On this 1st Sunday of Epiphany we celebrate the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.
St Luke in today’s
Gospel reading (Luke: 3:15-17, 21-22) tells us what happened when John baptised
Jesus: ‘When
all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was
praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in
bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And
the same event is described in slightly different words in the other three
Gospels.
In this striking scene
God reveals to us that this man Jesus is his Son, the Beloved. It is also the
only scene in the Gospels where we find all three persons of the Trinity –
Father, Son and Holy Spirit - together at the same time. It is in fact an
epiphany of the Trinity, so it is especially important for all of us Trinitarian
Christians.
Luke tells us that John’s baptism was ‘a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins’.
John baptised with
water those who came to him to signify their repentance – that is, their personal
commitment to live in future by God’s standards. God forgives their previous
failures to live up to his standards – their sins – which are symbolically washed
away in the water.
Since the earliest
times, Christians have been puzzled that Jesus came to be baptised by John.
After all, the argument goes, Jesus as the Son of God must be without sin, with
nothing to repent, so a baptism for forgiveness of sins seems inappropriate. Matthew
tells us that the Baptist himself was reluctant to baptise Jesus, but Jesus
insisted, saying ‘it is proper for us in this way to fulfil
all righteousness’.
For Jews, righteousness
meant doing God’s will. Jesus clearly believed God willed him to be baptised by
John. But for what purpose? Perhaps so that Jesus would be certain who he was
before beginning his ministry. Or perhaps so that John could testify to his Trinitarian
vision. But I like to think that God willed Jesus to be baptised in a stunning
act of solidarity with sinful people – with you and with me – so that Jesus
stands alongside us as we bare our souls in repentance, as our sins are washed
away, and as we receive God’s forgiveness.
What about the Christian sacrament of baptism with
water as we know it today?
None of the Gospels
tell us that Jesus himself baptised anyone, but his disciples certainly did.
They did so with his approval while he
was alive, as John’s Gospel tells us. John also records Jesus teaching that ‘no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born
of water and the Spirit’. And the disciples continued to baptise after his death, following his
Great Commission, recorded in Matthew’s Gospel in these words: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” 3000 are said to be have been baptised on the
day of Pentecost alone!
Those who came to
Christian baptism in the earliest days would have made the same personal
commitment to change, in expectation of God’s forgiveness, as those who John
baptised. This baptism, like John’s, must surely have been ‘a baptism of
repentance for the forgiveness of sins’.
But as time passed, baptism
with water more and more came to be seen as a ceremony of initiation into the
community of believers, the Church. Baptism was essential, Christians felt, because
Jesus had said no one could enter the kingdom of God without being born of
water. In times when many children died in childhood, Christian parents
naturally wanted to make sure their children would join them in the kingdom of
God, so they began to baptise infants too. Parents and friends sponsored the
infant Christian, making personal commitments on their behalf. The original
idea of a ‘baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’ began to fade
into the background, perhaps because it is hard to see what sins infants need
to repent.
So baptism evolved to
become the sacrament of Christian initiation we know today, and the parents and
friends became what we call sponsors and godparents.
But surely there is something missing in this
baptism as Christian initiation?
In today’s Gospel John
the Baptist says ‘I
baptise you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming.’ That’s
Jesus, of course. ‘He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire’. What
has become of Jesus’s baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire?
The apostles were
baptised with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, just as Jesus had promised
them before his ascension. They also experienced tongues of fire – and fire was
certainly kindled in their hearts. They went out fired-up to preach the good
news of Jesus Christ, which as the Book of Acts tells us spread like wild fire.
The embryonic Church
spread despite – or rather because of – persecution. As it grew the apostles
found it necessary to appoint assistants, called deacons, one of them a man
called Philip. When persecution came the new Christians scattered throughout
the countryside of Judea and Samaria, leaving the apostles in Jerusalem. Philip
fled to the city of Samaria, where he in his turn preached the good news. Large
numbers of people responded and Philip baptised them.
This is the background
to today’s 2nd reading from Acts 8:14-17.
‘When the apostles at Jerusalem
heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to
them’. Peter and John were, of
course, apostles. In Samaria, we are told, they discovered that the new
Christians had not received the Holy Spirit, even though they had been baptised
by Philip. Peter and John prayed for them, ‘laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy
Spirit’ - in other words they received Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit.
The apostles were
faced with the problem of maintaining the unity of the church as it spread away
from Jerusalem. Their solution seems to have been to insist that they alone
could administer Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit by laying on of hands. As a
result Christians in faraway places maintained links with the apostles in
Jerusalem.
As the church grew and
the original apostles began to grow old and die, they consecrated others they
trusted to carry on their work, which included administering the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. These others in turn consecrated their successors to do the same,
and so on to our own day.
Their successors are
what we now call bishops. The line of succession we call apostolic succession.
And the sacrament of confirmation is Jesus’s baptism with the Holy Spirit,
administered by a bishop in apostolic succession laying his hands on a person
seeking confirmation.
So to conclude, as we celebrate the baptism of
Jesus:
First, let us give
thanks for the insight we receive into the nature of God as Trinity from the
epiphany of Father, Son and Holy Spirit at Jesus’s baptism by John.
Second, let us give
thanks for the sacrament of baptism with water, which builds on John’s baptism,
to mark our incorporation into Christ’s body the Church, whether as infants or
adults.
And third, let us give
thanks for the sacrament of confirmation, through which we are born again as we
receive Jesus’s baptism of the Holy Spirit, to inspire us and put fire in our
hearts to work for his kingdom.
