Preached at the Church of the Holy Cross, January 11, 2008. By Father Will Brown
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Happy Epiphany. Last Tuesday was the feast of the Epiphany, and shortly after the Epiphany, within its “octave”, the Church sets before our minds the Baptism of the Lord.
In the Nicene Creed we say that we believe in “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins”. The Church teaches that Jesus had no sin. So why was he baptized? It was not until I was in college that it occurred to me to ask this question. And when I asked it, I was given a rather poor answer by a well-meaning priest, who told me that maybe Jesus didn’t know who he was until his baptism, and that this was kind of his way of figuring things out for himself, a kind of coming-of-age experience.
Part of the problem with this answer is that it ignores the Scriptural data. In St. Matthew’s account of the Lord’s baptism, John the Baptist tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized. John is flabbergasted, and says to Jesus: “I need to be baptized by YOU, and do you come to ME?” (Matt. 3.14). And Jesus answers John: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (v. 15).
The plentitude of God’s righteousness is part and parcel of the manifestation of the Kingdom of God, which as I have said time and again, is Jesus himself . What is happening in the mystery of the Baptism of Jesus, and the reason the Church presents it to us during the Epiphany Octave, is that the identity of Jesus is being disclosed for the first time: it is the beginning of his public life and his public ministry as the Messiah. For when Jesus comes up from the water, “he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice from heaven [saying] “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”
And so Jesus is identified, in the sight of all “the people”, as the plentitude of righteousness and so the fulfillment of God’s promises through the prophets. “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”
In today’s reading from Isaiah, for example, we hear one such prophetic messianic expectation: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him”. And in today’s Psalm we hear another: “He will say to me, ‘You are my Father, my God and the rock of my salvation.’ I will make him my firstborn and higher than the kings of the earth.”
The episode of Jesus’s Baptism is there first of all to bear witness to him as the one of whom Isaiah and the Psalmist and the other prophets were speaking of in hope with respect to God’s promise of deliverance and the establishment of a kingdom of justice and peace. At Jesus’s baptism, he is revealed to be this long-awaited “fulfillment of all righteousness”.
But there is a diachronic dimension to the Lord’s Baptism: It serves as an example for us to imitate. For now, a part of our comportment and conformity to the “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4.13) – a part of our growing into the shape of his life, death, and resurrection, is our going down into the waters of Baptism not merely in obedience to him, but in IMITATION of him.
On an ontological level though, all of this leaves unanswered the conundrum about the purpose of Baptism. If it is FOR the forgiveness of sins, and if Jesus is without sin, then why is he being baptized? Is it merely an example for us, or does it actually DO something? Might it not have been easier for Jesus simply to have said to the disciples, “Look guys; you need to be baptized into my death to be forgiven – I don’t need it, because I’m me, sinless, etc.”
The truth is that there is a paradoxical reversal at work in this mystery, for rather than being purified by the waters of the earth, the Lord is in fact purifying the waters with his body, and making them capable of regeneration. It is the waters of the earth that are receiving baptism at the hands of the Lord, when he goes down into them, not the other way around.
The ancients had seen in the waters’ depths, an only dimly-understood domain of dark power, capable of wrecking ships, drowning men, and flooding entire countries. But from now on, with, through, and in Christ, the waters of the earth will be the condition of possibility for our regeneration and deliverance. Our being “renewed” by the power of God, and capable of communion with him, and so of deliverance and fulfillment.
The Fathers of the Church saw in this mystery the fulfillment of OT prophecies, as for example when the Psalmist speaks of the Lord “dividing the sea” and “shattering the heads of the dragons upon the waters” (Psalm 74.12). This is a prophetic trope that emerges repeatedly in the Old Testament – how “in that day” (cf. Joel 3.18), when God’s righteousness appears, God’s chosen will go down into the waters and fight against and kill the evil that dwells there (cf. e.g. Job. 26.12).
It is as though, in the Baptism of the Lord, God speaks again as he did at the first: “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures” (Gen. 1.20), only now, rather than dolphins and sharks, in Jesus Christ , the waters bring forth sons and daughters.
That is the real truth of Jesus’s baptism: by a kind of spiritual synecdoche, it means that the Lord has entered into his creation, has taken our flesh, brought light to the darkness, wrought healing through weakness, bestowed riches by means of poverty, and brought what was dead to life. The good news of the mystery of the Lord’s baptism is that what hitherto held violent sway over us has now, by and in the power of Christ, been renewed and made into something salutary. So we have no longer to be afraid. Nothing in this world can harm us, but everything – the physical world, our life-circumstances, whatever they are, our enemies, the powers that oppose us and try to drag us down, EVERYTHING has become a means to our salvation in Jesus Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Happy Epiphany. Last Tuesday was the feast of the Epiphany, and shortly after the Epiphany, within its “octave”, the Church sets before our minds the Baptism of the Lord.
In the Nicene Creed we say that we believe in “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins”. The Church teaches that Jesus had no sin. So why was he baptized? It was not until I was in college that it occurred to me to ask this question. And when I asked it, I was given a rather poor answer by a well-meaning priest, who told me that maybe Jesus didn’t know who he was until his baptism, and that this was kind of his way of figuring things out for himself, a kind of coming-of-age experience.
Part of the problem with this answer is that it ignores the Scriptural data. In St. Matthew’s account of the Lord’s baptism, John the Baptist tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized. John is flabbergasted, and says to Jesus: “I need to be baptized by YOU, and do you come to ME?” (Matt. 3.14). And Jesus answers John: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (v. 15).
The plentitude of God’s righteousness is part and parcel of the manifestation of the Kingdom of God, which as I have said time and again, is Jesus himself . What is happening in the mystery of the Baptism of Jesus, and the reason the Church presents it to us during the Epiphany Octave, is that the identity of Jesus is being disclosed for the first time: it is the beginning of his public life and his public ministry as the Messiah. For when Jesus comes up from the water, “he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice from heaven [saying] “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”
And so Jesus is identified, in the sight of all “the people”, as the plentitude of righteousness and so the fulfillment of God’s promises through the prophets. “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”
In today’s reading from Isaiah, for example, we hear one such prophetic messianic expectation: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him”. And in today’s Psalm we hear another: “He will say to me, ‘You are my Father, my God and the rock of my salvation.’ I will make him my firstborn and higher than the kings of the earth.”
The episode of Jesus’s Baptism is there first of all to bear witness to him as the one of whom Isaiah and the Psalmist and the other prophets were speaking of in hope with respect to God’s promise of deliverance and the establishment of a kingdom of justice and peace. At Jesus’s baptism, he is revealed to be this long-awaited “fulfillment of all righteousness”.
But there is a diachronic dimension to the Lord’s Baptism: It serves as an example for us to imitate. For now, a part of our comportment and conformity to the “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4.13) – a part of our growing into the shape of his life, death, and resurrection, is our going down into the waters of Baptism not merely in obedience to him, but in IMITATION of him.
On an ontological level though, all of this leaves unanswered the conundrum about the purpose of Baptism. If it is FOR the forgiveness of sins, and if Jesus is without sin, then why is he being baptized? Is it merely an example for us, or does it actually DO something? Might it not have been easier for Jesus simply to have said to the disciples, “Look guys; you need to be baptized into my death to be forgiven – I don’t need it, because I’m me, sinless, etc.”
The truth is that there is a paradoxical reversal at work in this mystery, for rather than being purified by the waters of the earth, the Lord is in fact purifying the waters with his body, and making them capable of regeneration. It is the waters of the earth that are receiving baptism at the hands of the Lord, when he goes down into them, not the other way around.
The ancients had seen in the waters’ depths, an only dimly-understood domain of dark power, capable of wrecking ships, drowning men, and flooding entire countries. But from now on, with, through, and in Christ, the waters of the earth will be the condition of possibility for our regeneration and deliverance. Our being “renewed” by the power of God, and capable of communion with him, and so of deliverance and fulfillment.
The Fathers of the Church saw in this mystery the fulfillment of OT prophecies, as for example when the Psalmist speaks of the Lord “dividing the sea” and “shattering the heads of the dragons upon the waters” (Psalm 74.12). This is a prophetic trope that emerges repeatedly in the Old Testament – how “in that day” (cf. Joel 3.18), when God’s righteousness appears, God’s chosen will go down into the waters and fight against and kill the evil that dwells there (cf. e.g. Job. 26.12).
It is as though, in the Baptism of the Lord, God speaks again as he did at the first: “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures” (Gen. 1.20), only now, rather than dolphins and sharks, in Jesus Christ , the waters bring forth sons and daughters.
That is the real truth of Jesus’s baptism: by a kind of spiritual synecdoche, it means that the Lord has entered into his creation, has taken our flesh, brought light to the darkness, wrought healing through weakness, bestowed riches by means of poverty, and brought what was dead to life. The good news of the mystery of the Lord’s baptism is that what hitherto held violent sway over us has now, by and in the power of Christ, been renewed and made into something salutary. So we have no longer to be afraid. Nothing in this world can harm us, but everything – the physical world, our life-circumstances, whatever they are, our enemies, the powers that oppose us and try to drag us down, EVERYTHING has become a means to our salvation in Jesus Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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