C205 Baptism of Jesus (Epiphany 1)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sorry, I normally do. I don't know. You're listening to by the well, a lectionary based podcast for preachers recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people. Hello, everyone, I'm Fran Barber. [00:00:18] Speaker B: And I'm Robyn Whittaker. [00:00:19] Speaker A: And this week is the first week of Epiphany and our first week back officially for 2025. So in this first week of Epiphany, Robyn and I will be focusing. Isaiah 43, verses 1 to 7, Acts 8, 14 to 17, and Luke chapter 3, verses 15 to 17, and then verses 21 to 22. [00:00:45] Speaker B: So also this Sunday is often known as the baptism of our Lord or because that is the gospel reading. But I think there's lots of rich theology in all of these readings. So let's start with Isaiah. Franz, before we start there, it'd be. [00:01:00] Speaker A: Good to talk a bit about epiphany. [00:01:01] Speaker B: Yes. Okay. So what is epiphany? [00:01:04] Speaker A: Well, technically manifestation of God or God revealing God's self. The orthodox call it theophany. [00:01:13] Speaker B: Yes. [00:01:14] Speaker A: Which is a bit different, but theos, meaning God. So the revelation of God. So obviously we see that in the birth of Christ in and in Jesus stepping into the river Jordan and the declaration of God's son from God and so on. [00:01:30] Speaker B: So, yeah, and we're going to see, I mean, it's not always the same level every week, but our gospel readings, if you think of this season as the season of epiphany, one question to ask yourself, I think, is how is God being made manifest? So we're going to see that in this week. It's particularly the declaration and the baptism. But in other weeks we'll see, you know, something Jesus does or in his ministry that is revealing his identity. Or in the Older Testament readings as well. [00:01:59] Speaker A: Well, I was going to say we're getting a revelation of God in isaiah passage, chapter 43. [00:02:05] Speaker B: Yep. [00:02:06] Speaker A: As a saving, redeeming, creating force. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Yep. Who's with the chosen people? So Isaiah 43, we're in the second part of Isaiah. What's the context here, Fran? [00:02:18] Speaker A: Well, just broadly, Israel is in exile. They're beleaguered, broken, desperate, in a desperate state. And the chapter just prior to this 42, especially from chapter, from verse 18, is laden with judgment and God's ire and anger with Israel. So it's a very significant shift in tone and posture by God as we come into this extremely. This intimate and comforting passage. [00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's right. [00:02:55] Speaker A: Completely. Yeah. [00:02:57] Speaker B: So it's good to, you know, be aware when we're reading Isaiah that not all of Isaiah has the tone of this, but one of the things that is a fairly prominent theme in Isaiah is putting God's speech in the first person. So I, the Lord say this, I am this. And it does give us this sense of intimacy and a sort of a deeply personal speaking directly to the reader, I think sense. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and this is a. This is sort of like a monologue or a poem that could be. Without that little grammatical. It's not a little. Without that significant grammatical strategy that you've just talked about would be a bit more clinical even perhaps. [00:03:40] Speaker B: I think so. So let's look at some of the themes in this. The first thing that struck me is we've got language and we'll see. Isaiah uses a lot of the previous existing Pentateuchal imagery and texts and of. We have this language of creator and Robert Alter has Fashioner, but the one who created and formed you, which the Hebrew here is exactly like the Hebrew verbs we have in Genesis. So it's evoking this almost after the previous chapters, wrath and judgment and sin and the people have been dispersed. We almost have creation themes here I think in the. In the reimagining of the community. Regathering. Yeah. [00:04:22] Speaker A: Well, it's a very profound theological connection between creation and redemption and that they're inseparable. We might sort of suggest sovereignty and huge power around creation. God's creating power quite rightly and God's mercy and saving around redemption. But actually both those things, saving and redeeming occur in creation and the power and the sovereignty occurs in the redeeming as well. So it's. [00:04:52] Speaker B: And it's a reminder that creation in the Bible and theologically is not a once off thing God did in the past, but is the ongoing activity of God who is always creating and recreating and calling creation into its fullness. And that of course frames the seven verses we've been given because in verse seven we again get this. In my glory, I created them, I formed them, I made them. So you know that that image we get God as potter, God as creator. And it feeds into the sort of intimacy, therefore I know them, I call them by name kind of language. [00:05:27] Speaker A: It's got very psalmic. Yeah. To me it evokes that psalm and the Psalms. [00:05:31] Speaker B: The other reference I noticed was I was trying to work out all these images we get, particularly in verse 2 and 3 of you pass through water and through rivers and through fire. And scholars tend to think that's hinting back at the Exodus narrative, so passing through the Red Sea or the Reed sea, so evoking liberation that that sea did not harm you. The fire there is the fire on Sinai and the pillar of fire that went before the people in that same narrative. And even the river, the river Jordan was the last thing the people crossed through to get to the promised land. So in these three brief images of water, fire, river, we've got a kind of almost an evoking of the whole grand narrative of the Pentateuch from liberation through to promised land. [00:06:24] Speaker A: It's incredible. It's incredible brevity and profundity there in history and memory and recounting it. [00:06:32] Speaker B: Yep. [00:06:32] Speaker A: And reminding people of it. [00:06:35] Speaker B: What else did you notice? [00:06:36] Speaker A: Well, they're the main things I did notice. [00:06:38] Speaker B: I'm sorry, A story. [00:06:39] Speaker A: No, it's all right. Interested in the nations in exchange for your life, Verse four. I'm interested only because I'm not really sure what it means, because you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you. I give people in return for you nations in exchange for your life. Yeah, that's troubling. [00:06:59] Speaker B: It is troubling. So I found all of the readings today posed angsty theological questions for me, and that. That was exactly it in this reading is what. What does this mean? That God's prepared to trade other nations for this chosen people. Now, that's written from the point of view of those chosen people. But particularly in today's world, we need to be conscious how those things are heard, and particularly historically, that these would be the texts that later settlers, like the people who settled America, would use to justify their chosenness in that place that led to the eradication of indigenous peoples in huge parts of the country. It is tapping into a king's person redeeming redeemer notion. So this. The Hebrew word is goel, and we get it all through the Hebrew Bible of this idea that if you're considered part of the family, that the. The man who is your kinsman should redeem you. And I think we've got that image functioning here. So we've seen it in all sorts of places in the older Testament, like if a man dies, the brother should marry the wife and take her into his home. We see it in texts about where people end up in a life of slavery due to financial or economic hardship, that the kinsman redeemer should buy them out, purchase their life back. So you start to get this language of ransoming a life, which is literally buying back a life. And I think that's what's going on here with this idea that God is prepared to effectively ransom these other nations. [00:08:41] Speaker A: In that familial sense. [00:08:43] Speaker B: In that. So it's a metaphor. [00:08:45] Speaker A: Right. [00:08:46] Speaker B: It's playing with a metaphor which we. [00:08:47] Speaker A: Can get sidetracked on in preaching and lose the heart of what we're doing. But I also do think, as you say, in our current context, a small amount of commentary might be okay on that. [00:08:59] Speaker B: I think. So part of the passage and remembering this is a context in the 6th century. So Israel has been in. Excellent. There is this very hopeful sense of the community's been gathered. So we get this language of being gathered from east and west. Right. In verse 5, from the north and the south. So God is bringing the people back. So King Cyrus of Persia let the people start returning to Jerusalem. And these three named states or city nation states. Egypt, Nubia and Saba is altars. It's. What is it in the nrsv. Egypt, Ethiopia and Seba, depending on the version you read. Southern states who were in a military conquest with. With Persia. So there is a sense that it's actually evoking very current contextual political realities to say those states are currently in a war with Persia. So you can return. So it's using a contextual image that would have made sense. We should not extrapolate out or universalize that. [00:09:57] Speaker A: No. Okay. [00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:59] Speaker A: The other. So obviously for this week of the baptism of Jesus, as we're coming to in Luke, we've got the evocative water imagery here that you've already mentioned that evokes Exodus in terms of a homiletical focus or preaching focus and perspective. There is something this passage does too, that reminding is reminding the people whose they are, where they belong. And that in our ritual of baptism, in our sacrament of baptism is what we're doing. It's. It's. It's. We're doing a lot of other things as well. [00:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:35] Speaker A: But it's a sort of a renaming, a rebirth. Womb Entombed is one phrase used of the font. You know, that the old you dies and you rise with Christ and so on new life and you become. You know, I'm primarily my baptism, actually. My baptismal identity is the prior thing about me from then on. [00:10:54] Speaker B: Yep. [00:10:56] Speaker A: So in terms of what's in this passage from Isaiah is very much that patterning. Who's. Remember who what I did for you. Remember who I am as God to you. Remember what I've done. This is who you really are. [00:11:10] Speaker B: Yes. You know, there's a lot of identity it's putting you in the context of the family of God. Yeah. So I think. [00:11:17] Speaker A: And call a bit as well. [00:11:19] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And again, that intimacy of relationship. So I think you're right. This is not describing baptism. [00:11:25] Speaker A: No. [00:11:26] Speaker B: But the images of water and fire and river are doing the same theological work, I think, as we're going to see in the. In the. [00:11:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:36] Speaker B: Well, shall we go to Acts next or the Gospel? Where do you want to go next? [00:11:41] Speaker A: Maybe we'll go to the Gospel. [00:11:42] Speaker B: Okay. Luke, chapter three, verse 15. [00:11:47] Speaker A: Did you know you could join our Facebook group by the well for extra content and discussion. So part of this passage was in Advent 3. [00:11:58] Speaker B: I know. So it's. We're kind of picking up from a passage we heard a month ago. [00:12:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:05] Speaker B: And now continuing the John the Baptizer story. And we're getting. It's always interesting to me, at least as a New Testament scholar, to compare. These are such familiar stories, but I think we can see the richness of what Luke is doing if we do compare them with the other Gospels and need to be a bit careful not to read in too many other things. So let's unpack this. Perhaps. I mean, we get two sections. So what's going on in 15 to 18? Perhaps we should start there. [00:12:38] Speaker A: Well, I would say, as I probably did in Advent 3, there's an apocalyptic tone to this, sort of a judgment tone. And like in Luke generally, there's also a suggestion that there's an end of that judgment, that God's mercy does arrive. Well, it arrives at verse 21. The missing parts of this actually are the exhortation that John proclaimed the Good News and then he went to prison. So that's interesting omission that perhaps later in our conversation, I'll wonder what omitting that from the story of baptism actually does to our understanding of this baptism. [00:13:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:23] Speaker A: But clearly in verse 15 to 18 is the judgment of God from verse 17 in particular. And a clear statement of John the Baptist that he is not the one to come. Yeah, he's pointing to the one to come. [00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:38] Speaker A: And is the link without whom we would not understand the one to come. [00:13:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So we've got. I mean, some of the epiphanic work, I guess, of this, of this passage is pointing to the identity of Jesus is the one who is far more powerful and will come with the Holy Spirit and fire, as opposed to John, who is much more of a. There's no regular prophets, really, but much more of a typical prophet who is calling people to repentance. And using a well known. It's not unique to him, it's not unique to Christians. It's a well known Jewish washing ritual to signify that act of repentance and returning to God, the washing away of sins. And you know, at the risk of stating the obvious, this word baptizo simply means to wash. It gets used in other contexts. It, of course, in the Christian tradition comes to have a very specific liturgical use. I think we hear baptism and we can't think of anything except a very explicit, you know, baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. [00:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah. That we think only came with us. Yes, Christians. Whereas the word exists in the Hebrew version to mean washing, as you say. [00:14:52] Speaker B: Yep. So I almost prefer to disrupt that a bit and to make a distinction that John is not doing what we would call now Christian baptism. That John says, you know, I wash you with water and one is coming whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie, and he will wash you with the Holy Spirit. [00:15:10] Speaker A: Because the washing with water is a pattern that has happened. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [00:15:14] Speaker A: Jewish people's time. Yeah. [00:15:16] Speaker B: So. And that. Yeah. So, but we do, as you said, we get in Luke, these. It's in the Matthew version 2. But we didn't get it in Mark, the earliest Gospel. That added bit about the harvest imagery. Right. That apocalypse. Yeah. And yeah, so we've got that added now in Luke to give it that sort of fairly stark apocalyptic judgment edge. Yeah. [00:15:40] Speaker A: Interestingly in that move. So it's the Holy Spirit that's doing the separating. It's sort of his winnowing fork. He's just in his hand. You know, the Holy Spirit does the separating. [00:15:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm also fascinated in Luke all the way through we get this repeated phrase that he preached good news to. [00:15:58] Speaker A: The people, which is not in the lecture. This lecture section. But I'm interested that those two elements that and the prison for John are left out. [00:16:07] Speaker B: No, and it's my beef, even with the layout in the nrsv, because I would connect that as a summary statement. So he preach good news to the people at the end of that verse 17, you know, it connects to that. So this word of judgment is actually good news. [00:16:23] Speaker A: Paradoxical. [00:16:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Whereas with the paragraph separation in most Bibles, it makes it sound like, oh, and then he also went and preached good news. It was unlike that really hard, horrible stuff. [00:16:33] Speaker A: I know. I thought that in Advent 3, actually. [00:16:35] Speaker B: Yes. [00:16:36] Speaker A: So I don't know if I'm leaping ahead here, but the distinctive part of Luke, is it not in verse 21, that Jesus is baptised as part of a whole group of other people, when all the people were baptised and when Jesus also was sort of. He's almost an afterthought to the great baptism baptising that's going on. [00:16:53] Speaker B: Well, he's joining in with the throng. Right. So at this point, he's not special. He's out with this group of Jews in the middle of kind of not really anywhere, participating in this call to repentance and washing. [00:17:06] Speaker A: And I must confess that this reading, this year, reading this, was the first time I really noted that distinction about Luke compared to the other Gospels. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Yes. And the other thing Luke adds in verse, what is it? 21 is and was praying. [00:17:21] Speaker A: Yes, I've got that in green. [00:17:24] Speaker B: You've highlighted it. Good. Yes. This, of course, is typical of Luke. You're going to find this all over the place. Jesus is characterized as one at prayer, but it's really important. This is where he has, I think, made a distinction from Mark, where Mark has us. Imagine, and I think it's probably the image in most of our heads, it certainly is in mine, that as Jesus is being baptized, he comes out of the water and the heavens open and the dove comes down. All one kind of action or one scene. Luke, I think, has Jesus been baptized with everybody else? And then he's praying. I mean, it could be five minutes later, it could be 35 minutes later, it could be an hour later. There is this different sort of epiphanic moment that's a bit more like the transfiguration or something, and there's a discernment. [00:18:10] Speaker A: Going on for Jesus or a process happening, communing with God in that prayer, in that prayer time. [00:18:17] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. [00:18:21] Speaker A: Well, the other thing, verse 22, is the interesting paradox, or which contradiction kind of is that the Holy Spirit's descending bodily and like a dove. [00:18:31] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, it's. Luke adds this little word that is bodily. It's like using that soma word in the Greek somaticos, so in bodily form. So he wants us to kind of know that this dove is a real dove. It's not just some. A whiff, ghostly waft of a. Of a dove. I don't know why that's important to him, but. Yeah. So there's a few things going on here. There's an excellent book I read a number of years ago by a scholar called Michael Peppard. He's a Anglo American scholar called Son of God in the Roman World, and he talks about the baptism narrative, or Son of God. Language generally in the New Testament. But you know, this declaration we get here of you're my beloved son with you, I'm well pleased. And we can debate about how to translate that. He really talks about this being a moment of God choosing Jesus. Now I'm going to sound like a heretic for a moment. I just want to. And that actually this is the point at which God officially kind of adopts and anoints Jesus as the chosen one, as his son. And what he does is he puts that in the context of the Roman world where emperors often adopted sons as a preference. So I think we live in a culture, and I want to say this really carefully because I know it's complex for people, but we live in a culture that so prizes biology that I think we see adoption often as the second choice in that culture. What Peppert argues is adoption is often seen as the better choice because you can basically choose your children. So you've got emperors who would choose adult children that adopt a 20 year old because they deem them far more worthy to ascend to the throne than their biological kids. And so he says in this context, this would have been heard as God really choosing Jesus in that way. Now the caveat is, I want to say this adoptionist language would become problematic in Christian theology. So by the time you get to the 4th century, you will get the church fathers writing about Jesus as the begotten Son of God. And it's partly to push back on this distinction and to make a grander claim about Jesus pre existence. But I do agree with Pep, but I think some of those dynamics are there which gives us this political edge. That is the. As the chosen Son of God of the Most High, he's kind of the elected or the anointed leader, which of course he will become in Luke. And that is also a political claim. He's the kind of, you know, parallel emperor. [00:21:12] Speaker A: Can I make a comment about a theological. Well, there's many theological claims here because what's the actual epiphany in this reading is that verse 22, that. That's the moment of the revelation, this heavenly voice. But this all follows the genealogy. Oh, sorry, Jesus genealogy follows. This doesn't. [00:21:30] Speaker B: Yes, it does. [00:21:31] Speaker A: And that, you know where I think Seth is there in replacement for the murdered Abel or no. Yes, murdered Abel. [00:21:37] Speaker B: Yep. [00:21:38] Speaker A: But this is a list of peoples who are deeply fraught and fragmented and that this Jesus is born in amongst this complex system of sin. And it's what humanity is. [00:21:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:53] Speaker A: So there's. [00:21:54] Speaker B: That goes all the Way back to Adam and version two. Yeah. [00:21:58] Speaker A: So there's something about Jesus, the incarnation, occurring in the context of this reality of mixed humanity, and that alongside it is just as important, or perhaps more so than the. Than the adoption move. [00:22:13] Speaker B: Yes. And I want to be really clear in saying that it's got those resonances of adoption that would have been recognizable in the ancient world. It is not to say he is not human or not. [00:22:23] Speaker A: No. It's not a dissecting adoption. [00:22:25] Speaker B: No. And I mean, the interesting thing if we do look ahead and the lectionary will take us there soon, is when we get to Luke chapter four and the temptations, the testing, it is framed as if you are the Son of God. So it is precisely this revelation of Jesus identity that will be the thing that is tested. If you're the Son of God, if you really are this person that you've just been revealed to be, then do this. So there's a nice little connection there. I hadn't really noticed quite so much before in revisiting Peppard's work. [00:22:57] Speaker A: Luke's very. He uses few words for his account of baptism. It's very succinct. [00:23:04] Speaker B: Yes. He doesn't have a big dialogue like Matthew or even John's Gospel will add. Yeah. [00:23:11] Speaker A: In terms of preaching questions or foci. I mean, obviously Jesus Baptism is a moment for us to talk about the church's relationship with baptism. And I mean, in the mainstream Western churches, in a lot of places, you don't see babies brought to be baptised at all much, but there are still adults who seek to be. And are we asking, you know, are we, those of us in sort of places of leadership, are we making clear that that's a welcome thing? And actually Uniting Church has a service for adults, for adult baptism. So there's that as a focus, but also that distinction around prayer that you mentioned that Luke has. What is our relationship with prayer? How do we engage in it? What are we doing? What is there a moment? How does epiphany or revelation of God, what is the relationship of that with prayer and how we pray individually and communally and. [00:24:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. [00:24:15] Speaker A: Questions. [00:24:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I mean, there's so much here, and it's a bit like Trinity Sunday. Our job is not to explain all the theological depths of baptism. Right. But it is to tease out some of those things. You probably can't do them all. I mean, for me, I mean, what later Christians will do with the adoption stuff is, of course, Paul will talk about we become adopted sons. He does use gendered language of God through Jesus. So there is a. But it goes to that stuff you were saying earlier about Isaiah and our identity. So can we hear that you also are my beloved children and the emperor. [00:24:53] Speaker A: Is not your Lord and you know, the prime minister's not your Lord. There's actually a prior allegiance. [00:24:58] Speaker B: And layering onto that political stuff, the image here of the Holy Spirit as dove as opposed to eagle is an image of peace as opposed to war. So we've got like other resonances going on here. And in terms of what you're being adopted into, I mean, yeah, it's hard to know. There's so much unpacking you could do this week. I think it is helpful to be really clear about what. None of this is Christian baptism. That's the problem. Right. We want to talk about Jesus baptism and link it to our own because it's. But actually Jesus was. This is a Jewish ritual. We get to acts. We're going to see a midway point in a moment. [00:25:39] Speaker A: But the reality is the church did develop its own liturgy and ritual around this. So I think it's a bit artificial to say we're not going to talk about our own. That's a bit. [00:25:48] Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, no. [00:25:48] Speaker A: It's a bit sort of historicist or something to even do that. But you, I mean, as long as you make the distinction, as you say. [00:25:57] Speaker B: But where I might go, because one of the ways I've come to think about the baptism of John, the baptism that John offers, this washing is it's, to me, it's a bit like. It reminds me of the years I spent in my evangelical youth where there were frequent altar calls. Right. And you know, for all sorts of reasons, people would go up. Some people went up every week. Right. And I would often think, you can't. You kind of actually sinned that much this week. But maybe you have. But look, altar calls happen for various reasons, but it often was come forward and repent or, you know, some kind of recommit yourself type language. And I think that's exactly the dynamic of what's going on here. So it could actually, one direction could be exploring, you know, what are the rituals in our own community or the remembering of our baptism that is our own. You know, there is a constant call to repentance and reorientate ourselves towards Jesus. This is not a once for off thing that either was done to us as a baby or as an adult. [00:26:57] Speaker A: I think that is really important to restate and repeat because I do think in comfortable mainstream liberal More liberal contexts, we don't often think we've got much to repent for. Sometimes. Yes, but the constancy of that and the returning to God and the re. Remembering and all of that is key to life. [00:27:18] Speaker B: So there might be ways to have your own rituals with evoking baptism. It's a good Sunday to do some of that remembering. [00:27:24] Speaker A: So have we got time for Acts? [00:27:26] Speaker B: Let's do a very quick. We've got three minutes to talk about Acts 8 verses. It's only three verses. 14 to 17. Often referred to as the Samaritan Pentecost. So the. [00:27:41] Speaker A: Well, that's a grand statement for three verses. Although I can see why. [00:27:45] Speaker B: Yes, because it's the moment that the Spirit is given to the Samaritan Christians remembering that Samaritans and the Jews of Jerusalem did not always get along very well. So, of course, in Acts 2 we have the Holy Spirit Pentecost in Jerusalem, but here we have the Holy Spirit through the apostles, being given in Samaria. Yeah, that's my grace. [00:28:06] Speaker A: Yes. And on the way to the ends of the earth. Like as in. It's the universalizing. [00:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the expansion of the Gospel out. Yep, yep. I mean, this. I find a really tricky passage. A lot has been written about it, particularly from Pentecostals, that it does seem to distinguish between a water baptism in the name of Jesus and then a second laying on of hands that's giving the Spirit. [00:28:29] Speaker A: I did notice that, and I guess I just put that down to this is the sort of early development or the growing in understanding of how the church was going to express this. [00:28:42] Speaker B: I think that's right. So the later creeds. So the Nicene Creed, we'll talk about. We have one baptism. Right. And that's not just an ecumenical thing. I think that's also about saying water and spirit together. But we are seeing here, well, something of the diversity of practices in the early Christian movement as it's been worked out. So again, don't universalize from this as if there's not some separate moment of Holy Spirit, something happening. After all, you weren't really baptized or something. But it. It does play into later traditions and the distinguishing of those things sometimes. [00:29:19] Speaker A: But as you say, the main thing is the universalising of this creative redeeming force to the wider world. [00:29:30] Speaker B: By the well is brought to you by Pilgrim Theological College and the Uniting Church in Australia. It's produced by Adrian Jackson. Thanks for listening.