Baptism of Christ
“And there came a voice from heaven” Mark 1.11
While I was in Florida last week, I visited the biggest church in the area: First Baptist Ft Lauderdale! It reminded me that there’s a difference between the way that American Baptists baptize and British Baptists. Not many people know that.
In my former life as a baptist minister, I would stand up to my waist in water and with one hand on the collar and one on the solar plexus of the adult candidate, I would propel the person rapidly backwards until the water closed over their face.
It was dramatic and messy and time will not permit me to tell you of my adventures in a six hundred gallon baptistry with a 24 stone lady, or of the very chic white cotton Italian designer trousers I decided to wear one evening. As I walked down into the pool, they turned completely transparent.
My first baptism in an American Southern Baptist church was a revelation. No unseemly dunking and splashing for them. The candidate held a cloth over their nose and mouth and were very gracefully and slowly eased back under the water as the lights dimmed and the organ played seraphic music.
The pastor of the church explained to me that, as baptism represented being buried with Christ, it was more appropriate to lower the candidate lovingly into the grave, than to throw them into it.
The New Testament imagery of Baptism is indeed of dying and rising in Christ; of being buried with him in death and reborn to a new life in his resurrection.
It was natural for the early church to interpret the words and commands of our Lord in that way.
But John the Baptist’s baptism, was one of repentance, and this posed something of a problem for the first and second century theologians. Why should the sinless Jesus submit himself to a baptism which was for the washing away of sin?
Even John himself is perplexed by Jesus’ actions, as Matthew records: “John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’” (3.14)
Here it is more bluntly in the mid-second century apocryphal Gospel of the Nazaraeans, where Jesus says: “Wherein have I sinned that I should go and be baptized by him?”
It is interesting that today’s Gospel reading from John, perhaps the most ‘theological’ of the four, only implies the baptism of Christ, but never describes it.
In my younger years I was among those interpreters who understood the Baptism of Jesus in terms of identifying with sinners: he who knew no sin became sin for us; he identifies with us in sin and vicariously repents for us in his baptism.
But I have come to see that this is an unnecessary interpretation which goes beyond the text.
Professor Morna Hooker, in her commentary on Mark, I think rightly gets to the heart of the matter. John’s baptism was not just about forgiveness of sins, it was about the coming of the New Age, the Kingdom Age, the Messianic Age, when forgiven men and women would gladly submit to the gentle rule of God, and would live out Kingdom values in their daily lives.
It was about extravagant love for God and consequent love of neighbour. It was about hating hypocrisy and deadening religious practice.
In this light, it would be natural for Jesus, in his full humanity, to identify with the baptized of this new movement. John’s hesitation was probably not so much to do with Christ’s sinlessness, as with a realisation that Christ was vastly superior to him, in ways that John could hardly imagine possible. He was not worthy so much as to loosen his sandal.
With naive and unembarrassed simplicity, Mark (possibly the earliest Gospel) faithfully records the incident at the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry.
We are sometimes in danger of making baptism and confirmation the very thing that John the Baptist railed against: an empty ritual embedded in cultic Christianity. A British folk-religion placebo. At worst, an inoculation against the real thing!
The Baptism of Jesus, which we celebrate today, reviving the ancient practice of the church at epiphanytide, reminds us of the authentic roots of our own baptism. It calls us to follow Christ’s example and command.
For our Lord there was no turning from sin and no repentance for a sinful past; but there was a turning to the daunting task before him; a setting of his face toward Jerusalem where in three years he would taste death in all its bitterness and be baptized in blood as he carries the sins of the world.
And to test his resolve, the Spirit drives him from the Jordan to the wilderness for 40 days of temptation, fasting and prayer. (Mark 1. 12)
So for us, the remembrance of our baptism should spur us to turn from sin and selfishness; to live as heralds of the New Age, to wear the mark of Christ in self-giving and love.
Every time we are sprinkled with holy water; every time we cross ourselves with holy water as we enter or leave church; we are reminded of God’s love, grace and forgiveness; but we are also reminded of our baptismal resolve to turn from evil and to follow Christ; to love one another as he has loved us, and so show all that we are his disciples.
For Christ at this turning point in his young life, there is a great affirmation from his Father. Mark records it thus: “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’" (1.10f)
These phrases find resonances in our OT lesson today (Isaiah 42) as well as in Psalm 2 (v7) and the whole scene would speak to first century Jews of God’s breaking of the 400 year silence since the last prophet
- the rending of the heavens to come down and fulfil his promises made to the prophets.
For us, there is nothing so dramatic at our baptism and confirmation. No assuring voice booming out from heaven that we’ve made a wise choice. No paternal congratulations for joining the Church of England. Only a cup of tea and a piece of cake.
The ‘voice from heaven’ that Mark describes is probably his translation of a Hebrew idiom: the bat qol - the daughter of a voice. Since the last prophet, God seemed silent, and the best the devout could hope for was some echo of the Divine - the daughter of a voice. In Jewish literature it was often compared to the cry of a bird, the murmuring of a dove.
John the baptizer was a voice crying in the wilderness. But as men and women came to him and turned to God, they heard not only a voice in the wilderness, but a distant voice from heaven; an echo of the Divine. The Holy Spirit’s subtle work within them gave them hope and strength to live for God.
The faith of our Baptism sometimes seems very shaky and precarious. The most we seem to hear is but a distant cousin of the voice of God. But we do not lose heart.
As we struggle to fulfil our baptismal vows in a very imperfect church, we look to Christ for example and for inner strength, and hope that, however distant it may sound, we too may hear
“... a voice from heaven” Mark 1.11
