January 12, 2025 at St. Agnes & St. Peter Churches in Naples, FL
Isaiah 40: 1-5,9-11 + Psalm + Titus 2: 11-14, 3:4-7 + Luke 3: 15-16, 21-22
The fact that Jesus was Baptized by John was a problem for the earliest church as followers of John may well have outnumbered the followers of Jesus at first. We know that they were certainly wide-spread throughout the region before the Gospel of Jesus Christ made its way around the sea. All of the Gospel writers focus some effort to affirm that Jesus was greater than John.
The fact that Jesus was Baptized by John ought to be a bit of a problem for us too, at least at some point, if you think about it at all. How could and why would the sinless Jesus Christ come to John for Baptism? What would he have to repent about? Again, as I say to you often, “This is not history.” Do not ask if it really happened? Ask what it means, what is God saying to us? This Gospel passage is not telling us something that happened a long time ago. It is revealing something important to us – important enough for God to speak out loud. We might get the clue that the actual baptism is not really what this is about from the fact that Luke, who is always interested in details, says nothing about the actual baptism. In fact, if you know your grammar, Luke puts this verb in the “past simple passive” voice, “had been baptized.”
A stronger clue about what it means comes as Luke tells us about all the people being baptized including Jesus. This is a powerful Incarnational message. Jesus is not pretending to be one of us. Jesus is one of us. God, through Jesus Christ has really and truly come to share life with us from Baptism to death. That voice and the message it speaks is for all of us who are baptized. “You are my child. I love you” is the message. The very loving Spirit of God descends upon this man who chooses to be one of us in all things sharing his privileged place as a child of God. It is a humble man that comes forward in the crowd, and we might even try to imagine how John inspired Jesus with his preaching calling his faithful to bear fruit with mercy and justice.
What is it that pleased God so much at that moment except the humility and willingness of Jesus Christ to set aside all entitlement and privilege and embrace the Will of the Father becoming one with us sharing with us his live-giving, forgiving, and merciful Spirit. What is it that draws us here and then sends us forth with hope, with courage, and with joy except this wonderful news we have been told in many ways since Christmas. We are a baptized, chosen, and a much-loved people by a God whose very Spirit has been poured out.
This Feast of the Baptism of the Lord invites us to dig deeper into the meaning of our own Baptism, to wonder how we might live more consistently as children of God, and how might truly be pleasing in God’s sight.
There were many at the time who saw Jesus as rule-breaking eccentric, and “eccentric” is exactly what he was and what we might become. Eccentric means “off center,” unusual, centered in something different. Jesus was not centered in himself. If we have any hope of pleasing God, we cannot be centered on ourselves. Baptism ought to make us eccentric like Jesus, people who get noticed because their behavior, their ideas, their hopes and dreams fall outside the norm, or what this world would call, “normal.”
Go ahead this week. Let’s try it. Get a little eccentric. Start thinking about pleasing God instead of pleasing ourselves or others for that matter. What is there to lose? Nothing, except eternal life.