Grace to you and Peace from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for this meditation is written in the 3rd Chapter of the Gospel according to St Luke: Verses 15 – 22:
As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, 16 John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
18 So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people. 19 But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother's wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, 20 added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison.
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Judas had betrayed Jesus, and Jesus was condemned. Judas full of remorse hurled the ‘blood money’ back at the Chief Priests and Pharisees and went off and hanged himself…… there was now a vacancy in the ranks of the disciples!
When the disciples were going about the process of replacing Judas the betrayer, they wanted a man who had been there throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry.
One of the things this does for us is define the beginning and end of Jesus public, earthly ministry. Peter said, [Acts 1:21-22] “So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” …. So we see that as far as the early church was concerned, Jesus’ public ministry began when John baptised Him and it ended when Jesus ascended into heaven. Today’s gospel tells us about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as He was baptised.
The Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us something about John baptising Jesus and although John the Evangelist does not specifically tell of the baptism itself, he does tell how John the Baptiser testified about the Holy Spirit descending like a dove on Jesus. So, directly or indirectly all four Gospels andthe book of Acts tell us about John baptising Jesus.
The season of Epiphany is a time when we consider the things that God showed to His people. It is not too hard to figure out what God wants us to see in today’s Gospel: … “the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
That should get your attention! It is not every day that God opens up the sky and proclaims something to us. It is not every day that the Holy Spirit takes on the form of a dove and flies down to rest on someone. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that this is the only time that all these things happened together in the entire history of the world.
Think about it. Today’s Gospel tells us that the crowds wonder if John is the Christ. They are ready. All the prophecies have come true. All that’s left is for the Christ to actually show up. John is out there by the Jordan saying, “I’m not Him, but He is coming. Prepare the way for the Lord.” Then one day the Lord Himself steps down into the Jordan and tells John, “Baptise me.” After the Baptism, the sky opens up, the Holy Spirit comes down, and there is this voice. What a breathtaking majestic epiphany!
The wonderful thing about this epiphany is that we get to see our Lord and Saviour beginning His public ministry as He battles to take back what is rightfully His.
God created all things and therefore all things belong to Him. When He created humanity, He said, [Genesis 1:28] “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” With these words God established humanity as His stewards over all of creation. He established Adam and Eve as the lord and lady of all they surveyed. Everything was perfect.
Then the devil spoke with the voice of the serpent and asked, “Did God really say …”…. God had given everything, except the fruit of the one tree, to Adam and Eve and yet Satan convinced Eve that God had held something back – that God did not have their best interest at heart. Satan leveraged that seed of doubt until both Adam and Eve lost confidence in God and ate the fruit. – You know if we are honest, as Christians, we have times in our lives when we can all relate to that.
On that day, the universe changed forever. The relationship between God and Man was closed. The relationship between man and woman was closed. A wave of sin swept through the entire universe just as a large tidal wave sweeps over an island.
Mankind had turned the keys of the kingdom over to the devil. From that time forward our enemy and his allies have had their way with us. The Holy Scriptures clearly teach us that we are all conceived and born sinful and are under the power of the devil until Christ claims us as His own.
We would be lost forever unless delivered from sin, death, and everlasting condemnation. This is why our Holy Baptism is crucial to our right and lasting relationship with our Triune God.
At Christmas we celebrated God’s action to infiltrate this world and take it back. He entered this world as a baby – as one of us. He stepped onto the battlefield as a baby in a manger and then grew up to be a man. Now, here, at his baptism, God the Father proclaimed His intention to all who were there with John the Baptiser at the Jordan.
The significance of this holy baptism is beyond words to the Christian. Jesus is on the move. The people who were there witnessed the inauguration of Christ’s public ministry. The One for whom they have waited, has arrived. Whilst there may have been many confused, frightened and overwhelmed people on the Jordan’s banks that day; in hindsight we rejoice, because we owe our very lives into eternity to this joyous epiphany.
But there are other eyes that see this epiphany. There are those who have dreaded this day. God made a promise way back in Genesis, [Genesis 3:15] “ I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The servants of the enemy also see this epiphany. They are the servants of the one who is in danger of getting his head crushed. For these servants, it is time to go on red alert. The Christ is about to start His offensive.
Although we do not read the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness until Lent, it actually takes place right after Jesus’ baptism. The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to do battle with the enemy and the devil wasted no time in hitting Jesus with every resource at his disposal. -- The Holy Spirit inspired the writer to the Hebrews to say that Jesus is the [Hebrews 4:15] “one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin”. This teaches us that Jesus endured every temptation that the devil and all his allies have ever used against any person in any place and at any time. The devil pulled out all the stops because he knew that if he can get Jesus to sin just once, the plan of salvation will lie in ruins.
Yet this sentence from Hebrews tells us that although Jesus was tempted as we are, He was different than us in that He did not sin. This meant that Jesus’ baptism was the opposite of our baptisms. We enter the waters of baptism covered in sin and leave those waters covered in God’s Righteousness. Jesus entered the water covered in righteousness and left the water covered in sin – our sin. Jesus began to carry the burden of our sin at His baptism.
Through the Baptism in the Jordan of God’s beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, God sanctified and instituted all waters to be a blessed flood and a lavish washing away of sin. As Jesus went down into the water, He was the only holy man on the earth. As he came up from the water, He was the greatest sinner on the earth – not with His own sin, but with the sin of every man, woman, and child who has lived or ever will live. He carried it all.
As written in VV21 – 22, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit acknowledged the sacrifice Jesus made as he took our sin onto Himself and clothed us in His righteousness.
Christ’s mission to open heaven is the will and work of the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit puts in a rare physical appearance. The Father declares His pleasure with the Son. While Jesus is the member of the Trinity who became flesh and died on the cross, we see in this reading that all three members of the Trinity are actively involved in opening the way to heaven.
Jesus was a marked man after His baptism. He was marked as the target of Satan’s temptation. He was also marked as the target of God’s wrath. But, more importantly, He was marked as the one who would open heaven for all believers.
Jesus endured the full fire of Satan’s temptation. He endured not only the temptation in the wilderness, but Satan never really stopped tempting Jesus. He even tempted him through His friends and followers. Jesus endured these temptations as we never will. Jesus’ perfect perseverance under Satan’s fiery temptation was part of the mission to open heaven for us.
In spite of the fact that Jesus never sinned, He was the target of God’s wrath – a wrath that was so severe that Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” Jesus suffered the original baptism of fire in our place. He fulfilled John’s prophecy of baptism by fire in order to open heaven for us. ….. Jesus blazed a trail through death that leads to life. He conquered death and rose from the dead. Through His triumph, the way to heaven is open.
Here at His baptism, Jesus took our place under the burden of our sin. As our substitute, He carried out God’s plan perfectly. The mission that Jesus began at His baptism was successful. He opened a way to heaven. He offers to join us to Himself through baptism. The Holy Spirit gives us the faith that receives that offer. God the Father adopts us into His family by that faith. When the time comes for us to leave this world, the heavens will open, the angels will carry us home and we will hear the Father say, “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” Amen
The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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