There’s a question thrown up by the evangelists to resolve: was the revelation after Jesus’ Baptism physical and public, or not? Did it take place in time and space, or was it outside our world? If we take a look at each evangelist’s account, we’ll gather a better sense of what Luke himself is saying to us about this episode. In Matthew 3, heaven’s opening seems to be visible to all, but only Jesus sees the Spirit descend. In Mark, only Jesus sees heaven’s opening and the Spirit’s descent. The revelation occurs within the mystical life of Jesus: the event is not witnessed by others, because it transpires just in the Lord’s interior life. The accent of Matthew and Mark is on Jesus’ perfect communion with his Father in the Spirit, and therefore on our perfect rupture with them. Heaven opens but only for Jesus, and so to enter heaven one must be united to him.
But the details which Luke remembers for us place this revelation (called a theophany) firmly in our world. Luke is telling us by them that God showed his hand here. Firstly, Jesus is shown praying. He will be shown praying before every major event in his life, ultimately in Gethsemane. That action of praying after the Baptism is important because it exhausts the mystical placement of this event: the revelation, the theophany occurs while Jesus is praying but not within the prayer itself; it is not hidden from our view. Secondly, heaven opens and the Spirit descends in bodily, physical form. That is, heaven opens out on to earth and the Spirit can be seen with natural eyes coming from there. We are being shown how God is at work in our world. Strange as it may seem, heaven is emptying its goodness out on the earth.
And so, Luke adds to Matthew and Mark, that we shall be made holy not by conjuring up for ourselves a mystical life detached from all reality, but in our daily and ordinary lives. Every moment, decision, and reaction therefore counts towards my final destiny.
But the intimacy of the mystical event, which Matthew and Mark preserve, isn’t lost in Luke. Physical and public though it is, the revelation probably wasn’t seen by everyone. Though it occurred in our world of time and space, no one was around to see it.
Luke tells us that Jesus was baptized “when all the people had been baptized.” There are a couple of ways we could translate Luke’s phrase, but one of them proposes that Jesus was the last to be baptized. It’s not as though Jesus was holding up the line when he paused to pray. It’s not as though, to move things along, John called out “Next!” Rather, the Lord came along at the end.
That Jesus was the last to be baptized by John has two important consequences for us.
We may say that the revelation hasn’t yet been received by the people. They haven’t seen the glory of God through Christ’s Spirit. That will come through Jesus’ public ministry, which is now underway, and will be completed at Pentecost – when the Holy Spirit descends on all flesh to sanctify and unite all humanity in the one God.
But also, Jesus’ being John’s last baptism signals the end of all the old baptisms. We only receive one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and it isn’t John’s – John’s baptism left people alone to go back to normal again. But if John has drawn repentance and washing together as a personal act, the Lord Jesus will do so as a corporate one: instead of going separate ways after John’s baptism, those who receive Jesus’ baptism are plunged into the Holy Spirit and become one body.
The Lord Jesus brings in a new regime for holiness. In him, we have God-with-us to make every moment holy. Nothing is outside the scope of grace. Everything about you matters to God. It is for us now to ask for and receive the Holy Spirit, so that all that all that Jesus came to give us will be ours.
Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest
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