Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
The interest of the people by now was building. They were all beginning to wonder, “Could this John be the Messiah?”
But John intervened: “I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
After all the people were baptized, Jesus was baptized. As he was praying, the sky opened up and the Holy Spirit, like a dove descending, came down on him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”
It's been a long while since we've had anything to post here. Most of our Advent/Christmas lessons were open discussions rather than 'sermons," then there was Annual Congregational Meeting, followed by a road trip to our sister church, Geyserville Christian.
But here we are, finally starting out the new year – after all the focused celebration of Advent and Christmas and New Year’s, finally sitting here in our own home with the old year wrapped up and packed away and a shiny, clean slate set before us.
We are now in cycle “C”, the third of the three rotating liturgical cycles and this year we will primarily be reading the story of Jesus from Luke’s Gospel.
The story of Jesus’ baptism starts out focused on John the Baptist, the son of Elizabeth and Zachariah, a relative of Jesus’ but obviously not a close one, since he didn’t recognize his own cousin.
I puzzled myself this week wondering why John was out there in the wilderness area in the first place. The wilderness seemed to me to be a strange place to set up shop if you want people to hear what you are preaching – and yet people flocked to him.
I discovered first that it can be a matter of words. That particular area is, indeed, hill country, and rough, but not what we typically consider as “desert wilderness.”
Also, I dug out the simplest map I could locate (handout) showing Jerusalem, the Jordan River, and the area south of Jericho where this story is believed to have taken place. I added an “X” a bit south of Jericho.
This is not terribly accurate, but somewhere in the vicinity of that X is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, near the Essene community of Qumran. John has long been linked with the Essenes, a highly ascetic sect who lived in the desert, away from the flesh-pots and distractions of Jerusalem. Whether John was an actual Essene himself or simply someone who shared their ascetic ideals, it explains a lot about John’s chosen lifestyle.
I researched further to understand why people were going out there to be baptized by John – there were similar cleansing rituals available in Jerusalem at the Temple itself. Why would people folks go out that far to see and hear John?
John Dominic Crossan offers the explanation that all the “legal and approved” rituals had to be performed in Jerusalem and were expensive. What John the Baptist offered (and basically, invented, by following what he believed he was sent to do) was a rite that didn’t just cleanse the body but also returned the soul of a person to its original creation-state of innocence and purity – and it could be done anywhere and it was free!
That’s all very interesting, but why did Jesus travel that distance to submit himself to a cleansing he clearly didn’t need (at least according to our later understanding of him)?
Again, Crossan’s take on all this is that Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom he would preach and his role in it grew out of his baptism by John. In other words, Jesus hadn’t, himself, fully formulated who he was and what he was about before he walked out into the wilderness near the Jordan River. But everything changed there – for both Jesus and John – when Jesus rose up from the waters and heard – sensed – a voice within him say “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”
Earlier, before the baptisms, John had told the assembled crowd, when they ask if he was the one they waited for: “I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
Maybe no one else there that day recognized what happened, but both Jesus and John knew, and from that time each took a new path. John’s path would be much shorter. He had done what he needed to do – he had announced Jesus to the world – now what remained for him was to die so that he would no more detract notice from Jesus. He pointed his followers in the right direction and, unafraid now, open;y challenged a king and died a martyr.
Jesus would grow in his own understanding and travel the countryside for three years, preaching and teaching the kingdom he had discovered within himself – calling all to join him there – before he, too, would die, a martyr.
In dying, they each, in their own way, did more than they ever could have down to raise up that kingdom of water and fire which is our inheritance and our eternal promise from our God.
As we were told long ago in the words of the prophet Isaiah (43:2, 4a)
But here we are, finally starting out the new year – after all the focused celebration of Advent and Christmas and New Year’s, finally sitting here in our own home with the old year wrapped up and packed away and a shiny, clean slate set before us.
We are now in cycle “C”, the third of the three rotating liturgical cycles and this year we will primarily be reading the story of Jesus from Luke’s Gospel.
The story of Jesus’ baptism starts out focused on John the Baptist, the son of Elizabeth and Zachariah, a relative of Jesus’ but obviously not a close one, since he didn’t recognize his own cousin.
I puzzled myself this week wondering why John was out there in the wilderness area in the first place. The wilderness seemed to me to be a strange place to set up shop if you want people to hear what you are preaching – and yet people flocked to him.
I discovered first that it can be a matter of words. That particular area is, indeed, hill country, and rough, but not what we typically consider as “desert wilderness.”
Also, I dug out the simplest map I could locate (handout) showing Jerusalem, the Jordan River, and the area south of Jericho where this story is believed to have taken place. I added an “X” a bit south of Jericho.
This is not terribly accurate, but somewhere in the vicinity of that X is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, near the Essene community of Qumran. John has long been linked with the Essenes, a highly ascetic sect who lived in the desert, away from the flesh-pots and distractions of Jerusalem. Whether John was an actual Essene himself or simply someone who shared their ascetic ideals, it explains a lot about John’s chosen lifestyle.
I researched further to understand why people were going out there to be baptized by John – there were similar cleansing rituals available in Jerusalem at the Temple itself. Why would people folks go out that far to see and hear John?
John Dominic Crossan offers the explanation that all the “legal and approved” rituals had to be performed in Jerusalem and were expensive. What John the Baptist offered (and basically, invented, by following what he believed he was sent to do) was a rite that didn’t just cleanse the body but also returned the soul of a person to its original creation-state of innocence and purity – and it could be done anywhere and it was free!
That’s all very interesting, but why did Jesus travel that distance to submit himself to a cleansing he clearly didn’t need (at least according to our later understanding of him)?
Again, Crossan’s take on all this is that Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom he would preach and his role in it grew out of his baptism by John. In other words, Jesus hadn’t, himself, fully formulated who he was and what he was about before he walked out into the wilderness near the Jordan River. But everything changed there – for both Jesus and John – when Jesus rose up from the waters and heard – sensed – a voice within him say “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”
Earlier, before the baptisms, John had told the assembled crowd, when they ask if he was the one they waited for: “I’m baptizing you here in the river. The main character in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.”
Maybe no one else there that day recognized what happened, but both Jesus and John knew, and from that time each took a new path. John’s path would be much shorter. He had done what he needed to do – he had announced Jesus to the world – now what remained for him was to die so that he would no more detract notice from Jesus. He pointed his followers in the right direction and, unafraid now, open;y challenged a king and died a martyr.
Jesus would grow in his own understanding and travel the countryside for three years, preaching and teaching the kingdom he had discovered within himself – calling all to join him there – before he, too, would die, a martyr.
In dying, they each, in their own way, did more than they ever could have down to raise up that kingdom of water and fire which is our inheritance and our eternal promise from our God.
As we were told long ago in the words of the prophet Isaiah (43:2, 4a)
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
. . . . .
Because you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you.
Thanks be to God.
RSS Feed