Today the Church asks us to remember the Baptism of Christ.
Picture again, in your minds eye, the moments after John
baptised Jesus, as described by Matthew in his gospel (3:13-17).
Here is Jesus, a man in the prime of his life, about
30 years old. He is glistening wet from receiving John’s baptism of repentance,
as he walks up out of the river Jordan. Then, suddenly, the heavens burst open.
The Spirit of God descends like a dove to alight on him. And the voice of God
declares from heaven, ‘This is my Son,
the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased’.
What a strikingly vivid and dramatic scene – it’s easy
to imagine being there, isn’t it?
Matthew describes an event – an epiphany - in which God reveals Jesus to
be his Son and anoints him with his Spirit.
The same epiphany, bringing together Jesus at his
baptism, the dove and a voice from heaven, is also described by Mark, Luke and
John. It must have been part of the common tradition of the earliest Christians
on which Matthew and the other evangelists drew when writing their gospels.
For Christians by the 4th Century these baptism
passages were seen as supporting and illustrating the doctrine of the Trinity,
the idea that the one God consists of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
They are the only passages in the NT where we encounter all three persons together
at the same time, in the same place.
Matthew would have known the book of Isaiah well, like
all educated Jews of his time. He would have seen the parallels with today’s OT
reading (Isaiah 42:1-9), in which God declares, ‘Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my
chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him’.
But there is this crucial difference: for Isaiah, God identifies his chosen one
as just a servant; whereas for Matthew, God identifies Jesus as his beloved Son.
What did John the Baptist make of Jesus’s baptism?
John recognised Jesus when he came to ask for baptism
- not surprisingly since they were cousins close in age. John says to Jesus, ‘I need to be
baptised by you, and do you come to me?’
What’s going on here?
John proclaimed ‘a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’
(Mark 1:4). He called people to repent, and baptised them as a sign that God
forgave their sins. John knew that he needed baptism, repentance and
forgiveness himself. But I think he must have believed that Jesus was such a
good and holy man that he had no need of baptism, repentance and forgiveness.
John would also have recalled Isaiah’s description of
God’s chosen servant in today’s reading, ‘He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard
in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he
will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint
or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth.’ Perhaps
John recognised the Jesus he knew in Isaiah’s description - softly spoken,
filled with compassion for the damaged and the weak, yet determined and
passionate for justice.
Despite John’s reluctance to baptise him, Jesus insists,
and John consents. Then John experiences the epiphany described by Matthew: ‘When Jesus had been baptised, just as he came up from
the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him’ – that is, to
John – ‘and (John) saw the Spirit of God descending
like a dove and alighting on (Jesus). And a voice from heaven said, “This is
my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased”.’
Only then does John realise the full
truth, that his cousin Jesus is the promised Messiah, the incarnate Son of God,
not just a remarkably holy man.
I wonder what his baptism meant for Jesus himself.
Jesus very deliberately chooses to ask
John for baptism, and insists on it – it must have been very important for him.
Matthew gives us a clue when he records
Jesus saying to John, ‘it is proper for
us in this way to fulfil all righteousness’. For Jews, righteousness meant obeying God’s law and
doing God’s will. Jesus clearly believes God wishes him to be baptised by John.
But for what purpose?
Perhaps God wanted Jesus to seek John’s baptism
at the very start of his ministry in order to demonstrate publicly that Jesus
was God’s incarnate Son, not just a good man like Isaiah’s servant. This was
certainly the effect on John. But Jesus himself surely also needed to be
certain who he was before beginning his ministry. Is it possible this is also the
very moment when Jesus finally understands that he is Christ the Messiah, the
Son of God?
Whatever the truth of this, Jesus clearly
associates himself quite deliberately with John’s proclamation, ‘Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven has come near’ (Matt
3:2) - he went on to proclaim it in his own ministry (Matt 4:17). And I like to
think that Jesus chose to be baptised by John because he wanted to show his solidarity
with sinful human beings like you and me, who desperately need to repent and be
forgiven, even if he had no such need himself.
So what does Jesus’s baptism mean to you and me, 2000
years on?
Well, no doubt there are many answers. But
this one strikes me.
The epiphany at the baptism of Jesus marks
a great new insight into the nature of God as the Trinity of Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. As God says through Isaiah, ‘See the former things have come to
pass, and new things I now declare’.
Before it, Jewish religious thinkers could
only conceive of the relationship between God and a human being as that between
a remote master and a terrified servant. After it, Christians could see the
relationship as one in which God takes our human nature upon himself, to be incarnate
as a human being, like you or me.
Everything is changed, everything is made
new. God ceases to be a remote figure and we are no longer afraid. God comes
near to us, as close to us as our own skin. We feel his presence to be like a
loving Father, to be like Jesus his Son, our friend and brother, to be like the
Holy Spirit which inspires all that is good and true in us.
Let us thank God for Jesus’s baptism, most
particularly for the insight it gives us into God’s intimate and loving nature
as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
I finish in prayer with a Collect of the Word:
Almighty God,
who anointed Jesus at his baptism with the Holy Spirit
and revealed him as your beloved Son:
inspire us, your children,
who are born of water and the Spirit,
to surrender our lives to your service,
that we may rejoice to be called your children;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
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