Readings: Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11.
Now that the 12 days of Christmas are over we enter a new phase in the Church’s calendar, Epiphany. The star of Bethlehem, the sign of the newborn King, stops over a stable and leads the wise men to their own rather private moment of Epiphany, the realisation that God’s glory has come to earth, far from king’s palaces and the great and the good. And today we heard the story of the Baptism of Jesus, one of the foremost moments of Epiphany in the Gospels: foremost because it’s the most public moment, when he’s revealed as God’s Son by the miraculous voice from heaven. It doesn’t need me to tell you that the gospel stories are full of miracles, full of epiphanies. In fact, it’s hard to imagine what Christianity would be like without them. If Jesus hadn’t become famous as a miracle-worker, would he still have been recognised as the Christ? Possibly not. Would Christianity exist without reports of miracles like the Resurrection? Probably not. But of course, we live in a sceptical, scientific age, where these things are no longer taken at face value, even by many believers. And rightly so, scepticism and science have raised many new kinds of questions for faith. I should note though, that I don’t expect it’s ever been easy to believe in the resurrection, science or no science. But faith is made stronger by asking questions in my opinion, the more difficult the better. After all, if Christianity is true, it has nothing to fear from questions, and everything to gain.
And if we have questions about faith, about what all this means for everyday life in C21 Edinburgh, today we’re reminded of our own miraculous moment of Epiphany. Strangely though, most of us probably don’t remember it, because it happened when we were very, very young. I am, of course, thinking of baptism. And for those of us who do remember our baptisms because we were older, or who’ve seen baptisms taking place, perhaps even in this Cathedral, did you experience a miraculous moment of Epiphany, of divine disclosure, of the heavens being torn apart and a booming voice? My guess is probably not, but I’d be delighted to hear about it later if you did.
There was some embarrassment in the early church about the fact that Jesus was baptised, since it’s so closely connected with repentance from sin. Why would he-who-was-without-sin need to be baptised? Indeed, it’s a question I often ask myself when baptising babies and young children, who’ve obviously done nothing wrong in their lives, yet. The usual answer is that baptism is a sign of God’s blanket forgiveness for all sin in that person’s life, whether we’re talking about the curious idea of original sin which even newborn babies are said to inherit from the mythological first couple in the Garden of Eden, or more concrete wrongdoing later on in life. Baptism is a sign that, whatever is at stake, God’s got it all covered. But that obviously doesn’t work for Jesus, who is not only sinless (so the Church teaches), but is very actually God himself. Why would God need to be baptised? Well, I can only conclude that it’s for the simple reason that baptism is not only about forgiveness of sin, but more about the disclosure of God’s presence in creation, the infinite in the finite, the divine in the human. This is why Jesus was baptised, and this is why we are baptised as we receive God’s Spirit.
Look at the two readings. The beginning of creation and Jesus’ baptism: not by accident are these two read together. We see elemental disorder and strangeness. The earth was a formless void…darkness covered the face of the deep. A wild and outlandish man, John the Baptist, living in the wilderness urges all and sundry into the fast-flowing river. The heavens are torn apart. But God speaks from above and all becomes clear. Let there be light, and there was light. You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. And the Spirit descended like a dove.
In the baptism scene then, Jesus rising from the deep, the fast-flowing Jordan, is the sign of God’s order and creation, the light separating from the darkness. We witness an irreversible cosmic event – a Big Bang where the heavens are irreparably torn apart, and God’s Spirit now floods the world, ordering and creating the people of God.
This obviously isn’t a cosmic event open to physics though. Interestingly, Mark alone among the Gospels makes it clear that this amazing event is disclosed only to Jesus: it’s something which Jesus alone sees and hears and knows the truth of. For now. Come his death on the cross it will be a different story, when even the Roman centurion, hardened to brutality, will experience his own Epiphany and exclaim “Surely this was the Son of God”. But for now those standing in the queue on the riverbank just see yet another man, perhaps the hundredth that day, being baptised by John like all the others. But the heavens are still torn apart. And so we become aware of the so-called scandal of particularity – the shocking realisation that the infinite and eternal God is disclosed in this particular flesh, in this particular place, at this particular time. God was disclosed in that man there, standing in the river 2000 years ago. And God is also disclosed in you, sitting there now. What you do with that is up to you now. This is not rocket science. But it is true.
