First Sunday after Epiphany
The Baptism of Christ
Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Isaiah 60:1-6, NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Matthew 2:1-12, NRSVUE)
One autumn a few years ago I got in the habit of eating a salad a couple of days a week for lunch. I wish I could say that it was simply because I was trying to be healthy, but there was more to it than that. There was this place a few blocks from office my in downtown Boston that did this “made-to-order” salad thing that was incredibly efficient. You walked down a line where all of the ingredients were set-up behind a short glass window and told them what you wanted; they threw everything in a big metal bowl, mixed it up, put it in a to-go container and sent you on your merry way. It was basically a salad bar for lazy, impatient germaphobes — which was great for me because I’m all of those things.
I had it all timed out perfectly: I could dependably walk there, get my lunch and be back at my desk in fifteen minutes, give or take couple of minutes in either direction depending upon traffic lights and how long the line was.
But this carefully-arranged process I had was thrown into disarray when January second rolled around. As I walked to this place and the block on which it was located came into view, I could see the line extending out the door and spilling onto the sidewalk. I had a little bit of time to spare, and I really had my heart set on having a salad for lunch that day, so I decided to take my place in the queue and wait it out; besides, I figured that they might be giving away free salad or something (no such luck, I’m afraid).
When I got to the register my curiosity got the better of me and so I said to the cashier, “Hey, what’s with all the people today?” In retrospect, the answer seems pretty obvious, though it didn’t occur me at the time: “Oh, that’s the New Year’s resolution crowd. You know, people who decided to eat better this year.” But it was what she said next that really stuck with me: “Don’t worry, the line will die down in a couple of weeks after most of them give up because it was too hard to do.” And, for the record, she was absolutely right.
I’m not sure if you know this but the second Friday in January — which was just two days ago — is known as “Quitters Day” because research has shown this to be the day by which most people have given up on their New’s Year’s resolutions. So, I wish a belated Happy Quitter’s Day to those of you who celebrated.
All kidding aside, though, there is an important truth about us humans underlying all of this. However good our intentions may be, it’s generally a whole lot easier for us to say that we’re going to do something than it is for us to actually do it — especially over the long haul. It’s far more pleasant to focus on the good stuff that makes us feel better about ourselves (like saying, “I’m going to get fit this year”) and to ignore the tough part of what that entails (like, “I’m going to have make sacrifices and work really hard”) until we can’t ignore it. And this is what came to mind for me as I was thinking about today’s passage from Luke’s Gospel.
If you had a quick look either at your bulletin or the screen, the citation for this reading looks a little like an equation from high school algebra — lots of numbers and symbols: Luke 3 colon 15 dash 17 comma 21 dash 22. And when you see this it always means that something got skipped — in this case, verses 18 through 20.
The folks who put together the Lectionary readings do this with some frequency and, much of time I understand why; I mean, if they didn’t shorten some of these passages we’d be here all day, and so they make editorial decisions to leave out stuff they view as extraneous or beside the point. But I think that skipping those three verses today was a mistake, and I’ll come back to why in a few minutes.
The second half of today’s reading (the part after the comma in the citation) is Luke’s account of Jesus’s baptism. Matthew and Mark tell versions of this story as well, and they all go about their business a little differently (for the record, John doesn’t talk about it at all).
For example, all three describe the Spirit descending upon Jesus like a dove;
Matthew and Mark make it clear that John the Baptist is the one who baptizes Jesus, while Luke doesn’t actually say;
Luke depicts Jesus praying, while the other two writers don’t;
and while all three have the voice of God declaring Jesus to be “my Son, the Beloved,” Mark and Luke indicate God speaking directly to Jesus (“You are my Son, the Beloved”) while Matthew has God speak to everyone there on the banks of the Jordan River (“This is my Son, the Beloved”).
So who’s right about exactly what happened that day — since simple logic would dictate that at least one of them had to be wrong? I have no idea. All I can tell you is that three out of four gospel writers tell us that Jesus was baptized, that the Holy Spirit showed up in the form of a dove, and that God chose this occasion to declare that Jesus was special. It’s reasonable to infer from all of this that they thought Jesus’s baptism was kind of a big deal, which it is.
In the first part of our reading (the part before the comma in the citation), John the Baptist is out there doing what his name would lead us to believe he’d be doing — he’s baptizing people (as well as preaching). He’s so good at doing these things, in fact, that people are wondering whether he’s the Messiah. But John wastes no time in setting the record straight.
He tells them that while he might baptize with water, one who is more powerful than he is coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire (namely, Jesus). Drawing on farming imagery that would have resonated with his agrarian audience, John says that Jesus will show up with his winnowing fork (I assume a metaphorical one) to clear his threshing floor, gathering the wheat and burning the chaff (making it clear that one would rather be the former than the latter, even if it’s not all that clear what all of this actually means).
To recap: John is out there by Jordan River preaching and baptizing people. He’s such a compelling presence that the people, who desperately wish for a Messiah, think he might be that Messiah. He tells them he’s not and that the Messiah is on the way. Jesus shows up and decides to be baptized too (which is a ringing endorsement for baptism — I mean if Jesus did it then, you know…). After the baptism, Jesus prays and then the Holy Spirit appears as a dove and God speaks, thus underscoring the importance of both Jesus and his baptism. Simple, right? Yeah, not so much.
You see those pesky verses that the Lectionary omits make things a little more complicated; here’s what they say:
“So with many other exhortations, he [John] proclaimed the good news to the people. But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting John up in prison.”
At some level, I can see why the folks at Lectionary World Headquarters left this part out — especially the last two verses. What does Herod have to do with any of this, and who the heck is Herodias? I mean, it kind of interrupts the flow of the story; but it’s also pretty important.
In a nutshell, Herodias was Herod’s wife — well, she was actually his half brother Philip’s wife first (and, fun fact: Philip was also Herodias’s uncle, which is pretty gross). Herod persuaded Herodias to divorce Philip and marry him, which was not only not very nice, but also a violation of Jewish law.
Herod, of course, did (and will go on to do) all sorts of other rotten stuff too. And one of the rotten things that Herod will do is throw John in prison (and eventually execute him) for having the courage and the honesty and the audacity to call out Herod publicly for all of the rotten things that he’s done. That’s why this part of the text really matters.
When John shows up out there in the wilderness preaching a “baptism of repentance,” he really means it. He really sees the ritual of baptism, on the one hand, and the need for people to think and speak and act differently, on the other, as inseparable. And this is an essential thing for us to understand — about John, about Jesus, and about baptism.
For John (and for Jesus), baptism isn’t simply about some nice words and a splash of water;
it isn’t some kind of credential or a ticket to heaven;
it isn’t a point-in-time, one-and-done event event.
It’s a call to consider needs of others, always;
it’s a call to speak truth to power, to do what is right because it is right, to seek justice, to show love for your neighbor, always;
it’s a call to respond to God’s grace as if you’ve received God’s grace (because baptism reminds you that you have), always.
It’s a call to do what John and Jesus did.
But none of these things is easy — we all know that; they require work and commitment and sacrifice. Sometimes they can be risky and dangerous (John and Jesus understood that). And so I’m not necessarily surprised that today’s reading leaves out that part — people don’t often want to hear about that part. But we can’t just ignore it.
And so the questions for us today, at some level, are simple ones, really: are we ready to celebrate Jesus’s baptism and all that it means — our own baptism and all that it means — by doing (and continuing to do) God’s work in the world, today and every day? Or are we content to celebrate the final day of this long Quitters Day weekend by walking away from the responsibility that God is calling us towards because it’s too risky, too difficult or too inconvenient?
The grace has always been God’s to share, but that choice has always been ours to make.