Baptism of the Lord, 2019

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.