BAPTISM OF THE LORD 2025
JANUARY 12, 2025
FR. JERRY THOMPSON, OSB
ST. JAMES’ EPISCOPAL CHURCH, FREMONT, NE
This morning we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord, which always falls on the first Sunday after the Epiphany. We’ve moved from the magi coming to see an infant to Jesus as an adult, roughly thirty years old, or so the verse immediately following our passage tells us.
It sure seems young to many of us, doesn’t it? And we will see Jesus later struggle with temptations that have their own particular shading at 30; unfortunately, those temptations don’t disappear as we grow older, although they change. Hopefully we grow with age to trust ever more deeply in Christ – that is, hopefully we change, too, so that we are more easily able to withstand temptation, whatever the shading it takes.
Hopefully we grow in caring enough to make the effort to withstand, in a way we might not necessarily have cared at a younger age; which is another way of saying that, hopefully, we grow in our faith, in our trust, in Jesus, so that not only are we withstanding temptation, but we are actively and consciously working with God toward expanding his kingdom – so that we are among the wheat gathered into the granary,
to use the image John the Baptist uses in our gospel reading this morning.
In Luke’s telling of the baptism of Jesus – and only in Luke’s gospel – Jesus is praying after his baptism. Prayer plays a more prominent role in the Gospel of Luke than in the other gospels.
In this passage, prayer opens communication between heaven and earth, as it does for us all. It’s during Jesus’ praying that the heaven is opened; the Holy Spirit descends upon him like a dove; and the Father speaks those words, “You are my beloved son, and I am so pleased with you.” I love you, my Son, and I am ever so pleased with you.
As I prayed with this gospel passage this week, I found myself wondering about the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus. Because, after all, it is Jesus’ spirit as well as the Father’s spirit I think of that passage in John’s gospel in which Jesus breathes on the disciples gathered fearfully in that room in Jerusalem after the crucifixion. Jesus comes to them and breathes on them, and he tells them to receive the Holy Spirit.
In our passage for this morning, though, the Spirit is imaged as separate from Jesus.
Part of what is going on is that different gospels paint a different picture of Jesus. But that’s only part of what’s going on.
Luke’s portrayal in this passage emphasizes our Lord’s humanity and - and as part of his humanity - Jesus’ growth into the Holy Spirit as he himself grows and matures as a human being, as he himself aligns himself more and more with the will of God the Father - just as we all are called to do, just as we all are called to be: one with God in Spirit; and our communion with him becomes manifest in action, just as is true with Jesus.
One of the times we affirm that ongoing growth is in the baptismal covenant we will say together in a few minutes. We are promising to grow more and more into the holiness of the Spirit given us at our baptism, to be increasingly pleasing to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Sometimes people ask, why did Jesus have to be baptized for the repentance of sins?
Remember, that is what John’s baptism is all about. And Jesus was sinless.
It’s a bit like asking why the second person of the Trinity had to become human, and essentially the answer is the same.
He didn’t have to do either. Christ choses to do both. Out of love for us, love for his creatures, out of love for all his creation, God chooses to become a human being, to live and die as one of us, to offer himself as a perfect offering where we could not, even though we are called also to offer our imperfect lives. Once again, I find myself thinking of that hymn in Philippians, where St. Paul proclaims, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.”
Christ Jesus chooses to empty himself into human form out of love for us. And he is baptized for the same reason: out of love for us. That is, he longs to stand with us,
as one of us, in all our sinful imperfection. He chooses not to be separate from us,
but to live in the deepest communion with us.
Jesus knows that the very fact that he is human means he is wrapped up in systems of sin that abuse and oppress other human beings and the rest of creation with us. And he knows that the hope for redemption of those systems rests in all of us, who, as he does,
choose as individuals and as communities to align ourselves with God, as we choose the way of God, the way Christ makes known to us in himself. And so he is baptized as other Judean human beings choose to be baptized, for the repentance of sin, as a way to be one with us, once again, and as a way to be one with the Father’s will.
That’s what our baptism is to be about, too: being one with God. Think about the questions asked of adults who are about to be baptized, and of sponsors of children who are about to be baptized:
Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God? Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God? Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior? Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love? Do you promise to follow and obey him as your
Lord?
From the moment of our baptism forward, our lives are to be about living into the Spirit we graciously receive, the Holy Spirit that fills us and enables us to live ever more deeply into the way of God, ever more deeply into the Spirit of holiness, into the life of Jesus Christ which we inhabit as his followers, as the Body of Christ in the world today.
To offer ourselves as Christ does in becoming human, and in being baptized, and in dying on the cross.
It’s a serious call upon us. We make a commitment at baptism - or a commitment is made on our behalf that we later affirm at confirmation – which we affirm again and again throughout the year, as we will this morning – we affirm that the change that occurs at our baptism, the commitment we make or later affirm by choice, that serious call, we affirm that the commitment is one we intend to see through – today and tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come. And we are promised that the Holy Spirit will empower us to do so if we make the effort.
All of that is captured in our second reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Just to remind us, Saul has been enthusiastically oppressing the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, going house to house and seizing them and putting them in jail. So some of the followers of Jesus flee the city and become missionaries, carrying the message of Jesus to other places. Philip is one of them. He goes to Samaria, and people respond positively to him.
The apostles back in Jerusalem hear about this, and Peter and John go to pray for these new followers of Jesus, that they might receive the Holy Spirit – because although they had been baptized, they had not received the Holy Spirit.
What’s that about? In part it’s probably about some dramatic manifestation of the Spirit,
but we all know that the primary evidence of the Holy Spirit in our lives – and of us working in the life of God through the grace of the Holy Spirit – the primary evidence is in the life we manifest, in the choices we make, in the love we show to God and to others.
Apparently these new converts were not manifesting the way of Jesus in their lives.
There wasn’t evidence that they were living into a different way of being human that reflected the choices of Jesus.
We are left asking ourselves some questions: How do our lives and our choices reflect participation in the life of God, in the kingdom of God? How do our choices as a community mirror the choices of Christ? His choice to become human, his choice to stand with us in John’s baptism of repentance for sin, his choice in the offering of himself to the Father on the cross?
In a few minutes, we’ll reaffirm our baptismal covenant as individuals and as a community of faith. One way of describing what we are doing is to say that we are choosing to stand with God as God chooses to stand with us in Jesus Christ.
I invite you to listen very carefully to the questions that follow the creed in the baptismal covenant. Consider them, consider what you are promising to our God and our Savior.
What do you need to ask of God as we make these promises?
Pray about how to live into them more fully. Take your bulletin with you today and continue to pray with them in the weeks to come.
So that you, like Jesus, can hear those wonderful words, “You are my child; you are my children. “And with you I am so very, very pleased.”
Amen.