January 12, 2020
/The Baptism of Our Lord
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
I want to focus on someone we rarely talk about in the Episcopal Church: the Holy Spirit. To be fair, it is not just an Episcopal problem. The Holy Spirit has long been thought of as the “forgotten third” of the Trinity. Christians love to talk about the Father and the Son, but we can sometimes get squeamish when mention of the Holy Spirit comes up. Our lessons today each give pride of place to the Spirit in the life of Jesus, whose baptism we remember today.
John was baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins. He was inviting people to repent and turn to God, and washing them in the Jordan river of their past sins and failures in order for them to live new lives. Baptism is for sinners and John, it seems, doesn’t think Jesus qualifies. Jesus should be baptizing John, not the other way around. But Jesus is not deterred, he insists. So, he’s baptized, and as we heard the skies open, God announces Jesus as his son, his beloved, with whom he is well pleased, and the Spirit alights on Jesus.
Our readings from Acts and Isaiah fill out the scene at the baptism. The prophet Isaiah speaks of the servant of God upon whom God has put his Spirit in order that he might bring forth justice. While Peter in Acts preaches to Cornelius and his household, telling them that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power after the baptism of John. Both these lessons urge us to see what’s happening in Matthew as a decisive, important moment in the life of Christ.
Some have interpreted Jesus’ baptism as him just setting an example or as a kind of pre-figuring of the cross and resurrection. All this may be true, but it fails to take seriously what’s going on. Jesus isn’t just setting an example, he’s not just providing a template for what a sacrament will later look like, and he’s not just foreshadowing the end of the story. No, Jesus begins his public ministry today, Jesus is revealed to be the Son of God by the voice of the Father, and Jesus is equipped by the Holy Spirit to live out his human life in the power of the Spirit. Today, Jesus receives the Spirit in his flesh, in his human nature, and this Spirit is what enables Jesus Christ to do all those things that make his reputation spread. The healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, the casting out of demons, Jesus does these things through the power of the Holy Spirit, which he received at baptism.
Jesus was fully God, and fully human. In the baptism of Jesus we see his humanity on full display. Jesus’ humanity, which is the humanity of God, is anointed by the Holy Spirit so that his humanity might be a conduit of the grace and power of God. The Word of God takes on human nature and the Spirit of God empowers that human nature for its mission. All of this is done for the purpose of the glory of God. At the baptism of Jesus we see Son, Spirit, and Father coming together, we peek into the heart of God: we see the Spirit resting on the Son in order to empower the Son to do the work of the Father. Just after the scene in our lesson today, we hear how the Spirit led Jesus up from the Jordan to the wilderness, where he is tempted. Baptism, anointing, and out into the wilderness to begin his ministry.
All this happens, keep in mind, at the baptism of John, at Jesus’ participation in this washing away of sin that many have shared in. Jesus himself didn’t need this baptism, Jesus, as the letter to the Hebrews tells us, is without sin. Nonetheless, he chose to share in something that would identify him with sinners, that would put him in solidarity with sinners. Jesus chose to stand in the place sinners stood, to share in their death to sin. Jesus stood with sinners, so that we sinners might stand with him. Jesus enters John’s baptism for the forgiveness of sin and transforms it. It becomes the site of his commissioning, of his sending out, of his anointing, of his empowering for ministry. Baptism is no longer about washing away out past, it is about being anointed for our future.
In just a few minutes, we will reaffirm our baptismal vows, as is traditional on the feast of Jesus’ baptism. These vows are beautiful and quite powerful, but they can obscure the deeper reality, I think, of what happens in baptism. Yes promises are made by us, but more than that promises have been made by God! In baptism, God has promised to wash away our sins, to wash away our allegiance to ways of life that are sinful and fallen, and to equip up with his Spirit to live in a new way, as a new people. In baptism, we turn our back on a world of death, and we are given God’s Holy Spirit to keep our backs turned, to live into the promises we have made – or that have been made on our behalf.
Jesus’ own life bears witness to the kind of new reality that is available to us in the power of the Spirit. We too, in virtue of our baptism, have been given gifts that testify to God’s Kingdom. This is key: Jesus’ acts of power weren’t about offering proof that he was god, they were about bearing witness to the inbreaking of God’s reign. You and I have been given the Spirit of God in our baptism for the same purpose. We are called to be the conduits of the grace and power of God in our world, making known through the acts and movements of the Spirit that God’s kingdom is breaking in, that it’s coming to bear on our every day lives. Sometimes, this may mean that the dead are raised! Other times, it may mean that someone who was unforgivable is forgiven. Both are miraculous, and both are possible because of the Spirit.
Jesus’ baptism shows us that Jesus is fully human, that he, like us, was anointed by the Spirit for mission in the world. We have not been given the Spirit of God to sit at home and twiddle our thumbs! We’ve been given the Spirit of God to go boldly out into the world, responding to the evil and sin all around us and within us, with the good news that sin and death have been dethroned, that they are no more. Our baptism, like Jesus’ baptism, has empowered us to perform might acts of power that make known in our world that God is moving, that God is creating, that God is declaring new things. Amen.