The Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the River Jordan can be found in all four Gospels. In Mark and Matthew we get the full and detailed account of the heavens opening and the dove descending on Jesus and the words of God, “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”  John, who begins his Gospel at the beginning of time itself, doesn’t narrate the baptism at all, though in John 1:32 it is clear that he knew the stories of the baptism.

I find Luke’s account (today’s Gospel) very interesting. Firstly, if you blinked you would miss it completely! Luke sums up the baptism in half a sentence, “…when Jesus also had been baptised and was praying…….”, and while he infers that it was John who baptised him, we are not actually told that it was John. The coming of the Holy Spirit like a dove and the voice from heaven all take place when Jesus already, “had been baptised and was praying…”. Why would Luke, who recounts in great detail the birth of Jesus, give so little importance to his baptism?

Let me suggest two possible reasons. Firstly, in the early years of the Church, when the apostles were struggling to convince Jews and others that Jesus had risen from the dead and the coming of the Kingdom of God had begun, the story of Jesus’ own baptism was a little bit uncomfortable and difficult to explain.

John’s baptism was for one purpose only – a public sign of repentance from sin, before God came to judge the world. If, then, Jesus needed or wanted to be baptised by John it would seem that he was repenting his sins, or in other words, publicly admitting that he was a sinner. In the same way, acknowledging that Jesus was baptised by John, seemed to make Jesus inferior to John in some way.

When trying to convince people that Jesus was the Messiah, that he had risen from the dead, and that he was God, Jesus’ own baptism raised some uncomfortable questions.

Matthew and Mark, who give us the full account of the baptism, get around this problem by stating that John was the “last and greatest prophet…”  who was there to point to the ‘chosen one’ and introduce him to the world. They are also at pains to tell us that John himself says that he is inferior to Jesus, the sentiment, “…the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie…” appearing in all four Gospels.

Luke seemed to deal with any possible questions about why Jesus needed to be baptised, by almost skipping over it!!

All of this can appear to be irrelevant to the message of Jesus and at one level it is, but if we want to come to ‘know’ the person of Jesus and to have, as Pope Francis puts it, “…a renewed person encounter with Jesus…” (EG3), then standing beside the earliest disciples of Jesus and understanding how they introduced the person of Jesus to us can be very helpful. As St. Teresa of Avila tells us, “Through meditating the humanity of Christ we come to know ourselves through Christ.”

There is, I think, something we can learn from this: The apostles were not afraid to acknowledge and face difficult questions about Jesus. They could have simply skipped over Jesus’ baptism and not mentioned it at all. After all, by the time the first Gospel was written most of those who knew Jesus were already dead. If they ‘conveniently’ left out the baptism of Jesus altogether, the message of Jesus would be no different and they would have been spared having to explain it.

Instead, in reflection and prayer, they allowed God to speak through what seemed to them awkward and uncomfortable, and in so doing the full richness of God’s plan for the world was revealed.

We too must not be afraid to open ourselves in reflection and prayer to the awkward and uncomfortable issues of our faith. If we believe that the Holy Spirit is truly with us, then we can be certain that God will speak to us through them. Our danger is always that we either pretend they are not there at all, or we deny them in some simplistic or moralistic way.

However the second, and I think more important, reason why Luke does not give huge prominence to the story of Jesus’ baptism, is because for him it is the coming of the Holy Spirit on Jesus that is central, not the specific circumstances by which this happened.

Remember, Luke also wrote ‘The Acts of the Apostles’ which has, at its centre, the story of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit on the apostles. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Church began at Pentecost. Until then the apostles and other disciples, hid away in fear, witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus but still without the strength and courage to take that message to the world.

The message of Luke in the ‘Acts of the Apostles’ is that the apostles got that strength and courage at Pentecost when they received the Holy Spirit.  The message of Luke in today’s Gospel is that Jesus received the Holy Spirit “…when he had been baptised and was praying…”  , and that gave him the strength and courage to begin his ministry.

For Luke it is the coming of the Holy Spirit that is important, not when, how or who was there when it happened.

And so to us: The apostles received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Jesus received the Holy Spirit “(according to Luke) …when he had been baptised and was praying.”

We, each one of us, received the Holy Spirit at our baptism. Those of us who are cradle Catholics or Christians of other traditions won’t even remember the event, and it is probably not something we were reminded of as we grew up in the Church. It was an important event in our lives – we officially received our names, we legally became part of our family, it was, in a real sense, a celebration of our birth, and we became part of our Church – though we had not the slightest idea what it was! Somewhere in the mix was ‘Original Sin’ and the devil trying hard to lay claim to us, with baptism sending the devil packing…… but receiving the Holy Spirit? In words, yes, it is part of the ceremony, but how can it possibly give us the strength and courage Jesus or the first disciples received?

The water, the oil, the white clothes, the candle all celebrate the ‘Sacrament’ of Baptism. They act as the signs that we are created in God’s image, and through Jesus, we are heirs to the Kingdom of God. But sacraments are not ‘magic’ and they do not work as if by magic. As we grow and mature we must be introduced to our God and to Jesus by our parents, teachers, and indeed our often forgotten Godparents, who take on this responsibility with parents; we must learn to pray, to communicate our joys and sorrows, our needs and anxieties, our fears and doubts directly with God; we must learn about the Holy Spirit who lives within us, bringing strength and courage when we need it.

All of this ‘being introduced’ to God, learning to ‘communicate directly’ with God, recognising that God ‘lives within’ us, prepares us, hopefully, to ‘receive the Holy Spirit’ as the apostles received him/her at Pentecost and as Jesus received him/her at his baptism.

Receiving the Holy Spirit is not something we can take for granted. There is no magic involved, no spells cast which will either save or condemn us. Rather, receiving the Holy Spirit is something we must desire, something we must prepare for, something with which we must cooperate. With all of these things in place, receiving the Holy Spirit is something we then ‘experience’ in our lives. And the key word, I think, is ‘experience’.

What happened to the apostles at Pentecost and what happened to Jesus after his Baptism was not a ritual or a ceremony or a rite, it was, rather, a personal ‘experience’ of the presence of God. For Jesus the ‘experience’ is described as hearing God say to him, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.”  Just imagine what it must feel like to just ‘know with absolute certainty’ that you are as close to God as a ‘son’ or ‘daughter’?

Any experience of God is, by its nature, beyond description. No matter how hard we try, no words, no descriptions, no images, no metaphors will ever capture an ‘experience’ of God. Yet, when such an experience happens it is as real as a voice speaking to us or as genuine as a person appearing to us.

Nor are they as rare as we might think. Throughout the Old Testament we hear over and over again how God ‘spoke’ to a person, or ‘appeared’ to a person, or ‘walked’ with a person. We know that God cannot ‘speak’, or ‘appear’, or ‘walk’, but we have no other ways of describing God’s presence to us except in human language. ‘Doves’, ‘tongues of fire’, ‘angels’, ‘dreams’, ‘burning bushes’, ‘fiery chariots’, etc. are all ways of describing what is beyond description.

What Luke does, in this Gospel, is very purposely separate the baptism of Jesus (John the Baptist, water, etc.) from his ‘experience’ of receiving the Holy Spirit. He talks of ‘baptism’ and ‘receiving the Holy Spirit’ as if they are different events…. “when (after?) he had been baptised and was praying….the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him….etc”

I cannot help feeling that Luke is challenging us in this Gospel. I cannot help feeling that he is asking us, “When did you receive the Holy Spirit?”; NOT, when did you have water poured over your head, or were anointed with oil, or were prayed over; but when did you ‘experience’, ‘receive’ the Holy Spirit within yourself?

It is the challenge not to see our Baptism as a magical spell or to take it for granted. Our baptism only bears fruit when we ‘receive the holy Spirit’ and that is something we must desire, pray for, and witness to in our lives.

Maybe Luke is saying to us, and through Luke God is saying to us: “You have been baptised…… but have you received the Holy Spirit? ….. have you ‘heard’ (experienced in some way) God saying to you, “You are my son or daughter; with you I am well pleased.”

This is what God says to each one of us, over and over again, everyday, and God wants nothing else but that we experience it deep within ourselves. Is this ‘experience’ a challenge? a gift? an invitation? a summons? a promise? or maybe all of them and more! Whatever we see it as, it is what God wants for us.

Many thanks,

Brian.

If you have any thoughts or comments that you would like to share with me on this reflection, please send me an email: b.maher@oblates.co.uk 

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