The Baptism of Christ, 12 January 2025
Readings: Is. 43.1-7; Acts 8.14-17; Lk. 3. 15-17, 21-22
Theme: When you pass through the waters
It is often good to ask a question because it helps us to better understand something. The question that I would like to pose at the feast of the baptism of Jesus is, why does Jesus get baptized? Surely, the one who is sinless does not need to have his sins washed away! This is a good question to pose to our readings this morning on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord because it allows us to dispel a suspicion that we might have that God has got this one wrong, that God might have over-egged the pudding a little here! So, why does Jesus get baptized?
This year the theme of our sermons is walking through the gospel of St Luke. Luke, as with the other gospel writers, is re-reading the story of Israel in the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus as it was experienced in the community of the early Christians. He thus re-reads the story of Israel’s passing through the waters of the red sea, as narrated by Exodus 14. 19-31, when Moses stretches out his hand to part the waters allowing their safe passage out of Israel, as related to Jesus in some way. But what way? How does Jesus relate to the passage of the Israelites through the red sea?
The clue is given in our first reading today from the prophet Isaiah. Here Isaiah relates just how the Lord will be with his people when they pass through the waters; just how, when they pass through the fire, they shall not be consumed in its flames. They will neither be drowned nor burnt, because the Lord will be with them to protect them; just as he had protected Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego before the punishment of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II as they walked around in the fiery furnace in the Book of Daniel 3. 16-30, when the flames rose and consumed all but them. These symbols of water and fire are symbols of purification. When we are baptized, we are washed clean of our sins by the blood of the Lamb. When Jesus is baptized, the other dimension of this symbol is to the fore. That is to say, baptism, or baptidzeo in the original Greek language, literally means to be submerged, to be buried under water, or as we would say, drowned. Jesus is drowned on our behalf! That is to say, he takes one for the team, as our American friends might say. The ‘one’ he takes for the team is death. He takes death and replaces it with life. The team, in this analogy, is the church. He gives to the church the life which is the life of God: eternal life which no fire can burn and no water can drown. This is why Jesus is baptized. He is baptized because in being drowned for us, he stops us having to be drowned.
But why should we have to be drowned? Isn’t that the image of a cruel God who would do this to us? No. It is the consequence of human disobedience and sin which has brought this drowning in death upon humanity. Our disobedience has consequences and our misuse of the gift of freewill has meant that we have drowned ourselves in death; in the waters of the red sea and in the flames of the Babylonian furnace. But God has reached out his holy arm, as the new Moses, Jesus, to part the waters of death, so that in the passing through the waters of our baptism, we will pass from death to life, a passing from Egypt to the new holy land of the kingdom of God.
To ask the question, why did Jesus have to be baptized?, we are really asking the Christmas question; namely, why did God become human? The answer is, of course, so that human beings might once again share in the divine life of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is why, at the baptism of the Lord, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus and the voice of the Father recognizes Jesus as his only Son, the beloved. In other words, just as the Holy Trinity is manifested at the baptism of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, so too at our baptisms are we baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Our baptisms are the entry into the life of the Holy Trinity through the death and resurrection of the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit who allows us to hear and understand the meaning of the words of the Father that, Jesus is the Son.
The death, the drowning that we incur, when we are baptized is thus an entry into the waters of purification which have been poured out through grace by the death of the Son. The Son, Jesus, is the one who reaches out his holy arm and parts the waters of the red sea for us, so that we may cross from the shore of death to the promised land of eternal life. But for this to happen, we need to enter into the death of the Son if we are to share in his resurrection.
Baptism is not cheap. It is an acknowledgement of the price of our sin in the death of the Lord and so the debt we owe to God is one which only God, himself can pay. The price was his own death on the cross, and that is why Jesus gets baptized in the river Jordan by John the Baptist because this is Jesus’s saying ‘yes’ to the Father. A ‘yes’, a ‘fiat’, echoed in the response of his mother Mary to the annunciation made by the angel Gabriel that she will bear a child and he will be the saviour of the world according to the will of the Father that these things should come to pass.
In these Christmas and epiphany narratives, we see the meeting of God and humanity in the personal stories of Jesus and Mary; stories in which the disobedience of Adam and Eve are substituted by the obedience of Mary and Jesus. Humanity and divinity say ‘yes’ in both of them and that is why in the baptism of Jesus we may pass through the waters and not be overwhelmed. The baptism of Jesus is thus the transforming of our own stories, in which rather than ending in death, we end in the hope of the resurrection.
Happy Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.