle of a story. “As the people were filled with expectation…” doesn’t exactly tell us much about where the story has been, only where it is going.
It is sort of like seeing Star Wars for the first time when I was a kid. I was too little to read the opening crawl myself, so I didn’t even get that little bit of background information. Instead, the movie opens on a scene already in progress. I had no idea why the one spaceship was chasing the other spaceship; I only knew that it was setting the stage for the rest of the story.
And this is very much John’s role in the story - to set the stage for the rest of the story.
Now, unlike when that first Star Wars movie came out, we can know more about what is happening here near the beginning of Luke's Gospel. Over the course of Advent and Christmas, much of the rest of these early chapters of Luke get read each year. We learn about the miracle of not only Jesus’ birth, but of John’s as well. We learn that the two are related through their mothers. And we know that John has gone out into the wilderness and begun to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins. In verses 10-14 (just before the verses about Jesus' baptism) he even gives the people some very practical answers to what that looks like.
If you have two coats, share with someone who has none.
If you have food, share with someone who has none.
If you are a tax collector, only collect the amount you are asked to collect.
If you are a soldier, don’t use threats to extort money from others.
For those of us that have read about Jesus before, this doesn’t seem like particularly radical stuff. We have heard similar things in the teachings of Jesus, and so this is pretty tame for us Christians. But for this time period, people weren’t quite sure what to think. The political leaders, such as Herod, were not really pleased with this movement among the people. Herod in particular was taking John’s teachings personally, probably feeling guilty for divorcing his wife in order to marry his niece who had been married to his brother. I know, it sounds complicated, but it was a thing and John had already called Herod out on it.
And then the baptismal text from Luke tells us that the people themselves were looking for the Messiah, the one that would bring them freedom and salvation, and they were wondering if John could be the one they were waiting for.
Now in our age, there are those that might be tempted to latch onto that hope amongst the people and claim to be that one they are waiting for. Some would do it for personal gain while others might simply be unsure of their own place. But instead of stepping into that particular opening and claiming to be something special that he was not, John points to another.
John was preaching something new, something different, and the people were starting to see what happens when you live your life positively in relation to God and each other. Things were shifting, so it was natural for them to think that this is what it will be like when the Messiah comes. This is why they question John. But his response makes it clear.
“I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming…. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
It is as if he is saying, “Look, you think this is something? You ain’t seen nothing yet.” He knows that he is the messenger. He knows the role he plays in the story. He is ready for a new world, but he knows that he is not the one that will usher it in. He may not yet know where his part of the story will end, but he is comfortable with the part he has to play. In the end, it is not up to him. Much like us today, his job is to spread the news and then let God do what God has promised.
And so we turn to Jesus.
Now in the Gospel of Luke, the earliest chapters are mostly background information. Like reading the opening crawl on a Star Wars movie, they mainly help set the stage for the story to let us know where things stand. We get a couple of pregnancies foretold by angels. We hear in Mary’s song that the people are suffering and outcast but that God will raise up the lowly and turn the world around. We hear one of the narratives about Jesus’ birth that we are so familiar with. We hear how even as a child of twelve, Jesus was content to sit in the temple questioning the elders, full of understanding that amazed those learned scholars. We hear about the beginning of John’s preaching in the wilderness.
And then Jesus appears in the midst of the crowds that have been following John. In the texts appointed for Jesus' baptism, John finishes his monologue on the Messiah and then Jesus is being baptized. The very next verse in the story (22) tells us that Jesus was about thirty at the time, but the last time we saw him he was only twelve. We don’t really know where he was for the last 18 years, though we can perhaps guess.
His earthly father Joseph was said to be a woodworker, so perhaps he was learning the family trade.
He was there in the wilderness in the crowds that had been following his cousin John and being baptized. Perhaps he had been learning and studying with his cousin.
All we do know is that at this point in the story, Jesus is baptized with the others and then immediately began to pray. And this is a theme we will see over and over throughout the Gospel of Luke - Jesus in times of prayer.
Now there are some that claim that Jesus was always perfect, always holy. After all, the incarnation tells us that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. If John is preaching a baptism of repentance but Jesus is fully good, why is Jesus there to be baptized? I can only say that however we may understand the incarnation, it does mean he was fully human just like you and me.
We know nothing about his life up to this point other than his miraculous birth and his annual visits to the temple for Passover. His ministry doesn’t begin until after he is baptized. But whatever it was he heard in his cousin’s preaching, whatever he knew about himself and his own life, he felt called to enter those waters along with others that were there.
Now if the story had ended there, chances are we wouldn’t be celebrating Jesus every Sunday. Jesus would have melted back into the crowds as one of many that had heeded the call from John to pray for forgiveness and to receive the baptism of repentance.
But the story didn’t end there. While Jesus was praying the heavens opened up and the Holy Spirit descended in the bodily form of a dove and a voice came from heaven:
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
This is the start of the ministry that set Jesus apart from the rest of the crowd.
Yes, his birth was heralded by angels.
Yes, he was known even as a child to be one of great learning and understanding.
Yes, he would go on to preach forgiveness and repentance.
But John did all those things, too. If that was all there was to it, we might today be Johnians instead of Christians.
It makes me go back and rethink the Star Wars story. Did it have to be Luke who went on to bring down the Empire? What if Leia had actually made it to Obi-Wan without being intercepted? She had the same lineage, the same connection to the Force as Luke. Unlike Luke, she had actually already been on the frontlines and was aware of all that had been happening in the wider world of the story. She was already speaking out and taking a stand on the issues. Had she not been intercepted by Vader, perhaps she would have been the hero of the story. But I suspect that most of us know that is not how the story goes.
And it is the same for us. We are not Johnians. We are Christians. As Jesus is praying after his baptism, God opens the heavens and publicly claims Jesus as the Beloved Son. And so Jesus’ public ministry is ushered in.
Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. He had grown up around these people and other than his understanding of the Torah, he isn’t really known as being anything remarkable until he is baptized. But he hears John’s words and he enters the waters himself and then he kneels to pray.
And then God makes sure that those present know who Jesus is.
John set the stage for the story and then God did what God does.
Hopefully you have noticed that this is not the end of the story. After all, this scene takes place in chapter 3 out of 24. If we were watching a movie, we would only be about 15 minutes in. The very next verse following the appointed text tells us that this is when Jesus began his work.
For Jesus, baptism was the beginning.
It makes sense that it would be the same for us. From the time of his baptism, Jesus spent what was left of his life preaching repentance and forgiveness. He took time apart for prayer as needed, but the bulk of his remaining time was spent pulling people back into right relationship with God and with each other. And if we turn to the final chapter of Luke, this is how he ended his ministry as well - with a message to his disciples to go forth preaching that same message of repentance and forgiveness.
It is the same for us still today.
Like Jesus, we hear that call to repentance and forgiveness. We enter the waters of baptism nudged by God’s desire for relationship, and, as we emerge from the waters, the Spirit is called down to rest upon us, to lay upon us that claim of God that we are beloved children.
We pass through the waters, and God is with us. God redeems us and lays claim to us and makes us God’s own.
And as with Jesus, this is not the end of the story for us. Just as Jesus is claimed by God and then begins his public ministry, so it is with us. We enter the waters, redeemed and claimed by God, and then we are sent out into the world to call the world into relationship - a relationship with God that is lived out in our relationship with one another. Through the sacrament of baptism we are both recognizing God’s claim upon us and accepting and affirming what it is that God is calling us to do.
Baptism is the beginning of our story, not the end.
Through Baptism, we are joined to the body of Christ, as Paul makes clear to us in his letter to the Galatians: “All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:27-28).
In other words through Christ all the divisions that we humans have created - nationality, social status, race, gender - these things cease to be our primary defining characteristics. They still exist externally, but our primary identification is the body of Christ.
We are all one in Christ Jesus.
And so it is that we continue to usher in the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed.
And so it is that we call one another brother and sister whether we are related by blood or not.
And so it is that we continually pray as we go about the ministry of proclaiming forgiveness and repentance and reconciliation.
For we are all one in Christ Jesus. And we are all called, through baptism, to continue that same ministry that he began at his.