Luke's Baptism of Jesus

A personal point of priviledge. Doc has decided (it was joint, but it is her body) to take a "scorched earth" approach to her breast cancer. There were just too many possibilities for future recurrence or new occurrence, so she's scheduled for bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction on 4 February. It has been a long and grueling road to get here, there's more in front of us, but it's where we want to go. I haven't exactly been rigorous about writing here, but I suspect I'll be a bit distracted around that time.  If you think about it around the date, please add Doc and her health care team to your prayers. Julian provides a bit of an anchor for me: "All will be well, and all manner of things will be well."
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Now for the main event:
This week's Gospel is Luke's account of the Baptism of Jesus.

The RCL continues the BCP Lectionary tradition of hop-scotching, but adds v. 3:17 to the lesson, continuing the speech of John the Baptist:

"His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

I'm not sure what motivated them to include that verse. Whatever. Then we skip over John's arrest by Herod the Tetrarch. That omission helps us see that he (Herod) is no better than his father, Herod the Great. As I look around, it seems like many leaders have taken to Herod the Tetrarch's practice of imprisoning those who cause problems for them. But, I digress.

The balance of the passage is very parallel to that of Mark. A few differences:

Mark: ...he saw the heavens torn apart...
Luke: ...the heaven was opened...


Mark: ...the Spirit descending like a dove on him.
Luke: ...the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.

The final verse is identical between them: "And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

Scholars agree that Luke knew of (if not possessed) the Gospel According to Mark. So did Matthew, but their versions are very different. In Matthew, Jesus goes to John to be baptized and John resists and finally capitulates. The sequences above come out differently for Matthew, as well:

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

In Luke & Mark, the heavens are opened/torn apart versus Matthew's phrasing, above. I think it's interesting that Mark's 'torn apart' is linguistically the same as the tearing of the curtain in the Temple at Jesus' death. Luke and Matthew kept that, but changed the action of the heavens. As readers, of Mark & Luke, we know to whom the final verse is addressed: it is to Jesus; what we cannot know is who else can hear the voice. In Matthew, it seems pretty clear that the voice is speaking to all people. (John's gospel is even more straightforward, but we don't read it on Sundays.) Given Luke's preference, it kind of surprised me that Matthew's phrasing wasn't in Luke. It seem to me that, given the balance of Matthew's focus for the Gospel, his gospel would have the Markan phrasing.

It is really interesting to me that all four of the canonical gospels include a baptism story. The lingering question, I think, is: "Why?" An Argument can be made for Mark's version that it is Jesus' adoption by God, but not for any of the others. So, why was it so important for them? I'll give you a hint: this is the first Sunday after The Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Just as I said last week about Luke's shepherds and Matthew's magi really being about the same thing, the announcement of Jesus' arrival and the economia of God, I think the accounts in all four of the canonical gospels are continuations of The Epiphany and formally marking the beginning of Jesus' ministry. As readers, we get to hear the sotto voce and soliloquy speeches. We're supposed to hear them, because WE are the intended audience. It is for us to recognize that God has marked Jesus as God's son for all of us to see. Through the Gospels, we can anamnetically remember the event of Jesus' baptism. He didn't need to be baptized - he was already divine. It is you and me that need to be baptized, to be reborn to a new life in Jesus through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is our induction into the priesthood of all believers, it is our way of salvation.

A great day to be baptized. At our parish, when we don't have candidates for baptism and after renewing our baptismal covenant, we process to the font, sing the Thanksgiving over Water and then asperse the people with the water as a reminder of their own baptisms. I thing that's important because almost all in the parish were baptized as infants or very small children. It gives us a way to build a memory of our baptism, one that we can come back to time and time again, and remember the greatest gift that God has ever given - God's own self for us.

The visit of the Magi

This Sunday's Gospel is Matthew's account of the visit of the Magi (the Wise Men) to Bethlehem.  I've shared some thoughts about that in my previous post "The Holy Innocents", so I'll skip that here.

There is a ton of apocryphal information.

First is how many. Matthew never says, but he does tell us about the three gifts. I guess the idea was that each gift was borne by a different person. Oh, and yes, they were all men; even though women were probably just as wise if not wiser. That's a sign of the first century times.

Somewhere along the line, the three wise men got names and countries of origin. Balthasar from Arabia, Melchior from Persia, and Caspar (or Gaspar) from India. No one knows what happened to them after they left Bethlehem. One story is that St. Thomas baptized one of them when he brought the faith to India. I'd have to guess that it was Caspar; I've got a one in three chance, right?

Matthew is explicit in the gifts that were brought: gold, myrrh, and frankincense. But he doesn't say what they represent. Again, suppositions. Gold - for a king, a measure of the respect and honor for the king, not to mention adding to his coffers. Myrrh has at least two possible explanations. First, myrrh was used as a burial ointment; something to cover the smell. This explanation would seem to point to Jesus' death and burial. Second, myrrh is used in the preparation of anointing oils (even today) for Olio infirmatum and Chrism. This would seem to point to Jesus as high priest. Finally, frankincense would be an offering to God, pointing to Jesus' incarnation as human yet remaining divine.

So, Matthew identifies Jesus as king, priest/victim, and God. That's pretty significant by itself, but the whole Epiphany idea, that is, disclosing/revealing/manifesting Jesus' identity to the world is a way bigger deal. Jesus was not hidden from the wise and discerning (the wise men), nor was he hidden from ordinary people. Think Luke's shepherds. Think about Jesus' ministry among the marginalized and outcast of his society.

Jesus came to the ordinary. Today we'd see him with street people, prostitutes, mentally ill, working poor, just to name a few. I think that emphasizes how much God really wants to be in relationship with us. Jesus, living among us as the Incarnate Son of God, opening God's self to the cruelties and inhumanities we perpetrate tells me that God is either totally off the rails or so loves us so completely that it makes no difference what happens. That is kenotic, self-emptying love. God gives away God's self for our benefit. I think there's no greater gift than the Incarnation.