The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Sunday, January 12, 2025

Luke 3, 15–16; 21–22

The people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ. John answered them all, saying, “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

“Now the people were filled with expectation, and all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ.”  Through his righteousness, John resembled the long-awaited Messiah.  Through our own righteousness and sanctity we can nudge people into thinking of Jesus.  “I am baptizing you with water, but one mightier than I is coming. I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals.”  Jesus tells us, “Amen I say to you, there hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11, 11), and even he is undeserving of carrying our Lord’s sandals.  That should give us pause.  And yet, through our response to the Lord’s call to faith in him, he will allow us to do this and, indeed, one day to touch the wounds in his hands and side which he incurred for our sake.

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  John uses water; Jesus uses fire.  This is to show the immense difference between the sign of John’s baptism and the reality that is Christ’s.  “His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn.”  John speaks of how we will face the Lord at the end of our lives when we have been reaped from the field of this life at the time when we should have matured spiritually, and at the end of the world when he brings his own into heaven.  “But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  The chaff is good for nothing once the wheat is harvested and is to be burned.  While actual chaff burns quickly and is no more, those who did not obey the will of God on earth and so proved themselves useless to him will be burned forever: “Their fire is not extinguished” (Mark 9, 47).

“Heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.”  The ancient Jews believed that the roof of the sky was a crystal sphere in which  the stars were set, and under which the sun and moon went around the earth.  If the sky was “rent asunder”, as it is written in the Greek text of Mark 1, 10, we should imagine it as a cracked dinner plate rather than a rent curtain.  The majesty of heaven would have blasted through the tear in a nearly blinding display.  Down from the heavens comes not destruction but the Holy Spirit “like a dove”.  The form of the dove recalls Genesis 8, 11, when the dove returning to Noah with the olive leaf signified reconciliation between God and the human race.  The “tear” in the heavens brings to mind another tear: “And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (Mark 15, 38).  In both cases, the rending signifies the opening of heaven to the human race, the sign of this at the beginning of the Lord’s public life, and the actual opening at the end.  The Holy Spirit “descended” upon the Lord st this time.   Since the Father and the Son are in the unity of the Holy Spirit from all eternity, the Holy Spirit does not “descend” upon him here, but the sign as well as the voice from heaven show the union of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”  The Father identifies Jesus of Nazareth as his Son and also expresses his pleasure in him.  The Father’s pleasure in his Son is from all eternity, and it is announced here in order to draw the human race to him.  The Father also speaks this way to all who are baptized and so become his adopted children: “You are my beloved son”, “You are my beloved daughter”.