Baptism of Jesus (with infant baptism)

First Sunday after Epiphany: The Baptism of the Lord [2] White Week of Proper 1 Year A/2 EUCHARIST Isaiah 42:1-9 Psalm 29 Acts 10:34-43 Matthew 3:13-17



Well, here we are. We’ve made it through Christmas, Hogmanay and the first week of back to normal life. If I was in a group chat at this point, I would put a nice big handclap emoji. We’ve done family and friends. We’ve done crowds and traffic jams. We’ve done big church services and big meals. We’ve done slumping and resting. And, even if you’ve not done any of those things personally, we’ve done them together as a culture, as part of what we believe Christmas and New Year is all about. It’s been a collaborative effort and we’ve made it through.

It’s tempting to put it all behind us, pack it away with the decorations and start something new. Indeed today, we seem to be invited to do just that. To celebrate a new life and the possibilities that lie before Fraser-Scott. And with our gospel reading today we’ve left baby Jesus behind and are considering Him as an adult at the start of His ministry. We are at the start of a New Year with all its joys and terrors. Instead, though I want to invite you to linger a wee bit longer with your experience of being part of something which is a corporate and collaborative effort.

We’ve just heard the story of Jesus pitching up to be baptised by John. If we had read the bit of the gospel just before our snippet today, we would get the picture that John is baptising lots of people in the Jordan including some religious leaders. Jesus simply joins in, as one of a crowd of humanity, keen to go through an experience that is on offer. I read something this week that made a big deal out of Jesus queuing up alongside others to be baptised. All very British and polite, but I take the point, Matthew the writer wants us to understand Jesus as one person among many. There’s no ceremony as He turns up; Jesus doesn’t want to be significant; He wants to stand in solidarity with the people around Him.

Then Jesus and John have a bit of a chat, bordering perhaps on a slight disagreement about about who should be baptising who. Matthew emphasises Jesus’ place in a community of friends and family. He’s quite good at this. He started off his gospel by recounting Jesus’s genealogy and placing the story of His life in the context of all the stories of His family and ancestors. And here he picks up on one of Jesus’ key relationships. Jesus and John may very well have been related; their mothers were either related or very good friends and so their stories very much intertwine. So, there is this lovely moment when Jesus ends the discussion with the word ‘us’. “It is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness”. That’s a unique detail in Matthew’s gospel.

I hope you can therefore see that Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ baptism as a cultural corporate, collaborative event, and furthermore, rather like our cultural experiences of Christmas and new Year, family and friends play a huge role in it. This is a story about us, not about one individual.

That perspective makes all the difference in understanding what comes next. Suddenly, says Matthew, the heavens are opened. Let’s not get too carried away with the excitement of the “suddenly” and the appearance of a dove and the voice of God, let’s just pause and spend some time with the heavens opening. There’s a real depth to what Matthew is trying to say at this point and so he turns to metaphor and poetry to say it. The heavens open. God is suddenly revealed as present. Present in that crowd of humanity keen to go through the experience of baptism, bringing to it all their hopes and dreams, their vulnerabilities and sadnesses. Present in that friendship between John and Jesus. Present in Jesus’ history and heritage. God is suddenly revealed as present right there. Present, crucially, before Jesus has done anything, or accomplished anything, or been useful or faithful. God’s presence isn’t a reward, or a result of Jesus’s worthiness. God is simply present, always has been, always will be, all that has changed is that, in that moment, that presence becomes visible and is seen and recognised, or to put it more poetically, the heavens open.

And Matthew tells us that God’s presence is experienced in two ways. Firstly, descending like a dove. It’s a peaceful presence, a gentle presence. A presence that rests and accompanies. A presence that alights, settles. No force or domination, or pushiness or intervention or being overwhelmed by power here. A presence alongside us in all our vulnerabilities and weaknesses. A presence which doesn’t wait for everything to be tidy and sorted, but rests with us in the mess, the ambiguities and the unfinished stories. A presence that doesn’t hurry us forward but simply stays. Secondly, in the naming of Jesus as beloved. Remember this is before he has done anything, Jesus is called and named beloved. Jesus doesn’t have to prove anything before God loves Him. Whatever He does, or doesn’t do, whatever we do or don’t do He and we will still be loved. We never have to prove ourselves to God, never. Our worth to God isn’t conditional on obedience, or goodness, or trust or strength. God loves us just as we are.

This is the heart of what baptism is all about. Fraser-Scott is not being expected to perform great acts of faith or daring do. He’s not being expected to make a name for himself, or exercise great power, or play a role in an elite club of special people. He’s joining a community of people who are seeking to recognise the peaceful, resting presence of God in the world and who believe, or long to believe, that they are loved beyond measure just as they are. Baptism isn’t about being made exceptional, it’s about being invited into a life of being attentive for God in the midst of everything, all human life.

For some of us this Christmas and New Year has been tough. Perhaps, this isn’t the first time for you, or perhaps you have memories of a hard Christmas in the past. With the state of the world as it is at the moment, starting the New Year can be, and I’m sure for lots of us, is also hard. Sometimes in life, if we are really honest, it’s hard to see the moments of the gentle presence of God, the kindness of friends and family, the joy in the small things, the small everyday miracles. Sometimes life is horrible. My sense is that true resilience is to be found not in strength to push on through those moments and discover the peace, the hope and the joy, but to allow ourselves to rest. To allow ourselves to be held and carried for a little while by the crowds, the humanity, the people of goodwill around us. To allow ourselves to be held and carried by our friends and family whose deepest longing is that we are happy. To be carried by a gathering of friends and strangers, just like this one here today. Sometimes we are carried, sometimes we do the carrying. Our responsibility and our hope, and all of this goes for Fraser-Scott as he is baptised, is that we are people and are surrounded by people who are attentive to and focussed on the presence of God that persists quietly and gently and stands in absolute solidarity with us, all of us, in all the ordinariness of life, with all the strength that unconditional love can give.