As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 18So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. 19But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, 20added to them all by shutting up John in prison.
21Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22and 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.”
Today is the day we remember the baptism of Jesus though, sadly, we have no other baptism to celebrate in church today!
We do quite a lot of baptisms in this parish but it seems to me that the celebration of these baptisms almost never fits in neatly with the theme of the particular Sunday on which the baptism takes place!
Sex and violence have been our regular baptismal Sunday themes here according to my memory! I think the last time we had a baptism here we were either reading from the Song of Songs or about Salome dancing before Herod and the subsequent beheading of John the Baptist – not totally inappropriate, some might argue, but hardly family-friendly either!
These post-Christmas weeks, at any rate, seem like the perfect time to celebrate baptisms as we remember the birth of Jesus, followed by the childhood of Jesus and now the baptism of Jesus. These are the ‘suffer the little children to come to me’ weeks of the ecclesiastical year, and yet where are the little ones now? I suppose they’re enjoying their school holidays.
As I say, we celebrate a lot of baptisms here, and yet I find that there is one question that I often put to the parents of a child who is to be baptised that is almost always an awkward question, and it’s a question that I find as awkward today as I did when I first started baptising children half a lifetime ago. And that question is ‘why do you want to be baptised?’
It’s a question I don’t ask at all sometimes because it just makes the baptismal family feel too uncomfortable, as if I’m going to send them away if they don’t have a good enough answer, which is never my style. If you know me at all you know that my rule for admission to baptism is very simple: if they move, baptise them: If they don’t, bury them!’ In other words, if you’re alive, you qualify!
Even so, I do wonder in many cases why people want their children baptised. Baptism is, if nothing else, the formal membership ceremony of the church. And when you know you’re dealing with parents who have no interest whatsoever in becoming members of the church, ‘why do you want to be baptised?’
Well, given that I can’t interrogate any parents with this question this morning I thought I’d do the next best thing and interrogate the Gospel passage itself. Indeed, I thought I would dare to ask the Lord Jesus Himself, ‘why did You want to be baptised?’
And I can tell you that the answer to that question is not immediately obvious, though I think we can be pretty certain that Jesus would not have answered that question in the way in which many parents have answered me – namely, that ‘I thought it was about time I got myself done’.
There was no ‘getting yourself done’ in those days. Not only was there no membership ceremony for the church, there was no church, and indeed the whole practice of baptism was something rather new and unusual! What was John doing, standing in the Jordan River, pouring water over people’s heads? It is not immediately obvious!
We are told that John preached “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), and so we assume that whatever ‘baptism’ means it has something to do with ‘repentance’, and that the water must symbolising the washing away of sin.
That sounds plausible enough, though one thing I do remember being pointed out to me by the late Broughton Knox was that of the twenty-four references to baptism in the New Testament, the majority of these don’t make any direct reference to water at all! Indeed, when Jesus spoke of baptism, He was generally talking about His death!
Baptism, in that sense in which Jesus used the word, was clearly something He had to go through, but it had nothing to do with washing.
What is baptism about then? If we can strip away our preconceptions for a moment and peel back the whole history of tradition that has grown up around the practice of baptism, what did that ancient rite mean when it was first practiced?
The immediate thing that came to mind for me when I pondered this question was to reflect on water-baptism alongside other traditional initiation rites.
I appreciate that our culture has pretty much done away with initiation rites, but I’m currently working my way through a fantastic book by Richard Rohr (the great Franciscan Friar) that looks at traditional initiation rites for men across various cultures, and Rohr, who is a great believer in the value of such rites in helping young people make the transition into adulthood, sees almost all of these traditional initiation rites as being a means by which the adult community passes on to its young five pieces of communal wisdom – five ‘gifts’ as he calls them, which the young people must accept and understand before they can be recognised as adults.
As I’m sure you will be curious to know what these five gifts are, I will tell you:
- That life is hard
- That you are no more important than anybody else
- That your life is not about you
- That you are not in control of your destiny
- That you are going to die
These might not immediately appear to be ‘gifts’, but Rohr makes a good case for suggesting that these are great truths that need to be embraced and, more specifically, that they need to be embraced by our young people before they can make any significant contribution as adults.
And so traditional initiation rituals push young people through a process of discipline and struggle – normally involved in battling the elements, putting their lives at risk, and enduring intense pain – to the point where they can absorb these great truths and can accept the responsibilities of adulthood.
Rohr mentions one workshop he took that stood out for me. It took place in central Australia at a sacred Aboriginal site, where, when the young people were successfully initiated, they were given access to an ancient quarry where they were allowed to fashion themselves an axe out of sacred stone. They would then take that axe back into their community as a symbol of their adulthood.
Rohr notes that this practice came to a crashing halt when the white man came, as the while people handed out axes to everyone, regardless of whether they had earned them through the process of initiation or not! This, Rohr suggested, is similar to the ongoing practice of white people, where we give the keys to our car to our teenagers long before they have learnt to handle the destructive power that is being placed in their hands!
I find Rohr’s discussion of initiation rites to be full of insight and value, and I am not against the idea of structuring our Confirmation process around a similar pattern of gruelling initiation if parents agree (with our young people perhaps having to withstand three rounds in the boxing ring before they can be brought before the bishop) and yet I have come to the conclusion that traditional initiation rites and the traditional rite of baptism really have nothing to do with each other!
For one thing, baptism is not a ritual involving pain (unless the water is especially cold). At any rate, it is not a graduation in any sense of the word. There is no indication in any of the references to water-baptism in the New Testament that the candidates had to prove anything before being immersed. They didn’t have to pass any tests. They didn’t have to battle wild animals. They didn’t even have to stand up to three rounds in the ring. All they had to do, it seems, was to turn up! The gruelling process of initiation, if there was one, came after the baptism and not before!
This was certainly the case with Jesus. You find in all the Gospel accounts that the baptism of Jesus was immediately followed by His experience of temptation and testing in the wilderness. This, if you like, was the ‘initiation’ of Jesus, but it comes after His baptism and not before, which pushes us back to the question, ‘why did He want to be baptised?’ Why baptism? What relevance did this ritual have to the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry?
My second line of thought was that maybe it was all about Jesus’ relationship with his cousin, John.
We know that Jesus had great respect for John. “No man born of woman was greater than John”, He said (Matthew 11:11). Perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered whether John was baptising people or buying them drinks. Jesus just wanted to be a part of what John was doing and so affirm him in his mission and ministry. Was that what Jesus’ baptism was all about?
The answer to that question is almost certainly ‘NO’, and this is where Luke’s account of the baptism is particularly helpful.
In Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism it would appear that John isn’t actually present when Jesus gets baptised. It would appear indeed that somebody else baptised Him!
Now I appreciate that other Gospel accounts do say that John baptised Jesus and so I assume that this was how it happened, but read through Luke’s account and it appears that John is in prison by the time Jesus gets baptised.
Certainly the opening verses of Luke chapter three are all about John, but then he suddenly disappears just before the account of Jesus’ baptism! At the very least we must say that John is not a central figure in Luke’s account of the baptism of Jesus, and indeed, while it is mentioned that Jesus was baptised alongside other people, Luke’s account focuses on Jesus alone.
There is a dove that descends and lands on Jesus and nobody else, and the voice that comes from Heaven speaks in the second-person – “You are my beloved Son”. It is all about Jesus, or rather, it is all about Jesus and the Spirit of God, and this, I think, is what the baptism of Jesus is really all about according to St Luke – it is all about the connection that takes place between Jesus and the Spirit of God.
If you’re familiar with the Gospel of Luke as a whole, this should come as no surprise for the whole Gospel is all about Jesus and the Spirit of God.
The Gospel begins with Mary being told that “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” (1:35) as the birth of Jesus is predicted. This same spirit of God then inspires Mary to sing (1:46ff) and the elderly Zechariah to prophesy (1:67ff). This same Spirit will drive Jesus out into the wilderness and (4:1) and ‘empower’ Him in His ministry (4:14).
This is really the whole story of the ministry of Jesus, particularly as outlined in the Gospel of Luke – it’s all about Jesus and the Spirit of God – and the baptism of Jesus is certainly all about Jesus and the Spirit of God. There is a point of connection happening there. That point of connection, as we see later, was a point of commissioning and empowerment, but those details are hidden during the baptism itself. They are part of a private dynamic between Jesus and the Spirit of God.
And so I think our question of Jesus – ‘Why were you baptised?’ – is indeed answered here in Luke’s Gospel. Why were you baptised, Jesus? “Because I needed to connect with the Spirit of God”.
And I think this is why we baptise our children too – because we want to connect them to the Spirit of God. Indeed, I believe that this is the purpose of all of the sacraments of the Church. They connect us to the Spirit of God!
When we baptise our children we pray, “Lord God our Father … we thank you that you have been pleased to give this child new birth with your Holy Spirit”.
When the bishop confirms these same children the bishop prays, “Strengthen, Lord, your servant with your Holy Spirit.”
When I was ordained a priest the bishop prayed over me, “Receive the Holy Spirit for the office and work of a Priest in the church of God”.
When a bishop is consecrated, that bishop is likewise prayed over: “Receive the Holy Spirit for the office and work of a bishop…”
And when we take the Eucharist together each week we pray, “Fill us with your Spirit so that we might follow Jesus in all we do and say” as we “feed on Him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving”.
It’s all about connecting with the Spirit of God because, in the end, that is what the life of faith is all about! It’s all about connecting with the Spirit of God.
We might like to think it’s about self-discipline and moral effort and about being the type of person that doesn’t smoke, drink or chew or go with girls who do but it is not! It’s about connecting with the Spirit of God.
And we might think it’s about spiritual achievements through which we earn the favour of God and buy ourselves a place in Heaven for the hereafter but it is NOT! It’s about connecting with the Spirit of God.
And we might think it’s all about inclusion and community and love and self-sacrifice, and indeed it is about all those things BUT first and foremost it is about connecting with the Spirit of God through whom all those things become possible!
It’s all about connecting! First and foremost, it’s all about connecting. And baptism was a point of connection for Jesus, as it is for us.
Apparently Martin Luther (the great 16th century reformer), who struggled with depression throughout his life, when he was at his lowest ebbs of self-doubt and struggle would shout out loud at the darkness “Baptismus Sum” (I am baptised)!
Let that be our cry this morning! We struggle. We are confused. We feel alone. Oftentimes we feel overwhelmed. And yet we are connected to the Spirit of God! Baptismus sumus! We are baptised! Amen!
First preached by Father Dave at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill on January 13, 2013.
To download or hear the audio version of the sermon click here.
To watch or share the video version of the sermon click here.
Rev. David B. Smith
Parish priest, community worker,
martial arts master, pro boxer,
author, father of four.
With all due respect, baptism was not something new to the Jews. It was practiced particularly among the Essenes, a sect some believe the family of Jesus was a part of, and is a ritual that appears to predate Judaism.
This is an interesting article on Jewish baptism: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2456-baptism
Regardless though, the message is still perfectly on target, it being about connecting with the Spirit of God.
Just for the record, I’ve never been baptized myself. I’ve decided to hold out for the one by Fire. 🙂
Hi Arlene,
I appreciate the link to the article on baptism very much. It’s the most comprehensive material I’ve read on the subject. Even so, I think the links made between the practice of baptism and Levitical laws of purification are tenuous at best, and indeed the author concludes by admitting “The real significance of the rite of Baptism can not be derived from the Levitical law; but it appears to have had its origin in Babylonian or ancient Semitic practise”
In other words, there is a lot of guesswork involved in trying to establish the origins of the practice of baptism. Certainly I think the link to the ceremonial washing practices by the Essenes is plausible, just as it is plausible that John the Baptist (appearing ‘in the desert’ as he did) was at one stage linked to the Essenes. Even so, it is impossible to have any assurity about any of this.
For the simple truth is that the word ‘baptism’ never occurs in the Hebrew Bible, and the way John practiced the rite and what he meant by it are still largely open to interpretation.
I know my Baptist friends will disagree with this as they put great stock in the necessity of a confession of faith preceding full immersion. The truth is though that we don’t know whether any such confession was required and the earliest pictures drawn of John have him pouring water over people’s heads rather than immersing them!
My guess is that if it was important to the New Testament writers for us to know these details they would have supplied them.
Dave