The times into which Jesus was born were ones of great despair. For the people of Palestine, God had been absent, his voice had been stilled. The great prophets were distant memory. On a cosmic level, think of it this way.
In Jewish Cosmology, the earth was a great flat disc floating on the underworld – the place of shadows, shoal. The disc was covered with a dome. The sky was a hardened metal shell covering the earth and forming a barrier – a firmament. That firmament was filled with tiny holes – we call them stars – those tiny holes permitted the light surrounding God’s throne room, heaven, to leak through to the earth. Each hole was guarded by an angel to prevent humankind entering heaven by stealth or heavenly beings coming onto the earth without authorization.
Jewish hope was that someday the heavens would open, and God’s voice would be heard again in the land. That God would remember his people Israel and deliver them from their oppressors, the Romans, by the hand of his Messiah.
From the Book of Judah, written about 108 BCE, we read: “And the heavens shall be open to him. To pour out the Spirit, the blessing of the Holy Father.”
Into this vacuum of time and fervent hope, stepped John the Immerser. He was clothed in garments identical to those worn by the prophet Elijah – who had ascended bodily into heaven on a flaming chariot and who, since he never died, lives forever, and who was expected to return to the Earth as the harbinger of the Messiah. After John’s martyrdom, Jesus will say that John was indeed Elijah, and even greater than Elijah still.
John’s message was provocative. This age is passing away and the New Age is dawning. Repent. Realign with the Divine, be estranged no more. As sign of that repentance, John immersed his followers in the Jordan River.
There were two kinds of ritual washings in Israel. One was a ritual cleansing mandated by Jewish law and repeated as needed. The other immersion was for converts to Judaism. Done only once, it initiated a New Life. John’s baptism was like the second kind, but rather than indicating a pagan becoming a Jew, it signaled a Jew becoming a New Jew, fit for the New Israel and ready for judgment.
It’s quite likely that Jesus left home at an early age, perhaps tired of the relentless gossip about his birth. It’s probable that Jesus often felt isolated, alienated, and lonely in the small village of Nazareth. We have but one story of Jesus as a young man, at age 12 questioning the Temple elders in Jerusalem and being accidentally left behind. (These things happen.) The years that follow are known as the “missing years” – and no, it’s not likely that he traveled to Asia and studied eastern mysticism… But it is possible he left Nazareth and in Judea, encountered John, and responding powerfully to John’s vision, became John’s disciple.
In John’s movement, Jesus was able to release the hurt inflicted on him as a child. An outcast no more, his resentment and anger at the Nazarenes was washed away. Rising from the waters of baptism, Jesus belonged to a new family – a family he will recreate after John’s execution and which we seek to live into today in the fellowship of St. Matthias.
Something unexpected happened on that day. Entering an ecstatic state of consciousness, Jesus has a vision. The hard shell barrier was rent asunder and Jewish hope fulfilled as he saw God’s Spirit descend from heaven. Jesus heard a voice from God’s throne – as Isaiah and Ezekiel had before him.
“You are my son and you please me.”
That language is a paraphrase from Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1, verses associated with coronation and leadership.
Psalm 2:7 – I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said to me you are my son, today I have begotten you.
Isaiah 42:1 – Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations.
Whatever else Jesus might have felt about this experience, Jesus saw this to be a call to vocation. Over the next three years, Jesus will try to live his life in faithfulness to this day.
Many of you here today were baptized. Most of you had this done for you as an infant. For far too many, it was something done because that’s what you did in those days. It was a social occasion; a public celebration that you were here in this world. For far too many, it was insurance policy. St. Augustine of Hippo proclaimed a misguided doctrine of original sin, which meant that unbaptized babies who died would be unwelcome in God’s presence. Today, we affirm that fear-based baptism distorts God’s love.
For those of you who are generations younger than myself, perhaps your parents and sponsors reclaimed a more ancient truth – that baptism is not an end but a beginning. That in the waters of baptism we arise – as Jesus did – as members of a new family. We arise – as Jesus did – with a calling to vocation of resisting the seduction of evil and living into the Kingdom’s values in our lives. We arise – as Jesus did – anointed with Holy Spirit power, enabled to live no longer for ourselves alone, but for Christ who lives in us.
· Renewal of baptismal vows (Program and BCP p.292)
For those of you who are not baptized, let those words wash over you and consider if there might not be a word of invitation in there to you. For those who were baptized – whatever the motivations of those who sponsored you – know that you are filled with the creative power of God’s Holy Spirit and that that same Spirit which hovered over creation’s waters, hovers over you and abides with and in you, forever.