Working through the subversive Baptism of Jesus.
The compromise that brings us the story of the Wise Men on the Epiphany and the Baptism of Our Lord on the first Sunday after it is curious and a bit of a novelty. But it highlights the ease of squabbling about tradition. It’s totally human.
As Matthew depicts the baptism story, we have a similarly human squabble between John the Baptist and Jesus. One that seems an awful lot like two dudes trying to hold the door open for the other.
Go ahead.
I insist.
No, please, I insist.
Are you sure?
[Then they both attempt to go and the dance loops back to the beginning]
The difference, of course, is not chivalric tradition, but the messianic. But they both instill hierarchies. And what Jesus was attempting to do was subvert them.
A “king” may show grace by serving, but the king must be served.
It should be seen as remarkable, then, that it is the baptizer who consents to the arrangement. He defers to the wishes of the Messiah—even as those wishes put the Messiah in place below him on the hierarchical scale.
There should be little wonder why John the Baptist would continue to question Jesus’s Messiahship. He certainly isn’t acting like the would-be king.
But for us, this should make it clear just how much our hierarchies are faulty systems that encourage thinking that is backward to the Kin-dom.