Luke 3:15-16; 21-22
The accounts of the
baptism of Jesus in Matthew, Mark and Luke are very similar. There
is no account in John. Matthew has a little dialogue between John
and Jesus; John says, “I should be baptized by you” and Jesus
replies, “let it be so for now, for it is proper for us in this way
to fulfill all righteousness.” Now I have trouble with
understanding Jesus’ answer to John, so I looked up several other
translations of this passage. IN one, Jesus says, “do it, because
God is finally putting things right beginning with this baptism.”
another says “It’s the right thing to do. You need to baptize me
to complete God’s saving plan.” I’m not sure those alternate
translations help much. Jesus is baptized, the Spirit descends in
the form of a dove, and God’s voice is heard saying “This is my
beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”
Down through the
ages, this short account has raised many questions and fed a few
heresies as well. If Jesus was sinless, why did he have to get
baptized? After all, John’s baptism was a baptism signifying
repentance. What did Jesus have to repent about? Or is Jesus just
going through the motions, pretending to repent? That doesn’t
seem right, does it? And we have the Spirit descending like a dove.
Although the gospel of John doesn’t have an account of the baptism,
John says “I saw the Spirit descend upon him like a dove, and the
one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “The one whom you
see the spirit descend upon and remain is the one who will baptize
with the Holy Spirit.” Does this mean that Jesus received the Holy
Spirit at this moment? And was Jesus always the “beloved Son”
and the Father is now recognizing this, or is there a connection
between the baptism, the Spirit, and the recognition? There have
been heretics down through the ages that have pointed to this passage
and concluded that Jesus was just a human being who had been singled
out by God. In any event, it’s important to understand this
passage and see how it might apply to you and I.
The baptism of
Jesus, though, is intimately related to our own salvation, so it’s
worth a little time to break down what is going on here. First, we
think of repentance as meaning that we are sorry for our sins. But
that isn’t why John was baptizing nor why we are baptized. John’s
baptism symbolized being born again; you would be immersed in the
water and burst out, none of this pouring water over the head. Being
born again meant that you were starting over, that you were seeing
things with new eyes, that you wanted to personally recommit yourself
to the ideals of your ancestors, who in that very spot had been led
by Joshua from the desert to the promised land. John, after all, is
preparing a new Israel to be led by a new Moses, to be ruled by a new
David.
Jesus is baptized
because he has entered into a union with this new people; as John
says in his gospel, “the word became flesh and dwelt among us”,
or as another translation puts it, “pitched his tent with us”.
Saint Paul echos this when he says, “He was in the form of God but
did not see equality with God something to be grasped at; rather, he
took the form of a slave...” Jesus, the Son of the Father from all
eternity, in intimate union with the Holy Spirit from before time
began, has become one of us, like us in all things but sin. Jesus
had to be toilet trained, learn to walk and talk and all the other
things every human being must go through. His identification with us
was complete. His humanity is our humanity. And when the Father
sends the Spirit in the form of a dove, it is our humanity which
receives the Spirit; it is our humanity which becomes capable of the
Spirit living in us, praying in us, finishing the work that Jesus
began as a human being – the creation and building up of God’s
kingdom on earth.
John’s baptism
was only a symbol; later Jesus will tell his apostles to baptize all
nations; Ananias will baptize Paul and Philip will baptize an
Ethiopian eunuch and Peter will order the household of Cornelius the
centurion to be baptized. Baptism is no longer a symbol, it is a
reality. Paul says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been
baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were
buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might
walk in newness of life.”
Our Church teaches
that with baptism we become new creatures and we are sinless at that
point not because we are forgiven but because we are brand new in the
eyes of God. And at that moment the Holy Spirit begins to live in us
in a special way, giving us the theological virtues of faith –
which makes it possible for us to believe what God has revealed about
himself through scripture and the Church; hope, which gives us the
power to desire heaven and to place our trust in Christ’s promises,
and to rely on the Holy Spirit instead of our own powers; and charity
– which gives us the power to love God with all our beings and love
our neighbor as ourselves. Notice that these virtues are potentials.
Like anything, if we don’t exercise them, they won’t be worth
much; but if we do, we become saints.
And all this is
possible because Jesus, the only begotten son of the Father, became
human, and received the Holy Spirit as a human being in John’s
baptism. The very first sacramental baptism was the baptism of
Jesus, at which time God made it possible for anyone who shared
Jesus’ humanity to share his divinity as well. And before Jesus
performed a single miracle or preached a single sermon or healed a
single sick person, the moment he was baptized was the moment the
Father proclaimed him the beloved Son in whom He was well pleased.
And think about this: At the moment of our baptism God proclaims this
about us. As John said in his first letter “we love God because he
first loved us.”
When a person is
born and placed in the arms of his or her mother, it’s normal for
th4 mother to feel love at that moment. And when you and I are
baptized, God loves us before we’ve done anything.
