Isaiah 43:1-7
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

God be in my words and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our understanding. Amen.

This Sunday, the First Sunday after the Epiphany, we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord. As we read the various Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Baptism, one thing that strikes me is the way that all the Gospel writers seemed to feel a need to deal with John the Baptist and his relationship with Jesus. In each of the three Synoptic accounts (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), John says something about “the one who is more powerful than I is coming…” — a reference intended to dispel the idea that John, himself, might be the Messiah; and to drive the point home even more clearly, John goes on to talk about the more powerful Baptism the more powerful one will offer. In Mark’s Gospel, it is that the one who is to come will baptize with the Holy Spirit; in Matthew’s and Luke’s, this is amplified to include fire, and some very apocalyptic imagery about winnowing forks, wheat, chaff, and unquenchable fire. By the time the Gospel of John is written, the scene is expanded still further. John the Baptist is asked, directly, by the priests and Levites sent to check him out, whether or not he is the Messiah; and he responds that he is not. Further, while he also talks about the one who is coming after, in the Fourth Gospel, John the Baptist makes no bones about who Jesus is. He calls Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” and he describes the purpose of his own ministry of preparation in these words: “…I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he [Jesus] might be revealed to Israel. The Fourth Gospel’s account ends with John the Baptist declaring: “I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

This morning’s account, from Luke’s Gospel, doesn’t go this far; but even the Synoptic Gospel writers felt the need to emphasize the power of the event, itself. The author of Luke’s Gospel writes: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and 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.’” In Mark’s account, it’s only Jesus who sees the heavens opened: “And just as he was coming up from the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like of dove. And a voice came from heaven…” It’s also interesting to note that in Mark’s account, the spirit is “like a dove,” while in Luke’s, it is “in bodily form like a dove.” In Matthew’s Gospel, there is an interchange between Jesus and John, before the Baptism, in which John tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized by saying: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” The revelation following the Baptism in Matthew’s Gospel also seems to be for Jesus alone: “…just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” It’s curious to notice that, while Mark and Luke both have the voice from heaven addressing Jesus directly: “You are my Son, the Beloved…”, Matthew makes this a more general pronouncement: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Obviously, we can’t know what really happened at the actual Baptism event. We can see, and trace — at least to some degree — the evolution of the theological significance of the Baptism, and of Jesus’ relationship to John the Baptist. The progression from private revelation to public testimony is interesting; by the time of the Fourth Gospel’s writing, the roles of John and Jesus are well established: John, the forerunner; the one who prepares the way; the voice crying in the wilderness — and Jesus, the Messiah. When Jesus was baptized, the people were unsure who was what. John had a large following, and preached the kind of message they expected of a prophet — or of the Messiah. When Jesus came along, too, they were confused. As Luke puts it: “the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah…” Clearly, momentous things were happening, but in the midst of events, it was difficult (perhaps impossible) to predict how history would unfold. Remember, all the Gospel accounts were written after things had come to a conclusion; after the Crucifixion and Resurrection, after the missionary journeys of Paul and the other disciples. Modern scholarship dates the writing of the three Synoptic Gospels between 66 and 85 AD, with Mark and Matthew being the earliest, probably no later than 70 AD; the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, was written around 90 AD. By contrast, the earliest of the Christian letters (I Thessalonians) was written around 50 AD. All this historical information is important because it reminds us that, despite the fact the Gospels are written as direct, immediate accounts of events, they were not written down by eye-witnesses. They reflect the histories, theologies, prejudices, and even conflicts, of the communities for which they were written; they are not objective “newspaper-type” recitals of the events. The way the story is told — what’s included and what’s left out — provides us with layers of meaning beyond the simple exterior of the tale. If we look more deeply into Scripture, we can sometimes reach beyond the shadowy sense of the community for which the stories were written, into a place where we can encounter God. All of Scripture is the story of people of faith encountering God; and though the window that Scripture provides, sometimes we can find new insights, new revelations, new depths to our own relationship to the Divine.

So what do we make, this year, of the Baptism of Christ? In contemplating this question in the light of the readings, I found myself drawn to the short passage from the Acts of the Apostles. Peter and John went to Samaria, to strengthen the faith of the Samaritans who had accepted the message of Christ. Don’t forget that Samaria and Samaritans were not highly regarded by the children of Israel; the fact that the apostles at Jerusalem were willing to send Peter and John to them makes the point that this new community, forming around the Lord Jesus Christ, exhibits an inclusivity and willingness to extend itself toward people who might previously have been excluded. We’re told that the people of Samaria, who had been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, had not yet received the Holy Spirit; and that it was through the intervention of Peter and John — through their touch, as they laid hands upon them — that the gift of the Holy Spirit was conferred. It sounds a little like an early form of Confirmation; the nascent faith of the Samaritans was confirmed and strengthened by the touch of two of the apostles. From this tiny scrap of story, it’s not clear whether this was a private revelation for each of the Samaritan Christians, or a public demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power. But perhaps it doesn’t matter. In the wider context of the 8th chapter of Acts, this piece serves as background for the story of a man (named Simon) who tries to buy the power of God with silver, but for us, hearing this in the context of our celebration today, the implications are much different.

One of the disadvantages of our practice of infant baptism is that most of us don’t remember being baptized. We’ve seen and participated in many baptisms; but we probably don’t remember what we felt and experienced at our own. We may not even recall the particulars of our Confirmation, which has often been treated as a kind of rite of passage, done at the point when a child transitions from attending Sunday School classes to being in “real church” with the adults. But if we are fortunate enough to have vivid recollections of one of these moments — or any other powerful sacramental experience, like marriage, reconciliation, anointing for healing, ordination, or the Eucharist in certain instances — we have grounds for comparison with both the story from Acts and the account of Jesus’ Baptism at the Jordan.

To flesh this out, I need to talk a bit, not about my baptism, which I don’t remember, but about my ordination. Before I was ordained, I had been present at a few ordinations; and since, I have participated in many. There’s something very wonderful and compelling about the spectacle: the sight of the Bishop and a crowd of priests laying hands on the ordinand is powerful; it’s a visible expression of the Apostolic succession; it is an outward, obvious, concrete action that signifies a profound — but usually invisible, or at least subtle — change in the person ordained. To the gathered community, it is a powerful public spectacle; but for myself (and for colleagues to whom I’ve spoken about this), being ordained is a very different experience from the one the congregation or the participants witness. I vividly recall the moment the Bishop and the gathered clergy laid their hands on me. There was a feeling of such profound weight; it wasn’t painful or overwhelming, but it felt so real, as though responsibilities really had weight — or as though the Spirit had a bodily form and it was…heavy enough to feel. And then, when the hands were removed, I felt such incredible lightness; at that moment, I felt like I could fly; I felt utterly transformed, completely changed, and yet, entirely myself. I didn’t hear a voice from heaven, but God was there. I felt God’s presence as unequivocally as one can feel sunshine on one’s face. It’s hard to put such experiences into words, because language seems inadequate for the task. How do we talk about joy, or wonder, or awe, except with those small, inadequate words? How do we explain the really transformative moments of our lives, if we aren’t to resort to extravagant similes or exaggerated metaphors?

Maybe the message in Christ’s Baptism for us, this morning, is that we need to be alert to the transformative moments in our lives; perhaps we shouldn’t be waiting for burning bushes, or bird-shaped visitations from the Holy Spirit, to tell us what to do and how to live out our lives of faith; perhaps our miracles, our moments of revelation, are subtler, harder to express in words, less flamboyant than the things recounted in Scripture — but they are no less powerful, no less important, no less urgent.

We are the Body of Christ, brothers and sisters. We might rather imagine that tasks requiring courage and involving risk will fall to others and not to us — to those who receive visible signs and unambiguous affirmations from heaven — but if we’re honest with ourselves and true to the faith within us, if we hold ourselves open to the challenging call of the Spirit, then I think we may find ourselves drawn into efforts and projects that do, in fact, challenge us and force us to grow into this radical, overwhelming faith we profess. For we have been baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire: not the fire of punishment, but the fire of enthusiasm, of transformation, of warmth and light and power. What remains is for us each to figure out how, in our own lives and circumstances, we are called to nourish the fire within us so that it transforms us into living beacons of the love of Christ in the world.

Let it be so, in the name of Christ, Amen.

Sermon preached by Beth Hilgartner
at St. Barnabas’, Norwich