Isaiah 43:1-7
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
The Baptism of Christ (Epiphany 1)
Father God,
As we hear your word and seek to understand it,
may the Heavens be opened to us today,
Amen.
Now when all the people were baptised, and when Jesus also had been baptised and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased”.
Today is the first Sunday of the season of Epiphany, the season of celebrating God’s revelation to the World.
When the Wise Men visited Bethlehem, Jesus was revealed to a wider world than the ethic and religious community he was born in.
Today in the readings in Church, we’ve skipped Jesus’ childhood.
Baby Jesus is suddenly all grown up and being baptised, and another key truth is being revealed, the truth that God is in Three Persons, the truth of the Trinity.
Jesus, as God the Son, is baptised and prays in the water. The heavens open and God the Holy Spirit comes down upon him. A voice is heard- God the Father proclaims Jesus as his Son, and announces his delight in him.
The Baptism of Christ is a rare occasion, when all Three Persons of the Trinity are shown at work.
And for us, we hear this message at the start of a new calendar year. I work in education, so September is the real New Year for me, but I still like the optimism of January. I like the lengthening nights, all the health and wellbeing in the press, “New Year, New You”. I like the optimism of the New Year’s Resolutions, which we keep making and remaking year after year- Be honest- twelve days in, how are yours going? January for many is a time of hope, even if the World has misplaced its hope in the individual’s ability to transform itself through its own striving.
And yet January 2025 is tinged with a certain nostalgia. I saw a nice witticism online which went like this: “I don’t think I want a new year this time around, I want a gently used year like 2015 or maybe a 1998 if its in good shape” Which year would you like? A lot of nostalgia is based on trepidation about the future, “I miss 1998 because I’m a little worried about 2025” or something like that. There is a sense that great changes are occurring in the world. A new archbishop of Canterbury is being sought. There are gloomy predictions about Britain’s economy. And, we are less than ten days away from the inauguration of the second, and constitutionally final, term of Donald Trump as President of the United States, and all the unpredictability that brings. There is a sense that the “tectonic plates” of the world are shifting and realigning.
And amidst all this, the Good News I have to bring to you today, is the truth of the Trinity! Quite aside from this seeming little comfort at first glance, for many people the traditional language of the Trinity- God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit- is problematic. Many feminists point out the heavily male view of God that it presents, and the strong hierarchy that comes out of so many of the old discussions about who sends who within the Trinity. Many feminists avoid this male and power-based language about God, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, preferring instead to talk of “The Creator, the Redeemer and the Sustainer”. Now it’s worth noting that when priests baptise people, they must do so “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, not of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. This is in order to avoid a technical misunderstanding
If we say that God is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer -all of which is true- what we don’t want to be saying is that God the Father is when God is creating, God the Son is when God is redeeming, and God the Holy Spirit is when God is sustaining. If you are interested the technical word for this error is modalism. It is an error because to talk properly about the Trinity we want to say that God the Father is in relationship with God the Son, and in relationship with God the Holy Spirit. Each of the three are separate persons, as you and I are separate persons. But nor do we want to say that there are three Gods. That’s not what we want to be saying either! Each of these persons are one entity, in the way that you and I with our separate existences are not.
What are we to do? How are we to talk of the Trinity revealed in Christ’s baptism, and find any Good News in it in the challenges of 2025? We are presented either with the option of a overly masculine and power-based view of God, or of disappearing into a rabbit hole of theological technicalities.
I suggest we turn to our reading from Isaiah, and particularly the first verse. Here God comforts his people and announces their salvation:
But now says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel. Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
Professor Paulson Pulikottil, writing from a seminary in Pune in Maharashtra, India, offered this explanation and application. God is the creator of his people, not just the universe, but his people in particular, and cares about what he has made, just as a craftsman cares about each particular item he makes. God is their redeemer, a term meaning in Isaiah’s day that he is their closest kin, and that he is willing to pay the price to free them. God has called them by name and excitedly declared them his own.
In the words of Professor Pulikottil: “They are his cherished possession, and he will not discard them.
The same holds true for all who have become part of the new creation in Christ”.
How, then, have we become part of the new creation in Christ, claiming these words for our own, That you are God’s treasured possession. That we will not discard you in 2025. We turn back to the Baptism of Christ.
We read:
Now when all the people were baptised,
And when Jesus also had been baptised.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is baptised among a crowd of others. He enters the water with sinners and tax collectors, and is baptised with and alongside them. Why did Jesus, who had done no sin, need to be baptised to wash away sin? In being baptised alongside us, he was taking on our sin for us. He was working out the mystery of our salvation, which he would ultimately complete in his death on the cross and in his Resurrection from the dead. Accepting the gift of what Christ has done for us, for us individually, personally and for each of us in particular, we become part of the new creation in Christ.
Because Christ has been baptised with us and for us, God’s promises in the Book of Isaiah become our own. God has created you by name. And not just God the Father. In Genesis, we find the Holy Spirit hovering over the earth as it is being formed. In John’s Gospel, we find that God created the universe through his Word, who became incarnate as Jesus Christ. All three persons of the Trinity are our Creator. And God has created you individually and personally. You are not a cosmic accident, thrown into existence by chance. You personally have been willed into existence in an act of love and care.
God has redeemed you, in a work of salvation which includes the Baptism of Christ. As God says to his people in the Book of Isaiah, When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. Christ is our redeemer. On the cross he paid the price for our sins. But this is also a term of intimacy. When God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, God became our closest kin.
And God has called you. Not just God the Holy Spirit who brings the gift of faith, But God the Father who beckons you to faith, and declares also upon you baptised in Christ: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased”.
For many of us, the language of God as a parent who delights in us can make us uncomfortable in accepting the love which God offers. And so, we are back to the problems with the language of God as Father. In the experience of many people, a father figure is not a figure of closeness and joy, but of distance or even fear.
So again we turn to the Book of Isaiah, where we find a God who has created, redeemed and called us, but also a broader range of imagery for God beyond the paternal.
Only a chapter earlier than our reading, God’s passion in engaged with the beloved nation is likened to a woman in labour. Only a few chapters later, God’s commitment to the beloved nation is described as a woman breast-feeding her child, or caring for her child in the womb.
For God’s declaration over Christ at his baptism, and therefore over us, let us hear Isaiah’s less gendered language in verse four of our reading. For “You are my Son” let us hear “You are precious in my sight” For “the Beloved” let us hear "and honoured”, and for “with you I am well pleased” Let us simply hear “I love you”.
And let us take those words with us into 2025, as God says to each of us:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you,
I have called you by name, you are mine…
You are precious in my sight,
and honoured,
and I love you.
Amen