Baptism of Our Lord

Jesus was just Joseph and Mary’s boy, as far as most people knew. A carpenter from a nowhere town. At this point in his early 30’s, he hadn’t done anything particularly remarkable. No teenage miracles. No Facebook following or any sort of disciples.

Everyone had been wondering and hoping if John the Baptist was the Messiah perhaps, but now he is in prison, not even on the scene when Jesus appears. John’s message of repentance and forgiveness and calling out King Herod had landed him in jail. He had said there was one who is to come, one much greater than he who will not just immerse you in water but with some sort of fire.

When Jesus actually arrives on scene, the gospel of Luke gives us few details. If you blink, you miss it. “Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying.” That’s it. Jesus is lumped in with the crowd, with every other person from everywhere.

Jesus gets baptized also it says, but if baptism is about forgiveness and repentance, then why does Jesus do it?Jesus isn’t an also. He is the exception. He could have come and taken over, but instead the Son of God gets in line with everyone else.

As Robert Brearley says, “According to Luke, all we know about the baptism of Jesus is that it was with “all the people”—but maybe that is what the church has sometimes forgotten. ... Jesus simply got in line with everyone who had been broken by the “wear and tear” of this selfish world and had all but given up on themselves and their God. When the line of downtrodden and sin-sick people formed in hopes of new beginnings through a return to God, Jesus joined them. At his baptism, he identified with the damaged and broken people who needed God.”

Baptism doesn’t separate us off, rather it joins us and unites us with the body of Christ.

But water and relationships can make a splash. Kinda like instead of a pristine snow day, you end up with a bunch of muddy water.

Rowan Williams former Archbishop of Canterbury) shares this about baptism:

baptism means being with Jesus ‘in the depths’: the depths of human need, including the depths of our own selves in their need—but also in the depth of God’s love; in the depth where the Spirit is re-creating and refreshing human life as God meant it to be.

If all this is correct, baptism does not confer on us a status that marks us off from everybody else.... but to claim a new level of solidarity with other people. It is to accept that to be a Christian is to be affected—by the mess of humanity....

To put it another way, you don’t go down into the waters of the Jordan without stirring up a great deal of mud!”

The incarnation, God with us, enters humanity fully, from the dirt of the stable to the mud of the Jordan.

David Lose says sometimes “we can easily slip into thinking that God forgives us in order that we can be named, claimed, and called God’s children. But I don’t think that’s accurate at all. God forgives us not to make us God’s children but because we already are God’s children. Forgiveness is a result of God’s love for us, not a condition of that love.”

Jesus gets in line.

What does it mean to have God in line with you ? Right there with you in your waiting, in your hoping, in your wondering?

No sooner is he in line and baptized and then praying when “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.”

Jesus is in prayer when he receives this affirmation. In the gospel of Luke, prayer is Jesus’s primary posture in which he remembers who and whose he is. This is where Jesus hears this You are my Son. You. Joseph and Mary’s boy now gets a “you are my son.” Suddenly Jesus’s relationship to God is made clear. A divine answer is given to the expectant hope of those being baptized, wondering in their hearts “are you the one?” Jesus gets in line with everyone else and at this moment God says, “you.” God marks the onset of Jesus’s ministry with this “you.”

This isn’t just any you.

This is the you of being known, being seen, being claimed, and being loved.

Karoline Lewis says “Never underestimate the power of “you,” especially in the second person singular. We know how “you” feels. Like you are the only person in the world. Like someone is paying attention. Like someone means it when they say.”

I know you.

I love you.

I believe in you.

I have called you by name. You are mine.

Karoline says the “you” to Jesus heralds the “you” that God, in Jesus, says to all persons. Those persons we don’t see, easily pass by, and overlook. Those persons we don’t want to see....To hear “you” is to be regarded, to be favored by God. That’s what “you” should feel like.”

Are there people that you’d rather pass by, overlook, or not spend a lot of time talking to? I was making some hospital visits this past week and as I came across different individuals I would look at them and pray “Lord, help me to see this person through your eyes, the lens of the holy you..”

You in the icu

You who are trying to make small talk but struggle to put the right words together.

You preparing to birth a child

You with your mind in agony

You feeling alone

You a woman tired of being in and out of the hospital all the time.

But in order to hear the you that God has for us, we have to let go of all the other you’s we give ourselves.

I’ve recently been watching Anne with an E on Netflix because Anne of Green Gables was one of my favorite books as a young girl. Anne is an orphan and on her 16th birthday is preparing to go on a search for information about her birth parents. One of her caretakers, Matthew, gives her a charm bracelet. He says this is for “all the Annes you will become, but this hat, this here is to remind you of the original Anne. And that no matter what happens, you are enough just as you are.”

Baptism is God saying you are enough, just as you are. I have called you by name. You are mine.