SERMON
PREACHED
at
HOLY TRINITY RINGWOOD EAST
BAPTISM OF THE CHRIST
(January
13th, 1991)
READINGS
Isaiah 42: 1-4, 6-7
Psalm 29
Acts 10: 34-38
Mark 1:7-11
If
you were to pick up a New Testament and apply rigorous standards of literary
criticism and analysis to it, one of the first enigmas you would meet is this
event that we celebrate early in January each year, the baptism of Jesus.
Firstly,
if you compared today’s account with those later accounts of Luke, Matthew and
John you would find considerable differences. For your homework, you could go
home and look up the parallel passages asking yourself, “Who saw the Spirit?”
and “Who heard the voice?”
As
usual you would find John’s account to be quite different, but the other
authors vary too. Ask yourself, “Why?” What subtly different perspectives are
the writers demonstrating? What might have brought them to these differences of
perspective? As you begin to tackle these perspectives you will find yourself moving
into the fascinating and faith-enriching world of systematic theology and
biblical scholarship, worthy tasks indeed.
We
are being asked by the authors, the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
to ask another question. That question becomes more obvious as we move on to
read the writings of Paul, the other assorted epistles, and the mysterious work
we know as Hebrews.
A
recurrent theme throughout these works is that of the sinlessness of Jesus. He is
the unblemished Lamb, the one “like us in every respect except for sin.” We may
ask the risqué philosophical question, “is one who is like us in every way but
…” truly like us? It is the question raised controversially but effectively by
the movie and book The Last Temptation of Christ, to which Jan[1]
drew our attention two years ago. It is the question raised by another, similar
work to which I have referred, The Wild Girl. It is a question unsatisfactorily
explored by Milton in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.
Is
a sinless Jesus truly like us?
The
Gospel narratives, if we accept the premise that Jesus was sinless, force us to
ask another question. Why is one who is sinless baptised for the forgiveness of
sins? If the baptism of Jesus is for us, for our sins, then there is no need
for a life and death for us. We are already cleansed by his baptism. If
it is, as I suggest, an absolute identification with human experience then we
must ask why an ugly death. Surely old age would do?
They
are philosophical questions, but to avoid them is to avoid a journey into the
depths of Christ. To ignore such questions once they are raised is akin to
turning our back on the exploration of our own minds and selves, or the minds
and selves of our loved ones. It is to live in superficial relationship to our
Lord.
It
does appear that we have to recognize Jesus in his own parable of the Prodigal
Son. It was Karl Barth, perhaps this century’s greatest (though not infallible)
Protestant theologian, who made famous the recognition that it is the Son of
God who journeys into The Far Country. It is the One whose birth is a fly-cursed
manger, that we have just celebrated, who is separated from the Father’s love, who
dwells amongst the stock, amongst the pigs, hardly the place for a young Jewish
man. It is Jesus who becomes utterly as we are, enmeshed in what St. Paul calls
σὰρξ, sarx, flesh, the realm of human
sin.
Whether
or not Jesus actually commits individual human sins becomes irrelevant. Christianity
is not about some deal between a nice but bewildered god and a nasty but clever
devil, though much of our language suggests just that. The fact is simply that Jesus
becomes enfleshed in our frailty. The man who takes a bull whip to the temple-traders
also knows the whole range of our failures – including our deliberate ones –
and transforms them into the experience of resurrection and love.
Ancient
icons depicted the baptism of Jesus as a scene in which all sorts of murky
beasts are left dwelling in the water as he emerges. Jesus journeys through the
water into his ministry. We pass through the water as we begin our lives of faith.
I look at myself and know only too well my sins and failures, my hypocrisies
and peccadilloes. But I look at Jesus and find his absolute identification with
my frailty, and with my silliness, my selfishness, my pig-headedness. I find
that he rises from the waters, just as at Easter he rises from the waters of
death. I find that he transforms waters of death and despair into waters of
rebirth and hope.
And
so I go on.
Why was Jesus baptised? I offer no concrete answer, no irrefutable answer. But
next time I find myself or the world I live in entrapped in a vortex of
lovelessness and failure I will remember the one who rose out of the waters and
began his mission of love.
TLBWY
No comments:
Post a Comment