11th January 2009 6:00 pm Evening Prayer
The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Hong Kong
Readings : Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17
God, let us not accept the judgment that this is what we are. . . . Inflame our hearts with the desire to change—with hope and faith that we all can change. Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen. (adapted from Dorothy Day)
Today is the first Sunday of Epiphany. We in the churches that stem from Western Christianity, when we hear of the Feast of Epiphany on January 6, tend to think of the star leading the Magi bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Perhaps we think of Three Kings cake on the Twelfth Night of Christmas. Occasionally we may tend to miss what the Church of the Eastern Roman Empire intended when it began using the Greek word epiphaneia—manifestation or making clear—to describe the season between the Feast of the Nativity and the start of the Lenten fast. While the Feast of Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, Epiphany as a whole season celebrates the light that shines clearly in the darkness, God in Man made manifest in the in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
I once lived in a parish in the United States that began and ended Epiphany each year with the hymn “Songs of Thankfulness and Praise.” In the revised form of the hymn sung there, the words tell us what the season is about and refers in passing to many of the Bible passages that we read just before, during, and after the season: the nativity of Christ, the star and the magi, the baptism of Jesus, the first miracle—the turning of water to wine at the wedding at Cana, then Jesus’ struggles with the devil in the wilderness, the healings of body and mind during his public ministry, the transfiguration, and the preparation to go to Jerusalem for the crucifixion and what came after:
Songs of thankfulness and praise,
Jesus, Lord, to thee we raise,
manifested by the star
to the sages from afar;
branch of royal David's stem
in thy birth at Bethlehem;
anthems be to thee addressed,
God in man made manifest.
Manifest at Jordan's stream,
Prophet, Priest and King supreme;
and at Cana, wedding guest,
in thy Godhead manifest;
manifest in power divine,
changing water into wine;
anthems be to thee addressed,
God in man made manifest.
Manifest in making whole
palsied limbs and fainting soul;
manifest in valiant fight,
quelling all the devil's might;
manifest in gracious will,
ever bringing good from ill;
anthems be to thee addressed,
God in man made manifest.
Manifest on mountain height, shining in resplendent light,
Where disciples filled with awe
Thy transfigured glory saw,
When from thence thou leddest them
Steadfast to Jerusalem
Cross and Easter Day attest,
God in man made manifest.
The Gospel reading for the First Sunday of Epiphany is the story of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus in the River Jordan. This story told in the three Synoptic Gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, and referred to in passing by the Fourth Gospel, John. It is one of the events told in the Gospels about Jesus that almost all biblical scholars and historians agree probably took place—the very fact that the early Christians preserved a story about Christ seeking a religious ritual from another suggests that it probably took place, since the story clearly was something of an embarrassment for some of them.
When we look at how the story was told by the differing Gospel writers this becomes clear.
Mark, the earliest Gospel and a primary source used by Mathew and Luke in their Gospels, tells a relatively unadorned story about the appearance of the prophet John, who, as Mark puts it, appeared in the Judean desert near where the River Jordan flows into the Dead Sea, and preached a “baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” Huge masses of people respond—all the Judean countryside, and “everyone” in Jerusalem go out to John to receive this full immersion ritual washing. Standing in the queue is one Jesus of Nazareth, whom John baptizes along with the rest. But when Jesus comes up out of the water, “he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’” Jesus immediately leaves, being sent by the Spirit out into the Judean desert for forty days, where he will be tempted by Satan, threatened by wild beasts, and where angels will strengthen him. The appearance of John and his baptism of Jesus, says Mark, is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Matthew’s telling of the story—the one we read this evening—is somewhat different. St. Matthew adds the dialogue between Jesus and John—John says “I need to be baptized by you, not you from me.” Jesus replies that it is necessary for Jesus to get baptized “to fulfill all righteousness.”
Many people when they notice how Matthew has changed the story in Mark wonder whether Matthew has added this little detail because he is wondering why Jesus, who according to Christian faith was sinless, seeks and receives baptism from John. After all, why should a sinless person seek a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins? The fact that Matthew has deliberately left out this characterization of John’s baptism—Luke leaves it in—suggests to me that this is indeed the problem for Matthew. The reason Matthew’s Jesus gives for the baptism, “to fulfill all righteousness” reflects Matthew’s concern for Keeping God’s Law—Jesus does not need baptism here because he needs his sins to be remitted—he has none—but rather because he needs to go through the forms required by God’s Law. He thus shows solidarity with sinners like us who do need baptism for more than just “good form.”
In contrast to Matthew, who adds the dialogue between John and Jesus to explain away the potentially embarrassing historical fact of Jesus seeking spiritual assistance from John, the Gospel of John simply deletes the fact. In the prologue of John, the Baptist appears purely as a witness to Light, the word made flesh. John bears witness of the one who is to follow, and identifies him as Jesus. Later, Jesus goes out to Jordan to baptize rather than be baptized (John 3:22-4:3). Though the Baptist is quoted as bearing witness that he saw the spirit descend on Jesus, John’s Gospel is silent about the fact that Jesus was actually baptized by John.
Given the fact that one of the Gospels explains away the problem implicit in this story and another Gospel actually passes over a story that it has obviously heard, it is almost certain that the historical Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. But what does this mean? What did John’s baptism represent, and what would it have meant for our Lord?
Khirbet (ruins of) Qumran, center; Wadi Qumran (gulley of the scrolls caves) foreground; Dead Sea in distance. John preaches in the wilderness of Judea, near the north of the Dead Sea. He is within a few kilometers of the community that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, and there are clear links between him and that community.
The Judaisms of the period all agreed that ritual and moral impurity could be driven away by following the prescriptions of the Law of Moses—for many of these the remedy was to wash in pure water and wait until sundown. As a result, mikvehs, or ritual baths are common objects in the Jewish archaeological sites from that period. Since there were many gentiles interested in Jewish monotheism, and some of these wanted to become Jews, the various schools of Judaism apparently began to practice washing purification rites for people desiring to join to God’s people to purge the general impurity of living as a gentile. This was in addition to circumcision for men. Such proselyte baptism, attested to clearly only in later Judaism, was basically another kind of ritual washing provided for in the law, albeit one practiced for the first time and as an initiatory rite.
Ritual bath (mikveh) in the Qumran ruins. The Dead Sea Scrolls sect at Qumran rejected the validity of the Temple priesthood and sacrifices, and as a result practiced their own washings and purity rules. Simply being born Jewish wasn’t enough, you had to accept the right belief system and practice the right ritual system. As a result, it appears that they practiced some form of washing as an entry rite for even other Jews who joined the community. There is even a passage in the Qumran Manual of Discipline that says that this washing had to reflect a change of heart in the person if it were to be valid. It states that a person cannot become clean if he fails to obey God's commandments in addition to following the cleansing rituals. "For it is through the spirit of God's true counsel concerning the ways of man that all his sins be expiated," observes the Manual, "and when his flesh is sprinkled with purifying water, it shall be made clean by the humble submission of his soul to all the precepts of God."
John was baptizing in the Jordan just a few kilometers from the Qumran mother House. The fact that both John and the Qumran covenanters fled to the desert to escape what they saw as the corruption and false religion of Jerusalem stems from the importance of the image of the desert in Hebrew biblical history. It was where God met with his people and/or with the “man of God” to help form and shape him into the one God had called him to be. God meets Moses in the desert (Exodus 2:11—4:31), and purifies his people there as they wander for 40 years after the Exodus. He meets Elijah there (I Kings 19:1-18).
It is here that John appears, nearly as a wild man, clothed in camel hair and a leather belt, eating wild honey and locusts. He preaches what Mark and Luke call a “baptism of repentance unto the forgiveness of sins.” A better way to translate it, I think, would be, “a washing or immersion signifying your change of heart that results in the setting aside of your sins.”
It is something like what the Qumran sectarians practiced, but popularized and meant for all, not a hermetic ritual into an exclusive sect. People flock to Jordan and crowds accept his teaching. But he is not preaching a cheap grace. In the Gospel of Luke, in particular, there is a rigorous ethical and social teaching on the lips of the Baptist. He charges the people he has thus washed to “go out and produce fruit worthy of repentance.” What he is saying is, “Go and produce tangible evidence in your acts that you have indeed had a change of hearts, a change of direction. It is only thus that your sins can be set aside by God and by you.”
In the gospels in Luke and Matthew, he is quoted as giving examples of what such tangible evidence is—if you are a soldier, don’t commit unnecessary violence and take advantage of people; if you are a tax revenue agent, only collect what is required and don’t skim the proceeds to line your own pocket.
I wonder what John the Baptist would say today if we asked him to give examples in our society of tangible evidence of a change in our hearts. Would he ask us to stop walking past beggars without assisting? Would he insist that we stop paying less than living wages to those we employ? Stop abusing spouses and children? Belittling employees or subordinates? Stop making fun of those who differ from us? Would he ask us to stop frequenting enterprises or buying goods that are based on the exploitation of others? Would he simply ask us to stop doing things that bother our conscience?
John applied this need to have a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of direction, to all, regardless of condition or family background. He says (again in Matthew and Luke) “Repent! Being Abraham’s children is not enough—God can raise up children of Abraham from the very rocks if he needed to! What is needed is a change of heart!”
So why would a thirty-year old Galilean carpenter/builder be interested in this, especially if he fairly could not think of any sins he had committed against God or his fellow? As a Jew, he would have been unable to avoid incurring ritual uncleanliness in the course of day-to-day life. But the regular washings prescribed by the Law would satisfy that. Why undergo a washing to signify a change of heart?
I think the key here to understanding is to realize that Jesus was moving here from one part of his life to another: from his private life with his family and friends, his assisting in the carpentry/house building business, his preparation, to his public ministry. It is certain that he had been quite a dutiful family member before this: we read in Mark 3 a story about Jesus’ family trying to get Jesus to come home and start acting normally after he began his public ministry. They do this because they believe he has gone insane—he is no longer acting like the Jesus they had known before.
Jesus sees in John’s baptism a call to refocus, to reorient, to redirect his life. This does not mean he was in any way of need for God’s forgiveness of sin. For others, “fruit worthy of a change of heart” would be an amendment of life and abandoning past evil ways. For him, it would be the living out of the task to which God was calling him.
Hebrews 4:15 describes Christ in this way: He is wholly able to sympathize with our weaknesses because he was tested in every way, suffered every trial just as we—yet remained without sin.
The Christian doctrine of the incarnation, the doctrine that the second person of the Holy Trinity took on flesh, and became truly human, is somewhat shocking and usually surprising to the average Christian. Throughout history, pious people in the Church have repeatedly oversimplified it. Even today, there are many church members who think they are giving a highly orthodox answer when they define the Incarnation solely in terms of "The Divinity of Christ." But this is really heresy, and was so branded by the early Church.
What the Incarnation actually affirms is that the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was known to his disciples as a fully human person, sharing the limitations and temptations of ordinary men, was also in a unique sense the self-expression of God. This became clear to them when after his horrific and unjust death, he reappeared to them in bodily form—they knew that whatever it was they were seeing, it was not a ghost. They also knew, as St. Paul says in Romans 1, that it was by raising Jesus from the dead that God revealed just who this Jesus actually was. The clearest expression of the idea in the New Testament is in the Gospel according to St. John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."
The idea has been put in many other ways over the centuries: Jesus was truly man, and at the same time truly God, is "God living a human life," "the manifestation of God in human terms," and "the fullest expression of Divine personality that is possible under the conditions of human life."
It is the very completeness of the man Jesus’ acceptance of God’s will, the totality of his self-denial without any whiff of ego-driven drama, the purity of his following God’s calling that was the hallmark of the manifestation of God in Jesus. Just as we paradoxically feel the most free and empowered when we surrender to God, Jesus’ total submission made him most free and most empowered.
I think there is a lesson for us in all of this.
As sinners, we obviously need, unlike Jesus to not just have a change of heart and direction, but to repent of our sins. But often, it is the very burden of guilt that makes repentance and amendment of life seem impossible. If we have an addiction or obsession, it is the very disgust we feel for ourselves or shame we feel from others that serves as a trigger for relapse or acting out. Changing our ways begins to appear as hard as trying to defy gravity, or to hold our breath forever.
But the example of Jesus in his baptism provides us a way out, an authentic way to truly find the way to amendment of life, recovery, and repentance.
He was not burdened by guilt. But he simply had a change of heart and heard where God was calling. So he took a step in the direction of the voice. By going to Jordan, by seeking baptism from this bizarre, camel-skin wearing preacher in the desert along with thousands of others, he did the thing God had set in front of him to do.
It is an iterative process, a journey on a road. When Abram was called out of Ur, he left his home and nation, not knowing where he was headed. So too Jesus. He went to Jordan knowing that this was the next right thing.
Coming up from the water, he hears God’s voice, quoting the Psalms and prophets, “You are my son, this day I have fathered you. I love you, you make me happy.”
He then leaves for the struggles with the devil in the desert, where he will sort out things before he begins his work.
If we take a small step toward God, he will take giant steps toward us. If guilt and shame weigh you down and make it hard, then lean on Jesus and let him take on that particular part of being human. That’s why we call him savior, after all.
In the name of God, Amen.
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