baptism of jesus Year C

Isaiah 43: 1-7 NRSV text
Acts 8: 14-17 NRSV text
Luke 3: 15-17; 21-22 NRSV text

Jesus is baptised in the Jordan by John, along with all the people (v21). But something unique happens to him: the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descends upon him in bodily form like a dove, and a heavenly voice proclaims to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased”. This is Jesus’ own epiphany. Until now, heavenly announcements about his identity as the Son of God have been given to others; here, for the first time in the gospel, the announcement is made to Jesus himself. Why only now? The answer is that this is the beginning of Jesus’ mission. His identity, therefore, isn’t given (either to him or to us!) as the answer to a question on an exam paper: “Who is Jesus?” The point Luke is making so strongly is that Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is intimately tied up with his mission. He has been sent. The description of the opening of the heavens has an allusion to Isaiah 64:1: “O that You would tear the heavens open and come down!” (a prayer for deliverance and salvation). The heavens have been opened, and God has “come down” in the person of Jesus, the Son. The personal presence of God in the world has a purpose – salvation. What is happening here in the Jordan is every bit as much a part of salvation history as the great narratives of deliverance in the Old Testament.

That is why the three elements of divine identity, mission and the descent of the Spirit come together here at the moment of Jesus’ baptism. He is marked out from all the other people by the presence of these three elements. Jesus, Luke is telling us, is different: of all the people in the river that day, Jesus alone is God’s Son (not even John is that!); Jesus alone is being baptised, not for forgiveness but for mission; Jesus alone receives the Spirit that will empower him for the task ahead – the Spirit that he himself will dispense.

Heavenly announcements in Luke
Luke’s Good News is that God’s own Son has been sent into the world for its salvation. It is the news of God’s love, compassion and mercy – and it is trumpeted from heaven itself! We readers know this already about Jesus – though no one at the Jordan does! The angel Gabriel has announced this Good News to Mary; the angel has told this to the shepherds and the angelic choirs have sung in excited worship and adoration.

The “Messianic Secret” in Luke is that Jesus is God’s Son. That is true of Mark’s gospel, too, but Luke has a characteristic narrative way of emphasising it. His identity has the heavenly imprimatur. Significantly, it is revealed to us as his readers, but hidden from the characters in the story. So here, ironically, John the Baptist is the messenger – the messianic herald – but we already know more than he does about the one whose coming he announces! Moreover, we already know that he is mistaken is assuming that the Messiah is coming in fiery judgement: Mary’s song of praise has hailed him as the one who will “lift up the lowly” and the angels have announced that his coming will bring peace on earth, rather than fire.

This is part of Luke’s device for stressing the difference between Jesus and the Baptist. We ought not to assume that his concern is to denigrate John, as though his Christian community was struggling with the presence of a strong Baptist-following. It makes far more sense to read this in the context of Luke’s clear concern to show us that Jesus represents a decisive break with the Jewish past. Jesus is genuinely the “new covenant”. Luke is neither poking fun at John, nor trying to suggest that his inability to understand Jesus (it is an inability, as we see later in 7:18ff) is blameworthy. Rather, Luke presents John as located firmly in the “old”. He stands on the threshold between the old and the new, yet however much the new has continuity with the old, the old cannot furnish the concepts and appreciation for the radically new thing that God has done in Jesus. Jesus is God’s Son. That is why Luke has Jesus say, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women, no one is greater than John: yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he” (7:28). The heavenly announcement – which only Jesus hears in Luke’s account of the baptism – is to show that what is being announced is greater even than the herald himself can possibly conceive!

Baptism, Jesus and the Spirit
Luke’s Jesus is Son of God in at least two senses. He is Son by virtue of his birth. But also, he is Son because he is supremely possessed by the Holy Spirit. Thinking theologically for a moment, Jesus’ sonship is both ontological and pneumatological in Luke’s gospel. We have here the roots of Paul’s theology (Paul appears to know Luke’s theology, whereas the reverse doesn’t seem to be the case). Paul, you will remember, develops his account of Christians as “children of God by adoption” – adoption through the same Spirit as Jesus had. To have the Spirit is to be a child of God. Here, then, is a thorough-going baptismal theology, which we see clearly worked out in Paul: by the one Spirit we are baptised into the one body – into Christ. Through the Spirit, given at baptism, we are adopted as children of God. The presence of the Spirit is the guarantee of our identity as God’s children.

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus’ baptism is the moment when his identity as God’s Son becomes personally real. And it is no accident that it happens at the moment of baptism, because Jesus’ baptism is also the start of his ministry. It is the moment in which he receives his vocation. But note that his vocation is nothing other than the Way of the Cross! Remember that this is Luke – the evangelist who uses the Travel Narrative (9:51 onwards) to present Jesus as spending most of his ministry “on the way to Jerusalem” – to suffering and death. Yet this is not some sort of “Jesus was born to die” theology. In the very next verse (3:23), Luke says, “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work”. The baptism is the beginning. And what is his “work”? If we take the genealogy as parenthetical comment for a moment – clarifying who he was – then Luke’s gospel reads like this: Jesus is baptised, the heavens open, the Spirit descends, the heavenly voice speaks and Jesus begins his work. And his work begins as follows: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil” (4:1-2a). In other words, the immediate action of the Spirit is to lead him into his work, which is to take on the powers and authorities that destroy and enslave. That is why Jesus couches his vocation in Nazareth as “liberation-in-the-power-of-the-Spirit” (4: 18ff).

For Luke, the “era of Jesus” (if you like) is necessarily also the “era of the Spirit”. What God is doing in Jesus (and subsequently in the Church – the subject of Luke’s second book) happens as it does because of the Holy Spirit.

Baptism and mission (cf Isaiah 43: 1-7)
Baptism, therefore, is not about fire insurance, or securing a place in heaven. It is about baptism into Christ – into his mission and into the Holy Spirit.

Isaiah picks up on the theme of redemption through water and divine protection. He recalls Israel’s birth as a nation through the Exodus – the “passing through the waters”. Yahweh has called out a people. Yet this is not for some sort of spiritual “comfort blanket”. They are redeemed from slavery, it is true – because Yahweh has pity on them and wants to liberate them from slavery. Yet Yahweh has a purpose in calling them. As liberated slaves, they are to become a nation that models a different way of living and acting in the world. Yahweh’s original promise to their ancestor, Abraham, had been that they would be the means by which all the nations of the earth would be blessed. What Yahweh had done for Israel, Yahweh intended to do for all the world. Saving the world, though, isn’t easy! It means confronting the Pharaohs. The kingdom of God challenges the kingdoms of the world – and meets resistance. To be drawn into Yahweh’s saving purposes and activities is always dangerous stuff – and so Isaiah promises that Yahweh will protect them.

In the same way, to be baptised is to be drawn into God’s saving, liberating activity in Jesus Christ. It means living counter-culturally. For many Christians, this means some kind of “holier-than-thou”, “looking-down-the-nose” spiritual snobbery. It means self-righteous disapproval of “the ways of the world”. And persecution means being exposed to criticism or ridicule; to being regarded as quaint or old-fashioned.

Vocation (which belongs with baptism) is much more difficult stuff! It’s about grace and service, not self-righteousness. It’s about forgiving enemies and turning the other cheek; about pacifism and the pursuit of justice. It’s about standing up on behalf of the voiceless, the poor and the oppressed.

These are things we cannot do individually. We need one another – Christian communities engaged on the same journey of discipleship. We need the mutual support and encouragement – the mutual strengthening that fellowship provides. But we also – individually and collectively – need the Holy Spirit. Mission is not something we can do in our own strength. We have neither the grace nor the relentless energy needed for the Way of the Cross. We have the Spirit – the living presence of God in Christ – within us, both to empower and to protect.

The experience of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8: 14-17)
Many commentators read this as part of Luke’s legitimation of Peter and John as “dispensers of the Spirit”. The passage today belongs within the narrative of Simon Magus, who ends up trying to “hire” the Spirit’s power.

Pentecostals read it as evidence for a “Second Blessing” theology: there’s the experience of salvation (the “first blessing”) and a subsequent, second Spirit-baptism (“second blessing”).

I don’t want to get bogged down in either. It seems that Luke is reflecting the varieties of experiences that people have of baptism and the Spirit. I remember when the charismatic movement “hit” when I was a young Christian in the 1970s. It caused huge consternation and division! Reformed Christians (I was a Presbyterian) were working hard to show that these sorts of experiences had necessarily died out with the closing of the canon. Evangelicals were up in arms at the suggestion that there was anything more to be “had” than salvation through faith in Christ. Pentecostals and charismatics were arguing that ecstatic experiences were normative and an indication of whether or not you were a “proper” Christian. It was chaotic – and bitter!

But then, hasn’t it ever been thus? The point is that we do not control the Spirit! Personally, I reckon there are all sorts of weird and wonderful experiences that people have through the Spirit. The Spirit has always been anarchic – I’m sure it’s a sign that god has a keenly developed sense of irony! But we cannot “predict” the Spirit any more than the early apostles seemed able to!

We might have a tightly worked-out theology of baptism which is about water and Spirit baptism happening simultaneously. Experience shows that things happen to different people at different times and at different rates. They happen in different order – or without order! And there are definitely different phases and moments in Christian life when our experience of the Spirit may happen in different ways.

Most of us seem to operate on a very “reduced” experience of the Spirit. That isn’t only a comment about non-charismatics, either! If we look at the experience of people in different parts of the Christian Church and within the pages of Scripture (just look at Saul and David, for example!), most of our experiences seem both pretty staid and pretty “samey”. This passage is a reminder that we need to be open to the unexpected from God.

Part of our problem is that we want to control God. Another problem is that we’re consumers – hungry for “experiences”. That is no less true of our hunger for experiences of God than in any other area. The point, though, is that we’re consumers. We hunger for the wrong sort of food. However wonderful, deep and satisfying our spiritual experiences of God are, their purpose is to empower and sustain us in mission. We are baptised into Christ – into his death and resurrection. That means we are baptised into his mission – and into the Spirit! The hallmark of the Spirit’s work in the life of Christians is to make them more Christ-like. It is to empower them to live the baptismal life, and a measure of their experience of God is the degree to which their faith means mission.

Amen.

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