The Baptism of Jesus - Matthew 3: 13-17

by The Rev. Sandra Nixon

Today is the second Sunday after The Epiphany. Last week we celebrated “The Epiphany”, the story of God’s good news in Christ being revealed to the whole world symbolically through the visit of the magi, the wise ones from the east, as recounted in chapter 2 of Matthew’s gospel.  

We are now in what what the church calls the Season after Epiphany.  The word Epiphany comes from the Greek, "epiphaneia," meaning "appearing" or "revealing." In Celtic Christianity, Epiphany stories are stories of "thin places,” or experiences, when  divine presence or connection appears or is revealed; where the boundary between the earthly and the eternal becomes permeable. When God parts the curtain, if you will, and we catch glimpse, we perceive God’s presence, God reaching out to us, perhaps even communicating with us. 

Over the next few weeks, we will encounter more stories of revelation and awakening.  It is during this brief season between Advent and Lent, that we leave mangers and swaddling clothes behind, and turn to stories of shimmering revelation.  From kings and stars to doves and voices. Soon it will be water turned into wine - and eventually, transfiguration.

Writer Debie Thomas from “Journey with Jesus” magazine notes, “These dazzling stories are all well and good, but there’s just one problem: I have never discovered a portentous star in the East.  I have never seen the Spirit descend like a dove, or heard a divine Voice in the clouds.  I've never watched water become wine, or seen Jesus's clothes blaze white on a mountaintop.  Though I have professed belief in a self-revealing God all my life, I have not experienced God in any of the stunning ways the Epiphany stories describe.

I get where she’s coming from. Haven’t most of us wished at some point that God would make Godself known - more explicitly in our lives? I mean, who hasn’t wished to find the face of Jesus in their toast or tortilla?

Sometimes, as with Mary and Joseph and the wise ones and some of the prophets the revelations come through angel visitations, dreams and visions. But sometimes God seems to use ordinary things that are right in front us… in this story - a dove. With Moses, it was a bush that was also a vision - the bush seemed to be on fire but it wasn’t being consumed by it.

Here’s the thing: You or I may not have seen a dove coming down from heaven, or a burning bush, or heard a voice in the clouds. 

But, here’s what I can tell you. I’ve had moments, sitting at my desk in my office. I’ve been in a funk, tired, feeling uninspired. 

And then, all of  a sudden - I’m feeling a glow on my back and on my computer screen. I look back to see through my south facing window, a sunbeam breaking through the clouds - a ray from the setting sun breaking through in the southwest and finding me through the window, sitting at my little desk. And in that moment, I’ve had a sense of God’s presence and more than that, sometimes also, I’ve received a message. Sometimes it’s just “You’re not alone”. Or “You are my beloved”. Sometimes it’s “Hey, you there, stop. Take a moment, Be still. Know that I am God.” 

This is one reason I have’t changed the position of my desk in my office for a long time. Because God tends to find me there. It’s one of my thin places.

The last time was a couple of days before Xmas Eve as I was writing my Xmas Eve sermon about light, and it had been raining all day and then, suddenly, unexpectedly, light through the window. Sudden, unexpected revelation of grace and love.

Not all epiphanies are dramatic

Not all epiphanies and signs of God's presence are dramatic, or are life-changing messages or instructions. I might argue the point that Jesus’ baptism was in fact a super dramatic revelation - at least, in Matthew’s telling.

16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

The heavens were opened to him, Matthew says. “To him” - so… perhaps not everyone there experienced this - just Jesus? Maybe it was a personal spiritual experience that just Jesus had. The voice too - Matthew never says others hear the voice. There’s no external validation. This could all be personal experience / a moment of personal revelation and connection with God that Jesus is experiencing. 

Epiphany, as we said, involves seeing beyond the worldly veil of the ordinary, to see them as SIGNS through which God may choose to reveal God’s presence, to convey God’s love, and to bring us into a moment of communion and connection with the holy mystery that is the source of love and beauty in this world. 

But, it can be challenging to our modern, science-based sensibilities to approach the ordinary in this way. We might second-guess our spiritual experiences or be embarrassed to talk about them. 

Impossible to believe?

Not so for the early Christians. According to Christian historian John Dominic Crossan, Jesus's baptism story was in fact an "acute embarrassment" for the early Church  But - what scandalized the Gospel writers was not the miraculous, but the ordinary.  Doves and voices from heaven?  All well and good — but the Messiah placing himself under the tutelage of a rabble-rouser like John?  God's incarnate Son receiving a baptism of repentance?  What was he doing in that murky water, aligning himself with the great unwashed?

It makes one wonder what's most incredulous about this story?  That the Holy Spirit was experienced in and through a bird - or that Jesus threw his reputation aside to get baptized alongside everyone else?  Or that God looked down at the very start of Jesus’ ministry and called him Beloved — well before Jesus had begun his ministry or accomplished something worth praising?

Let me ask the question differently:  what do we find most impossible to believe for our own lives?  That God appears by means so familiar, we often miss it?  That the belovedness that gets affirmed for us through our baptism and in many other ways (I’m going to call it via ordinaria) - that our belovedness binds us to all of humanity — because each and every one of us is God’s beloved.  Or that we are God's Beloved — not because we've done anything to earn it, but because the Holy One insists on loving us just as we are and into fullness of life and our potential?

 There’s always a choice

Here’s the thing with Epiphany: we always, always have a choice to be open to revelation, to expect God will be revealed, and speak, to us.  It can be a challenge. It’s not always as easy as a sunbeam. It’s not always as dramatic as a voice coming from  the clouds. I’d rather God's revelations bowled me over.  I want the thin places to dominate my landscape, such that I am left choice-less, powerless, sinless.  Freed of all doubts, and spilling over with faith.

But God has not insulted my or your humanity with so little agency; rather, we get to choose.  No matter how many times God shows up in our life, we are free to close our eyes or turn away.  No matter how often God calls us Beloved and beckons us to new life, we can choose the tomb of self-hate or guilt or unworthiness instead. No matter how often we reaffirm our commitment to seek and serve Christ in all persons, we at liberty to reject one another and walk away.

There is no indication, anywhere in Scripture, that revelation leads to happily ever afters. But it does lead to a life of deeper meaning - perhaps also deeper peace - and a commitment to hope and to our role as collaborators with God for a better world. 

But seeking the star and other signs, and embracing epiphany is not easy.  The thin places and experiences and attempts by God to awaken us are not always going to be self evident, obvious.

Even when we think we might be having an “epiphany”, our doubt can creep in.  Because God works through earthly and earthy things - through creation - the font is just tap water, river water, or chlorine pool water.  The thin place is a neighbourhood, a bedside, a forest.  The voice that might be God might also be wind, thunder, the caw of a crow.  Is the baby divine?  Have we misread the star?  Is this bread or body of Christ? Is the sunbeam a sign of presence and grace or did the clouds just decide to part?

Yes. 

Look. Look again. Stand in the place that might possibly be thin, and regardless of how jaded you feel, cling to the possibility of surprise and to the promise of God-with-us.

Poet Louise Haskins offers another image of clinging as we seek Epiphany - clinging to the hand of God - and the risk this can require of us:

I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,

“Give Me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied,

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.

That shall be better than light and safer than a known way.”

So I went forth and, finding the hand of God,

trod gladly into the night.

Clinging to this hope and opening ourselves to Epiphany doesn’t ensure an easy ride through life though. In fact, it can lead us into dangerous territory, because love involves risk. The risk of being open to Epiphany and to our own - and each other’s - identity and call as Beloved is that we will be asked to affirm that against the messages the world tries to send us, and the callous actions of those in power who have walled themselves off from this truth. 

But it’s also the way of life. Of dwelling within our true home which is, the love of God.

New Testament scholar Marcus Borg says it this way: Jesus himself is our thin place.  He's the one who opens the barrier, and shows us the God we long for.  He's the one who stands in line with us at the water's edge, willing to immerse himself in scandal, repentance, and pain — all so that we might hear the only Voice that can tell us who we are and whose we are.  

And when we listen with our hearts, with faith, we will encounter, though the ordinary stuff of our own lives, we will encounter the holy. God will reveal to us that  We are God's own.  God's children.  God's Beloved.  That YOU are God’s own; God’s child; God’s Beloved. Even in the deepest water.  Without you having to accomplish anything.

It’s like Jesus was born to show us that this is true for all of us, not just him.

So can we hear that today?