This is huge! And I honestly don’t understand why we don’t get this time off of school and aren’t making a bigger deal of it.

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Putting Jesus’s baptism at the center of faith
Epiphany 1C |  Luke 3:15-22

The big deal

There are three ways we know that Jesus’s baptism was about as important to the early church as anything. I mean it. As in, up there with the crucifixion and the resurrection. This is essential story.

All of this stuff, these first three chapters are prologue. Click To Tweet

Those three ways:

1. All four canonical gospels have a baptism of Jesus story.

There really are only a handful of stories that are in them all. And fewer still have all of the same elements in them.

2. GOD speaks.

There are two parallel stories in the four canonical gospels which involve a booming voice from above speaking about Jesus as “my beloved.” The Baptism and the Transfiguration. GOD doesn’t just go around speaking at random times or to tell people to get their acts together. This is my beloved; I’m pleased with him. Then later again saying This is my beloved with a different ending listen to him.

3. It was the second holy day honored by the church.

After Easter, the first Christians made their second holy day The Epiphany. The Epiphany originally was a celebration of the baptism. Then the western churches changed The Epiphany story to be about the Wise Men, but the eastern churches still celebrate the 2nd-oldest feast as the Baptism.

This is huge! And I honestly don’t understand why we don’t get this time off of school and aren’t making a bigger deal of it.

Of course I have my ideas. But the Baptism of Jesus is central to our faith.

Luke’s version

We get Luke’s version this year. Which is interesting. Each of the four baptism stories are slightly different, but they all have Jesus coming up out of the water, a vision of a dove, and a loud voice speaking to Jesus being beloved and the pleasure of GOD.

What is curious in Luke’s version, however is found in what happens right before it.

Like in the others, we’re introduced to baptism from John. And he is proclaiming repentance: turning away from sin and returning to GOD. All these crowds of people are coming to him from all over to get baptized in the big river.

The lectionary cuts out the most interesting part of the text. Right after John stops talking the writer continues:

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.

We remember that this is a different Herod than we heard about last week. This Herod, however, isn’t really any better.

What makes this part interesting is that John has been thrown into prison. Before Luke tells us about Jesus’s baptism. So who baptizes Jesus?

An even bigger deal

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that John the Baptist isn’t the one who baptizes Jesus. Or that John doesn’t protest baptizing Jesus like he does in Matthew (when John wants to be the one baptized by Jesus – not the other way around). It is quite possible that the writer is giving us what will happen soon (but not yet) in the story.

What this does tell me is that John’s place in the story is only to proceed Jesus. Then get out of the way. The Baptism, as described by the writer of Luke, is all about Jesus and GOD.

More important is what Jesus has come to do: baptize with fire and the holy spirit, according to John. He has come to purify and clean and make holy what is not.

And for the writer of Luke, notice this is what comes next in the big story of Jesus. It begins with the angel visits: Gabriel to Zechariah and Elizabeth foretelling them about the pregnancy with John, then a visit to Mary. Their time together, Mary’s song, the birth of John, Zechariah’s mouth unglued and proclaiming in mighty song the beauty of GOD.

Then the birth, the visits from the Shepherds. They take Jesus to the Temple to be circumcised, head home, return 12 years later and forget to bring Jesus back with them…

That’s the first 2 chapters. Then John comes in. Fully grown and walking around as a prophet. The baptism. And then…a genealogy.

But this reveals for us the super special 4th reason why this story is central to everything. Why Luke feels the need to follow up this story with a genealogy which runs backward from Jesus all the way to Adam, then GOD.

4. His mission can now begin.

All of this stuff, these first three chapters are prologue. That’s how I read it. This is the background, the superhero origin story. A story that now begins.

Our origin stories

So the early church had these four reasons to think the Baptism of Jesus is essential:

1. It’s in all the gospels.
2. GOD speaks
3. They made it a huge holy day.
4. They saw it as necessary for Jesus to get started.

You may be wondering “If this is so important to the church, then why isn’t it a bigger deal, then?” And that is a really good question. I don’t know. But it should be. I think it is essential for us. Now. I think it sets us up to make some noise. To not only better understand our own baptism but why we do it and why it’s important to us.

And theologians and bishops and liturgists have often made that why into a convoluted mess of decent theology.

The baptism of Jesus, like the baptism of our parents and our children, like our baptisms, is not about inside and outside the camp. It is about preparing us for mission, the missio dei, the mission of GOD. Preparing us to take on the responsibility of proclaiming the Good News. Of being GOD’s children who inherit GOD’s kingdom. Not in death, but in life. In living vibrant lives full of the Holy Spirit who comes upon us in baptism.

We shouldn’t see Baptism as initiation to the “ingroup” but as the kickoff to a most amazing life of ministry. One which invites us to love one another and care for one another and give of ourselves to make our neighbors healthy and whole.

So we splash in the water and we get dunked in the water so that our selfishness dies. So our hatred dies. So our jealousy dies. So that we come out of the water blessed by the Holy Spirit, that we may hear GOD’s voice

‘You are my child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

Keep that in mind in the next few moments when we once again promise GOD that we will be of service. That we will love and respect and give of ourselves to further the kingdom. And then we’ll head to the back of the room and we’re going to get some water and we’re going to get you wet.

May it be water of forgiveness. May it be tears of joy. May it be the purity of the Spirit. Amen.