Preacher: Canon Karen
Date: 12/01/2020
Baptism of Christ
Isaiah 42: 1-9
Matthew 3: 13-end
How are you doing so far with your New Year’s resolutions? 12 days into the new year, are you still managing to keep to them or have you wobbled a bit?
According to the media, last Monday was the day on which people were looking for new beginnings in different areas of their lives. Last Monday being the return back to work and school for many after the Christmas and New Year break, a day on which people would be reacting to time spent with their families, time spent reflecting on their jobs and their lifestyles. Some would sadly be visiting lawyers to discuss divorce; for others it would be searching for that holiday escape and for yet others it would be a change of job that would provide the new beginning.
Today, within the Epiphany season, we celebrate the Baptism of Christ. Although we tend to focus on the arrival of the wise men at the crib of the Christchild as the main event of the Epiphany, Christ’s baptism and his first miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, when he turned water into wine, are also included as Epiphanies – God revealing himself in those situations.
A question which is often asked is why Christ had to be baptized at all? God in Christ is without sin, so what did Christ have to be cleansed of in the waters of baptism? This was a question that troubled John the Baptist as Jesus came to him for baptism. For John this is all wrong. He should be the one being baptised. But Jesus insists that his baptism, so far from being a departure from the script, is in fact a complete fulfilment of the script. Jesus came to John to be baptized by him. It is the first thing Jesus does at the beginning of his ministry. By coming for baptism Jesus announces the direction and purpose of his work on earth. All Jesus went on to say and do was a working out of the implications of that initial and all important decision to be baptised.
Jesus’ baptism is so significant that his first words recorded in Matthew’s gospel are about that event
Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.
By being baptised, Jesus follows the script, the script written from the beginning of the world: that the Christ of God, God’s anointed one, should descend into the darkest depths of our human condition.
In the babe of Bethlehem God took the initiative of sending his Son into our world. It was the act of the Father, an impulse of his love which wanted to be at one with the object of his love – us.
In the baptism of Christ, something very profound is being said about God’s involvement and identification with us and our human condition. Christ was no spectator watching on the sidelines of all the mess and wonder of human living, but was there in the very thick of it. It is the very condition of human nature, with all its contradictions, appetites, needs and aspirations, which the incarnate Christ claims for himself as he goes into the waters of baptism.
In the waters of baptism is to be found the beginning of the Christian life – the fresh start, the new beginning. The Greek word “to baptize” used in the New Testament refers to a dramatic action – not a gentle sprinkling of water but a real soaking. The place of baptism, we might say, is like a whirlpool of water. A place of swirling waters whose current draws down those who enter it, down even into the deep waters of death. As God in Christ came to be identified with humanity on the banks of the river Jordan, so through the waters of baptism the Christian becomes identified with Christ in his death and resurrection. It’s a real sharing in the very life and being of the crucified and risen Christ. And that very sharing in Christ’s life is what continually shapes and refashions the people we are until we come to resemble more clearly the likeness of Christ himself.
Baptism is about being washed so that a past life is overtaken by a new life and that in our humanity we promise to follow God and the way of Christ in a new way. That’s both the hope and the challenge presented to us in the baptism of Christ.
Most churches have a font near the entrance to the building, as do we. It is placed there because it marks the place of entry, entry into the building as well as entry into God’s family- it marks a starting place, a new beginning. I recall the church which, having a font at the entrance to the church, also wanted to have one at the front so that the congregation could see baptisms more easily. So they got a portable font to use at the front of church. To explain this to their congregation they put a note in their weekly newsheet that said ‘ we now have a font at both the back and the front of the church. This means that babies can be baptised at both ends’.
Sometimes we miss the point. Baptism is not just about a font or just about water but rather it is all about new beginnings and Jesus’ baptism was no different – for him it marked the beginning of his extraordinary ministry just as our baptism marks the beginning of our ministry, our life of service to God.
It’s the very opposite of people trying to refashion their lives, controlling the direction of their lives by new relationships, holidays or new jobs. Paradoxically in the act of surrendering ourselves with Christ into his death, lies our new beginning in the new life of Christ’s resurrection as he and we come up from the baptismal waters.
As I explain to families who bring their children for baptism, there are three elements to the service represented by three symbols. Firstly the candidate is signed with the cross in the oil blessed at the Maundy Eucharist in our cathedral. Just as our Queen was anointed at her coronation and set aside for the special role assigned to her, so is each baptism candidate anointed – set apart for their new life, their lifelong journey as a follower of Christ.
The second symbol is the familiar cleansing with the water in which everything that separates us from God is washed away and we are drawn into new life with him. And thirdly the giving of the lighted candle. Because that’s when the new life begins. Having been joined with|Christ we now start to live out his life in the world, bringing his light into the dark places.
And if we need any encouragement along the Christian journey of being formed and continually re-formed into the likeness of Christ with all that that entails, hard times as well as good times, we have those words which came from heaven at Christ’s baptism
This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.
We have God’s blessing on our decision to follow in the steps of his beloved Son as we become God’s beloved sons and daughters.