Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Rev. Daniel E. Somers, Dcn+

Saint Andrew’s Church

Sermon

January 13, 2019

Baptism of Our Lord

            During the Advent season, we made the acquaintance of that fiery prophet John the Baptist, clad in camel hair clothing, fueled on locusts pried from rocks in the Judean wilderness and honey.  In today’s gospel, we renew that acquaintance as his cousin Jesus re-enters history.  The gospels have revealed little about the intervening 30 years or so since his birth in Bethlehem as recounted by Luke and Matthew.

            But now comes the epic moment when Jesus’s divinity is manifested to all.  He has come to be baptized.  It is not clear why he is there, but there he is, the one whom John has been proclaiming as more powerful, more saintly than he, the Messiah himself.  There he was, among the throngs streaming from all over Galilee and Judea, to hear John, to be excoriated by John as nothing but a brood of vipers.  To hear him speak of judgment and repentance and hell fire.  Remember?  Why were they coming and why was Jesus, he who was without sin, requesting to be immersed by John in the waters of the Jordan?   

            Let’s have a little context, a bit of historical background.  The date of John’s ministry is fairly precisely fixed by Luke in 28 or 29 C.E./A.D.   At Luke 3:1 he writes, “In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.”  Tiberius succeeded Augustus Caesar.   Herod the Great died in 4 B.C.  Jesus was likely born therefore two years beforehand in 6 B.C.  It was John who launched Jesus on his mission at the River Jordan.  According to Mark at 1:1-8, John said, “I’ll baptize you with water but he [Jesus] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”  Salvation was no longer the exclusive domain of the circumcised descendants of Abraham.  The rite of baptism and true repentance were the new path as God sought authenticity and justice.  His message resounded among those whom Jesus later happily frequented – sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes.  As noted in the Gospel of John, 1:6-9:

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone was coming into the world!

John’s mission in short was none other than to announce to all Jesus’s coming – a herald.

            During the adult life of Jesus, Galilee was ruled by Herod’s son Antipas and the Roman governor or procurator Pontius Pilate.  Life for Jews was exceedingly difficult.  Pilate was described by Agrippa I as unbending and severe.  He was accused of bribery, cruelty and countless murders.  This portrait is confirmed by the Jewish historian Josephus who chronicled a number of events that provoked the Jews, leading to riots, beatings and executions.

            So what was the social, political and economic setting of Palestine, Judea and Galilee during Jesus’s and John’s lifetimes?  First of all, it was a peasant society, dependent on subsistence agriculture.  Whatever surplus the peasantry could muster was largely extracted by a system of corrupt, unscrupulous tax farmers to support the local ruling elite, including the temple priesthood and Herod’s grandiose building projects, as well as the Roman overlords and occupation forces.  In short, many struggled, were desperate, and in many cases deeply in debt.  Nonpayment of taxes would be considered tantamount to rebellion, which Rome always dealt with harshly.

            The Jewish purity laws also intensified class distinctions.  What were they?  Jesus inveighed against them and their hypocritical practitioners repeatedly.  It was a way Israelites sought to survive in an increasingly hostile world, but at a cost.  In essence, it was a separation from all things and places deemed unclean and impure.  Those Jews not able or not willing to follow purity laws which became increasingly hyper-technical were deemed as outcasts.  It was an ideology promoted by the ruling elite with an economic agenda.  The elite had little reluctance to distort Torah, the Mosaic laws found in the first five books – the Pentateuch – of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, to reinforce class prejudice.  As a result, the bulk of the populace was viewed as sinners, a troubling circumstance indeed.

            Into this roiling milieu step first John and then Jesus.  When Jesus chose to be baptized, no one told him what to do.  John the Baptist didn’t tell him – and he was known to have no compunction about telling people what to do, kings included.   But not Jesus.  And God the Father didn’t tell him either.  The Father told Jesus who Jesus was, how the Father regarded him:  “You are my son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  It’s not often that a son hears those words from his father.  But nothing in those words tells Jesus what to do or about how to live out his identity.

            Jesus had to work that out for himself.  Let’s examine some of his options to be the chosen one, the Messiah.  He was surrounded by a variety of traditions about what was expected of the Messiah, the beloved of God.  Many of those different visions are still with us with many people pretending that Jesus chose one or more of the other options.

            Jesus could have become like John, leading a rigid, ascetic life, ignoring or disdaining physical and social pleasures.  He could have preached rigid moralism, worn weird clothes and eaten strange foods.  He could have promised without exception that if you were not good, God would get you good.  He could have confined his ministry to the people of Israel and waited for the wrath of God to come.

            Jesus could have looked at what passed for headlines in those days and become an anti-Rome agitator, allied with the Zealots who pretty much invented guerilla warfare.  Murdering people at the altar was not beneath them.  He could have organized an army and set out to restore God’s people to their rightful heritage.  He could have promised military success, economic prosperity and national greatness.  Where have we heard that before?  This was probably the most common expectation of the Messiah. 

            Or Jesus could have looked to the Hebrew Bible and chosen one of the many role models, particularly David and Solomon.  They were stellar soldiers and politicians, players on the international stage.  They remained in his day symbols and reminders of Israel’s past glory as an independent nation and world power.

            Or he could have looked to the Book of Daniel and its apocalyptic vision of God’s ultimate triumph, where God appears in history and makes right all that is wrong in the world.  Evil would be vanquished with a new creation as the old one passes away.  Or Jesus could have turned to minor prophets such as Haggai and set out to purify Israel, driving out the gentiles and bringing about right worship with a racially and religiously pure community.

            These were all popular visions of the Messiah in Jesus’s day and remain so today.  There were self-styled messiahs in his day as well as ours.  There are any number people today who only want Jesus and the Church to preach personal morality, cause social reform, gain personal prosperity, bring renewed national grandeur, or just hang around until God annihilates us all in one great cataclysm, bringing about a perfect, pure and isolated community – a group as homogenous as it is holy. 

            Jesus, however, chose none of these.  He went to the generally ignored servant songs of Isaiah, four powerful and perplexing poems.  There God’s chosen one is not a king or a conqueror.  Rather, he is dutiful, weak, humble, gentle and destined to be wracked with pain.  He is a servant who somehow, mysteriously and through his obedient suffering, redeems not only Israel, but all of humanity.  This is why Jesus chose to be baptized, to proclaim his identity, his self-understanding and his mission.  The words spoken combined the message of Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1, of a messiah as servant.

            As our bishop writes, the baptism that comes with Jesus is not only a purification, it is the conferral upon us of the Holy Spirit, a new birth into his life.  You as members of his Church are the body of Christ, marked as his own forever!  We are cleansed, freed of sin and made new.  This life is to be marked by living out our baptismal promises.  As we in a moment renew our Baptismal Covenant, remember that we commit to continuing in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and in the prayers.  We promise to resist evil and to repent should we fall into sin.  We will proclaim by word and deed the Good News of God in Jesus Christ.  In seeking and serving Christ in all persons, we will love our neighbor as ourselves.  And we will strive for justice and peace among all, respecting the dignity of every human being.

            Weighty promises indeed, but well within our capabilities.  As we gather before the baptismal font this morning, may those promises be at the forefront of your thoughts and prayers.

In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. 

Amen.