The Baptism of Christ
Reading: Luke 3:15 – 22
11/01/04
Did anyone make New Year resolutions? Have you broken them yet?
I’m going to read you an extract from one of my favourite books, The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, which is about new year resolutions, but first some introductions are necessary: Adrian has a wife named Anne, a son named Gerald, and on this occasion a horrendous toothache:
Wednesday January 1st
1.30a.m. Anne’s gone to sleep. I can’t. My jaw’s on fire!
Might as well write down my two New Year resolutions:
(1) Every morning – take Anne a cup of tea in bed. She deserves it.
(2) Every morning – have quiet time after making tea. Give God more of my time. He deserves it.
10.00a.m. (at work) Disaster! So tired after sitting up late mulling over my resolutions, I forgot to set the alarm and we all overslept. Anne was very angry with me. Gerald grinned in that maddening way he has. Late for work. No quiet time. Toothache’s awful, but I feel the Lord is saying, ‘I will heal you. Don’t go to the dentist.’ Prayer is what’s needed. (Taking pain-killers until prayer is answered.)
If you lasted longer than Adrian you can feel good about yourself. You’ll be pleased to know however that after four days of physical and spiritual agonising Adrian has his tooth fixed by a dentist and on Sunday January 5th he is able to report: “Took Anne tea in bed without getting grumpy. Long quiet time.”
Even if you fail, you can make a fresh start. And it doesn’t have to be new year.
When we make resolutions we’re acknowledging that there’s something in our lives that we feel needs to change, and also stating our decision to change it. It’s about new starts and second chances. And so is baptism.
Baptism symbolises turning away from our old way of life, or repenting, and turning towards a new life with God.
John’s baptism with water expresses the cleaning away of our sins, the things that were stopping us from being close to God, and turning towards God. But willpower just isn’t enough to do that for long, and our own goodness isn’t enough. John was asked whether he was the Messiah, but he knew himself well enough to know that he couldn’t let them think that because it wasn’t true and he couldn’t fulfil that role. He had a different mission. So John’s baptism is only half the story.
If left at that we’d be carrying on with our resolutions and feeling guilty when we didn’t keep them. Letting ourselves down, letting down our nearest and dearest, or sometimes feeling we’re letting God down. And that just isn’t good news at all.
John told the people who came to him what would happen if they didn’t repent – they would be judged by God. The Son of God was coming soon, and he would save those who repented, but would judge those who continued in a sinful life.
One of the images John uses in the extract from Luke’s gospel is the fire of the Holy Spirit. Fire is a dangerous thing, but also a useful tool. It can purify and also destroy. It can be used to melt away base metals from gold leaving it pure; it can be used in the process of sharpening a blade; it can be used to destroy rubbish. And God will do all those things.
John also said that the Messiah would separate the wheat, which will be stored safely away, from the chaff (the useless husks), which will be thrown out and burned. It’s one of our most enduring images of hell. Sometimes, particularly when we fail at something, we might feel that we’re more like the useless husk. But we have to try to focus on the fact that God makes a lot of effort to gather in as much wheat as possible, and he’ll recognise the smallest grain of it. So, the Messiah will come as a judge, but also he will give a greater baptism, he will baptise with the Holy Spirit.
So these people who went out to the Jordan River to see John and receive his baptism, heard some pretty fearful news, but they also heard that Christ, the Messiah, the Saviour, was coming. Not just as a mythical story passed down through the generations, but very soon in the form of a real person who would have an effect on their lives one way or another. And that was good news.
When Jesus came to be baptised it was a new start for him too. He was about to embark on a new phase in his life – changing, at the most basic level, from carpenter to preacher. It’s an important event to us because he identifies himself strongly as a human being, alongside other suffering human beings, the Holy Spirit comes upon him equipping him for the task ahead and he’s also identified by the voice from heaven as the Son of God.
The Holy Spirit came down after Jesus’s baptism, while he was praying. The Holy Spirit came on the Samaritan Christians, in the reading from Romans, after their baptism with water, through the prayer of Peter and John. And we symbolise that, in the church, by giving a baptism with water and a confirmation, where we pray that the candidates will be “confirmed with (the Lord’s) Holy Spirit” and will “continue (his) for ever, and daily increase in (his) Holy Spirit”.
We may not get the dove and the voice from heaven, but remember we’re part of the generation who have not seen and yet believe, as Jesus said to Doubting Thomas, and therefore we are especially blessed.
Heaven opened when Jesus was praying after his baptism, and it stayed open. [This was echoed when Jesus died and the curtain, which hid the inner sanctum of the temple, was torn open.] In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit came to particular individuals to enable them to complete particular tasks, but with Jesus’s coming, and particularly with his sacrificial death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit became available to all of us. And this is the power behind our new starts, our resolutions, and our promises. That’s the real good news.
But it shouldn’t stop there. We should keep praying, as Jesus did. Talk to God, but also listen, and try to act on what we hear. You might be surprised. So, as we go into this year, we should follow the suggestion of the Man at the Gate of the Year, as written by Minnie Louise Haskins, an early 20th century writer, which we used as a prayer at the end of our New Year communion service:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
Amen.
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