Jesus’ Baptism – 2019
Luke 3:15-22
Marian Free
In the name of God who is beyond our wildest imaginings. Amen.
Some of you will know the books “Animalia” and “The Eleventh Hour” by Graeme Base. The former consists of extravagant and alliterative illustrations of the alphabet including Diabolical Dragons Daintily Devouring Delicious Delicacies or Lazy Lions Lounging in the Local Library. The paintings are so filled with detail that the “reader” has to be given hints so that they know what to look for. The pages can be examined time and time again and still the “reader” will not see everything that there is to be seen.
As the author says in the introduction:
“Within the pages of this book
You may discover, if you look
Beyond the spell of written words,
A hidden land of beasts and birds.
For many things are ‘of a kind’,
And those with keenest eyes will find
A thousand things, or maybe more –
It’s up to you to keep the score…”
For a long time, I have thought of the Bible as an elaborate picture book. Even though it does not contain a single illustration it seems to me that its content is so complex that I will never see all that there is to be seen. Each time I read it or read a commentary on a passage or a book of the Bible I discover something new. Sometimes this happens even as I am reading the gospel as a part of the liturgy – a word or a piece of information will jump out at me and I will wonder why I never saw it before. (For example, it wasn’t until someone pointed it out, that I saw that there were children in the Temple when Jesus overturned the tables Mt 21:15.) As is the case with a picture book, once I’ve seen or been alerted to something new, I will see it every time.
I have known for some time (and preached to this effect) that Jesus’ baptism by John was controversial. Why did Jesus need to be baptised? Why indeed did he need to repent? The gospel writers deal with this difficulty in different ways. Only in Mark and Matthew are we explicity told that John baptises Jesus. Even then, in Matthew’s gospel John initially refuses to baptise Jesus only to be told that “it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness” (Mt 3:15). John’s gospel has John identify Jesus, but we are not that Jesus was himself baptised. It was only this week that the Lutheran scholar, Karoline Lewis[1], drew my attention to something I should have noticed before now. In Luke’s gospel too, John does not, indeed cannot baptise Jesus. I have been so used to the idea that Jesus is baptised by John that I had not noticed that when Jesus is baptised in Luke’s gospel, John is absent.
According to Luke Jesus was baptised after everyone else was baptised what we are not told is by whom he was baptised. Up until now the story has been about John so we (or at least I) simply assume that it was John who baptised Jesus. Lewis alerts us to the fact that that may not be the case. John in fact is nowhere to be seen – he is in prison. He has so offended Herod that Herod has locked John up! It is possible that the mention of John’s imprisonment is just a literary aside but, given Luke’s overall agenda, that seems unlikely.
Through the introductory stories of John’s and Jesus’ conception and birth Luke makes it very clear that, of the two men, John is the lesser. John is given credibility and status only because he points the way to Jesus. He has no other role in the story and so, when it is Jesus’ turn to shine, John can be dispensed with. His imprisonment beforeJesus’ baptism removes him from the picture all together. John is no longer a part of the story; his time has ended, and Jesus’ time has begun.
The fact that, more often than not, we overlook John’s absence at Jesus’ baptism reminds us how much we miss when we read our scriptures and how much we read into the story that is not actually there. For example, because the disciples are all men, we fail to see the role that women play in the story, because that is what we have been told. We think that because both Matthew and Luke tell the same parable that it means the same thing in each gospel. We do not notice that Jesus’ travel sometimes makes no sense and that our minds create order where there is none.
The Bible is not a picture book, but it isfull of hidden depths and unexpected surprises. There are gaps in the stories and silences that speak of deliberate or accidental omissions. Puzzles and contradictions abound; and the same story can be told in several different ways. When we read the Bible, we need to learn to read with fresh eyes – looking for things that we have never seen before and noticing the things not said as much as those things that are spoken.
Like God, the Bible really has no beginning and no end. There is much that we can learn from what we “see” and “hear” and “read” and “experience”, but there is so much more to be learnt from what is unseen, unheard, unreadable and beyond our experience. No matter how often and how deeply we immerse ourselves in our scriptures we will never see all that there is to see or know all that there is to know. What is important is that we do not settle, that we do not content ourselves with what is obvious or become comfortable with the “truths” that we hold, but that we always strive to see beyond the merely superficial, always expect to be surprised and even shocked and always remember that the subject of our scriptures – the creator of the universe – is forever beyond our grasp.
[1]Working Preacher
Swallowsrest 