'With you I am well pleased' - April 21

Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 16, 17; PM Psalm 134, 135; Dan 3:1-18; 1 John 3:1-10; Luke 3:15-22 

Today’s Reflection

The Gospel reading appointed for today (Luke 3: 15-22) tells of how Jesus traveled to the River Jordan to be baptized by John, who had been baptizing people to purify them from sin, calling them to repentance and a holier life. Why would Jesus, the pure and sinless Son of God, the one whose sandals John said he was not worthy to carry, need to be baptized? And yet, Jesus said he must be baptized by John “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15).

So, why did Jesus need to be baptized? One reason is that, in the moment of Jesus’ baptism, we are given the clearest picture of how Jesus is truly the Son of God, and how he fits into the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The moment of Jesus’ baptism is when we both see and hear evidence that this seeming human being is in fact God’s own Son: “and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the 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 Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’” (Luke 3: 21-22). In Jesus’ baptism, God the Father makes God’s threefold nature known to all gathered there at the Jordan—and to all who would hear about it later by word of mouth and in Scripture.

Jesus needed to be baptized so that the world would know more clearly who he was. In being baptized, Jesus was clearly marked as the Beloved Son of God. Likewise, when each one of us is baptized, we are “sealed by the Holy Spirit… and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” When Jesus was baptized, he was marked as God’s own Son. When we are baptized, we are marked as “Christ’s own,” God’s dearly beloved children, forever received “into the household of God” (BCP 308).

Baptism is our rite of entry into the life of God. Of all the sacraments, only Eucharist and Baptism were modeled for us by Jesus himself. In the life of Christ, his baptism by John in the River Jordan marked the beginning of his public ministry, so it served as an initiation rite in that way for Jesus as well. Not only that, but Jesus often used words that mean immersion or baptism to discuss his ultimate sacrifice: “the suffering and death that lies ahead of him as a ‘baptism’ he is going to endure… as if going towards suffering and death were a kind of immersion in something, being drowned or swamped in something” (Williams). In our own baptisms, Rowan Williams observes, “We are, so to speak, ‘dropped’ into that mysterious event which Christians commemorate on Good Friday, and, more regularly, in the breaking of bread at Holy Communion.”

The baptism proper involves being immersed or having water poured upon the baptized. The immersion in water carries the meaning of first being dead to sin, then being raised to new life in Christ. In the creation, God ordered the chaos when he divided the waters from the land and the sky. From this perspective, water is associated with the primordial chaos. As Williams reflects, “At the very beginning of creation . . . there was watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was, depending on how you read the Hebrew, the Holy Spirit hovering or a great wind blowing. First there is chaos, and then there is the wind of God’s spirit; and out of the watery chaos comes the world. And God says this is good.”

When we are baptized, we are baptized into Jesus, who brings our inherent human chaos into divine order. And with this, God is well pleased.

Becky+

Moment for Reflection

What do you know of your own baptism? Is it a moment you have been told about or seen pictures of? Or were you old enough at the time of your baptism that you can remember it for yourself? How does reflecting on the moment of Jesus’ own baptism change how you see the spiritual meaning inherent in your own moment of baptism?