“He saw the spirit of God descending like a dove”
The Rev. Scot Sherman
The Baptism of Christ, January 8, 2023
Isaiah 42:1-9 • Acts 10:34-43 • Matthew 3:13-17
I don’t know if you noticed, but we’ve had a bit of rain lately. This past July I spent a few weeks in Australia for an academic conference, and I was able to experience historic rainfall there as well. Where I was, in Sydney, it rained every day for a week, 2.5 inches a day. I was determined to walk to church on Sunday morning, so I decked myself in rain gear, including the hotel’s industrial strength umbrella, and trudged through the gale for a half mile; I was so glad when I could hear the bells summoning us to mass; I walked in, drenched, laid aside my rain gear, squeaked my way to my seat, and squished into the pew. The service began, I’m not kidding, with the rite of asperges–a priest sprinkling us with water!!! As he made his way through the congregation, people made the sign of the cross, but I looked him right in the eyes, mid-sprinkle, and said, “really”?
Well, the chickens have come home to roost, because shortly we’ll be sprinkling all of you! Today we celebrate the feast of the first Sunday after the Epiphany, the Baptism of the Lord!
Epiphany, is the season celebrating the manifestation of Christ to the peoples of the earth. In the earliest centuries of the church, in many places, the winter solstice was celebrated on January 6th. As an alternative to pagan festivals, Christians chose this day to celebrate various epiphanies of Jesus' divinity–his birth, the coming of the Magi, his baptism, his first miracle at the wedding of Cana. Basically, the celebration of the Son of God was replacing the celebration of the Sun. In the early third century church, it was the baptism of Jesus that was the focus of the celebration, not the visit of the Magi. That came later. And it was a BIG deal! In fact, the 3 major festivals marked by the church were Epiphany–focused on the baptism of Jesus– Easter and Pentecost!
You may say, why all the hoopla? Well, Peter says it well in our reading from Acts. He finds himself, a lifelong orthodox Jew, in a socially unthinkable place—the home of Cornelius the Centurion, a Roman soldier— because God wants to bring the life of the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles. Peter talks about Jesus and the message that began to spread after the baptism that John announced: (v.37b ff): What is it? Well, first the baptism: “...how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power.” Then, “how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” Peter frames Jesus’ baptism as his anointing as Messiah. In the words of theologian, Willie Jennings, “the Jesus of recent history becomes the defining moment of all history.”
Why is Jesus being baptized by John? This is a protest movement against corruption in the temple, calling the Jewish people to rethink their complicity and compromise with evil, and to seek forgiveness. Jesus doesn’t need forgiveness! That’s why John refuses at first. Then Jesus says, “this fulfills all righteousness.”
I think Jesus is demonstrating his righteousness here by standing in solidarity with sinners. The word “righteousness” in the Hebrew scriptures is not so much about sinless perfection as it is about right relationship with God. It’s about living obediently because you trust God’s faithfulness. It’s commitment to God’s special regard for those who are powerless, oppressed, and in need of justice.
The baptism itself is high drama! The heavens open, and the Father speaks! Tom Wright says of this, “all heaven is breaking loose.” And from the heavenly dimension the Holy Spirit descends “like a dove”, John says. The other gospels go so far as to say the Spirit takes the form of a dove.
This has lots of associations in the Hebrew Bible. It was a dove, in the story of Noah’s flood, who marks the end of the judgment. When the dove returned to the ark with an olive branch, and then when the dove did not return at all, the earth was dry and God told Noah to bring all living things back to land. The dove is peace. The dove is new life.
John is ready for revolution. His emotions are running high, like many of us disgusted by political corruption and systemic injustice. He wants a Messiah who will bring fire and an ax! (I get that, don’t you)? But what does the Messiah bring? A dove. Here is God, humbling Godself, coming to us in humility, bringing grace, and calling us to gentleness and nonviolence. Biblical scholar, Dale Bruner, writes, “Christians are given power by the gift of the Spirit in baptism. But it is dove power.”
Dove power. The ability to hear God’s voice of forgiveness and love, to receive it and live into it for others.
A few years ago, my wife and I saw SF Ballet’s production of Helgi Tomassen’s “Romeo and Juliet.” The Prokoffiev score, the choreography, the story was so unbearably sad it just killed me. Some of you will have seen it: Romeo wakes up to the dead Juliet, and before taking his own life, reenacts the famous ball scene when they first met; he reenacts the whole dance with her lifeless body. It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. I wept. At the curtain call, it was the slow clap of the devastated. Then Romeo, the dancer Davit Karapetyan, silenced the audience, fell to one knee, and proposed to Juliet, Vanessa Zahorian, and she said yes!
I think of that today. In his baptism, Jesus meets us where the dance is. He meets us in the place of our weakness, our deepest suffering, in the grip of death itself. This is where we experience God’s love, the power of the dove. It’s to this place that our baptism points, the spiritual baptism that John said Jesus would bring: where we come to hear the Father’s voice as he calls us “beloved children,” so that we can walk in love.