And the Story Continues …
Luke 3:21-22[1]
One of the challenges
of our day is that it’s so easy for many of us to feel disconnected. If you
have children at home, you’re connected to other families through their
activities. Those of us who have extended families nearby have a connection
there. And we come to church looking for a way to feel connected. But the
pandemic has thrown a great big wrench into all those connections. Just the
simple fact that some of us choose to get vaccinated and some of us don’t has
the effect of weakening our connection to one another. And now this new wave of
cases may have us all feeling like we’re wading through “deep waters” (Isa 43:2).
Those who study what
it means to thrive in this life tell us that we need a sense of belonging to
something bigger than ourselves. These days it seems like all the options for
having that sense of belonging are in question. Our national identity as a
people has been fracturing for years. Even our connection to faith has been
changing in recent decades, as people become less interested in maintaining any
kind of religious heritage. These days, most folks don’t care about names like
“Presbyterian” on the church sign, and many have given up on church altogether.
When the main sources of our belonging to something bigger fail us, where do we
turn?
I think our Gospel
lesson for today can help us with that question. Yes, I’m talking about the
story of Jesus’ baptism. It may seem strange that Jesus’ baptism has anything
to do with this, but if we pay attention to the details, we might be surprised.
I’ll share one hint at the outset: Luke’s version includes some important
details that are different from the way we typically understand Jesus’ baptism.
But that’s why it’s all the more important to pay attention to them.
First, Jesus’ baptism in
Luke’s Gospel occurs as “all the people” were being baptized. It’s not entirely
clear from the English translation, but in this version, Jesus’ baptism is
framed as if Jesus were one of those standing in the line to be baptized by
John. After Jesus was baptized, someone else stepped up for their turn. In
other words, in response to John’s preaching about true repentance through
daily acts of mercy and justice, the “people” came to be baptized. And Jesus
took his place among them.
This may raise some
eyebrows among us. The people who came to be baptized by John were coming to
demonstrate their repentance. From that point of view, it may seem strange to
us that Jesus needed to be baptized. While I wouldn’t say he needed to repent
of any sins, I would say he needed to be baptized. The reason is that by doing
so, Jesus identified with the Jewish people, even with all their failings. And
he did that on purpose: Jesus redeemed the Jewish people by becoming one of
them, and he redeems us all in the same way.
A second feature of
Jesus’ baptism in Luke’s Gospel is that only Luke tells us that everything that
followed happened “while Jesus was praying.” The “heavens opened,” the Spirit
descended to him as a dove, and the voice from heaven all came to Jesus while
he was praying. But that too seems to be an intentional detail in Luke’s
Gospel. Although it may seem strange to us, Luke describes Jesus as coming to an
understanding of his calling and purpose the way any person would. We might say
that Luke tells us the story of Jesus’ baptism without a halo. In order to
carry out all that he would do, he needed God’s confirmation. And so his
baptism launches him into the work of God’s kingdom to which he had been
called.
More than that, Luke
emphasizes perhaps more so than the other Gospels that Jesus needed the power
of the Spirit to carry out his ministry. We tend to assume that, since Jesus
was both fully divine and fully human, he had all the knowledge and power he
needed from the very beginning. But Luke tells the story more from the
perspective of Jesus’ full humanity. Like one of the prophets of old, “the word
of the LORD” came to him to commission him for his work. And the Spirit empowered
him to carry out God’s saving purpose.
The gift of the Spirit
to Jesus at his baptism not only launched his ministry, but it also set in
motion everything that follows. And that means that what happened that day in
the Jordan river was a part of God’s larger story of salvation. By taking his
place among the people lined up to be baptized, Jesus was stepping into that
story of salvation. By serving in the power of the same Spirit that had
empowered the prophets of old, Jesus was stepping into that story. And when the
Spirit came upon the church to empower them, the story continued.
If we look at the
story of the church in the book of Acts, we see more indications of how the story
of God’s salvation continued. When Luke refers to his “first book” as being
about “all that Jesus began to do and to teach” (Acts 1:1), the implication is
that with story of the church, the story of God’s saving work continued. And
when Luke concludes Acts in a way that doesn’t really provide an “ending,” the
effect is to declare that the story of God’s saving work would keep going. And so
it is that each of us, in our own baptism, take our place in God’s ongoing
story of salvation that began with Abraham and continued through the prophets
and through Jesus and the early church, and still continues to this day. That’s
the “something bigger” that we all belong to. That’s what keeps me going day
after day, week after week, and year after year, even in times of crisis. As we
all take our place in the Body of Christ, the story continues.
[1] ©2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm Ph. D. on 1/9/2022 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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