My Oxford Dictionary defines the word
“eccentric” as “odd or capricious in behaviour or appearance; whimsical”. I
suspect there are a number of us who have had either friends or relatives they
might describe as eccentric. I had an uncle who at one time ran a Shell gas
station. Whether it was to save money or because he liked the colours, I don’t
know, but he painted the exterior of his house in the same yellow and red. The
neighbours didn’t like it, but it sure made it easy to find.
I don’t know if the statistics would bear
me out, but it seems to me that the greatest concentration of eccentric people
is to be found in the British Isles. There was, for instance, an officer of the
British army in World War 2 known as “mad Jack Churchill”. He lived by the
motto, “Any officer who goes into
action without his sword is improperly dressed”—and the sword he was referring
to was the Scottish broadsword. In addition to his sword, he occasionally used
a longbow. Early in the war he ambushed a German patrolman, shooting him
with a barbed arrow. His shot earned him the title of the only British soldier
to have felled an enemy with a longbow during the war.
Delving farther back
into history, there was William Buckland. He was a clergyman and a brilliant geologist
and palaeontologist, who lived
in the early nineteenth century. He was known to have
occasionally delivered his lectures on horseback and his obsession with the animal kingdom knew no
bounds. The result was that his home was literally a zoo. Besides this, he was famous for eating
animals of every species and placing them before his dinner
guests. Various people who sat at
his table recall being served panther, crocodile and mouse. Among the few
creatures that did not suit his taste buds were moles and bluebottle flies.
Perhaps he was not as
far along the eccentricity spectrum as William Buckland or Jack Churchill, but
I do believe there is an argument that the man we meet with in this morning’s
Bible reading falls somewhere into that category. He is John the Baptist (or
John the Baptizer). Matthew describes John’s clothes as being made from camel’s
hair with a leather belt around his waste, and that he lived on a diet of locusts
and wild honey. (As an aside, locust eating probably wasn’t all that eccentric.
Locusts were commonly eaten by the poorer people of that region and were an
efficient source of protein.)
John’s message was
uncompromising. He had no fear about exposing the hypocrisy of religious
leaders, the corrupt practices of the tax collectors or the bullying tactics of
the Roman soldiers—and ultimately his fearless denunciations would lead to his
death. At the same time there were those who found John’s challenging message
of repentance deeply attractive. And they came in droves to the grassy banks of
the Jordan River.
However, John always recognized that his mission was only an
anticipation of something far greater. And he knew its fulfilment was around
the corner when one day he spotted Jesus in the crowd. “I baptize with water,” he said, “but among you stands one you
do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am
not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (John 1:26-27; Matthew 3:11-12). Then
something that had never entered John’s mind began to happen. Jesus walked
forward and stepped down into the water. John was aghast. “I’m the one who needs to be baptized by you,” he protested. “So what are
you doing coming to me?”
And that’s the
question I want to ask this morning. Why did Jesus feel the need to be
baptized? And what did he mean when he said it was “to fulfil all
righteousness”? I think the answer is threefold.
Submission
In the baptism of Jesus the gospels give us
a unique picture of the Holy Trinity. As the Son emerges from the water, we see
the Holy Spirit coming down as a dove and alighting on him, and we hear the
voice of the Father pronouncing, “This
is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
Before I say anything
else, let me state that at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity there will
always remain a mystery. We can skirt around the edges of it, but we can never
fully penetrate it. Theologians have sought to clarify it, yet sometimes their
explanations can leave us more confused than when we began. The most helpful
approach I have found is through the picture of a dance. Eugene Peterson put it
this way:
Imagine a folk dance,
a round dance, with three partners in each set. The music starts up and the
partners holding hands begin moving in a circle. On a signal from the caller,
they release hands, change partners, and weave in and out, swinging first one
and then another. The tempo increases, the partners move more swiftly with and
between and among one another, swinging and twirling, embracing and releasing,
holding on and letting go. But there is no confusion; every movement is cleanly
coordinated in precise rhythms … as each person maintains [their] identity. To
the onlooker, the movements are so swift it is impossible at times to
distinguish one person from another; the steps are so intricate that it is
difficult to anticipate the actual configuration as they appear.[1]
So it is, at the
baptism of Jesus, that for a brief moment in time the curtain is lifted and we
are given a glimpse of the eternal dance of the Trinity—a still shot, if you
will. Here we see the Son empowered by the Spirit in humble and willing
submission to the Father. And that is Jesus’ posture not only at his baptism
but throughout his ministry, and indeed through eternity.
We hear it repeatedly
from his own lips: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish
his work,” Jesus told his followers (John
4:34). “I do not seek to
please myself but him who sent me” (John
5:30). “I
love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me” (John 14:31). And we see his unwavering commitment to that
purpose most poignantly demonstrated in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night
before his crucifixion. There we find Jesus falling with his face to the ground
as he prays, “My Father, if it is possible, may
this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39).
As Jesus stepped down
into the Jordan to be submerged under the water, then, it was not as an act of
repentance as John supposed, but as a public witness for all to see, to his complete
commitment to the Father’s will. As he would later tell his followers, “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to
do the will of him who sent me” (John
6:38).
Solidarity
There is a second purpose that underlies
Jesus’ baptism. That is, that it was not only an act of submission to the
Father’s will but also an indication of his solidarity with the human race—with
you and with me. Jesus was demonstrating in a visible, physical way that he is
one with us, one of us.
Some of you may remember when the Queen
visited Halifax in 1994. Part of her itinerary was to take her along Barrington
Street. At that time Barrington was already well down along its slide from its
former glory in the first half of the century. “Seedy” and “run down” would be a
kind way to describe the way it looked. So the government spent thousands of
dollars on temporary cosmetic improvements to some of the surrounding buildings.
The result was that the street took on the appearance more of a movie set than of
a real place. For some reason someone among the powers-that-be was of the
opinion that the Queen should not be exposed to things as they really were.
Well, not so with the Son of God. When
Jesus came to our world, he did not come as a visiting dignitary. The opening
verses of John’s gospel emphatically tell us that the eternal Son of God became
flesh and made his dwelling among us (John
1:14). As preachers such as myself are keen to point out, a literal
translation of that verse is that “he pitched his tent among us”. What that
means is that Jesus did not just come for an overnight visit—touch down, see a
few of the sights and then fly off again. And he did not live in a palace,
surrounded by all the luxury that this world is able to provide. No, he came as
an ordinary man and over the course of thirty-three or however many years,
experienced all that it is to be human.
Being baptized in the muddy waters of the
Jordan was for Jesus a concrete way of conveying that this was what he was
doing. As he plunged under the water, he was physically identifying with all
those who were responding to John’s message—not standing on the bank in silent
observation but throwing himself in with our lot, becoming one with us,
immersing himself in our condition and all that that entails.
Sacrifice
Jesus’ baptism, then, was an outward and
visible sign of his total submission to the Father’s will. And it was a sign of
his solidarity with you and me in our human lot. But I believe there was also a
third meaning to be found in what he did that day. And it is revealed in a couple
of conversations he had with his followers some time later.
The first of them came while Jesus was
teaching a large crowd. He had warned them in a parable of how they must be
ready for the coming of the Son of Man. At that point Peter came to him
privately and asked if the parable was just for them or for everyone. Part of
Jesus’ response consisted of these words: “I have a baptism to undergo, and what stress I am under until it is
completed!” (Luke
12:50) I can only imagine that
Peter must have been mystified by those words. Nevertheless they stuck with him
and lodged in his mind.
On another occasion
two of Jesus’ followers came to him asking, “Let us sit at your right hand and
the other at your left in your glory.” To which Jesus replied, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the
baptism I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38)
Again Jesus’ words were met with incomprehension.
Yet, while the disciples failed to grasp
the implications of what Jesus was saying at the time, it became clear to them
later that what he had been referring to was his death. So it was that, even at
this beginning point in his ministry, there loomed before him the shadow of the
cross. As Jesus descended into the waters of the River Jordan, he was also
looking ahead to the day when he would be plunged into the deeper waters of
death—when he would willingly offer himself up for you and for me on the cross.
There he would take upon himself not only
our humanity but our sin. There he would bear the full weight of our
waywardness and rebellion. And he did it so that you and I might be freed to be
the men and women that God created us to be, to be human in the truest, fullest
sense. He did it so that you and I might join in the joyful dance of the
Trinity and one day hear our Father’s voice pronouncing, “This is my beloved son,
this is my beloved daughter…”
Today, as we remember the baptism of Jesus,
may it help us to recognize him as the one and only Son of God, completely
submissive to the Father’s will. May we know his presence, walking alongside
us, sharing our joys and our pains, our hopes and our disappointments. And may
we live in gratitude that the road that began with his baptism was the road
that led him to Calvary—that he was pierced for our transgressions and that by
his wounds we have been healed.
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