Thought for the week - 12 January 2025

We can point at things and wait for things for a long time, and sometimes get ourselves so occupied in the action of so doing that we can forget what we are pointing at. We take things out and we put them back in again. We change colours of vestments and choose seasonal hymns, we look forward to Easter and then we look back to Christmas, each occasion necessitating a different kind of cake or drink t accompany it – in other words, we have succeeded in accomplishing the enormous feat of domesticating the creator of the universe, even making little statues of Him to put in the crib or on the altar. This may seem utterly shocking or not, depending on your point of view.

I am firmly in the ‘not shocked’ camp, but with caveats. I like to think that the domestication of divinity is a human essential – we cannot spend our time lost in the awesome wonder of eternity not because it would be a waste of time to do so, but because we have a divine mandate to go forth and baptise all nations, and to tell of the wonderful news we have heard, and it is hard to do so while staring into space, indeed the disciples were told off by the angel for doing just that on the day of the Ascension of Christ ‘men of galilee, why are you standing there staring into the sky?’ before being reminded to go back to Jerusalem, where the greatest concentration of people were, and begin the Church of God.

It is therefore useful to have ways of reminding ourselves about the faith, and to share those with others. As long as the colourful fabrics and the music and the statues and the icons and all the rest of it do not become a burden and a distraction to the practice of the faith, then all well and good, and we must remember, those of us who are in church often, that for most people they only see this for an hour a week, if that, so it is right that we make the effort, for them if not always for us. There are expectations laid upon us by God and by our fellow human beings and one of them is that we are here, reminding a forgetful nation that there is something else, something greater.

The Baptism of Christ is a reminder to us of just that, and like all practical reminders, it also contains an inherent truth in its teaching. We hear the account from Luke this year, which is short, and made shorter by editing, and patchy on details, therefore we should pay attention to the things it does tell us, as they are the sparse but rich details that Luke wishes us to know. Verses 18 – 20 are edited out of the reading today, and interestingly they relate to John the Baptist alone, and so we are left with a completely Christological narrative of astonishing and awesome simplicity.

To prepare us for this, we listen to Isaiah prophesying, as prophets do, about the person of John the Baptist, saying that one day someone will come, a joyful messenger to announce the Messiah – note though that the text of Isaiah, even though it is detailed about the Precursor, John, culminates with what the Messiah will do, once He is announced. The messenger will say ‘here is your God’ and then the blessings of God will come. This is pivotal to what happens in the Jordan today but, like our churches year, it points to things without being in itself a fulfilment of them.

It is remarkable that Christ is baptised, as He has no need of it. Instead, He cleanses the water by His immersion into it, in the same way that He cleanses the world by His incarnation and overturns the sin of Adam by being a second, greater Adam, a new man, a new birth for the world. On rising out of the water, as he rose from the womb of Mary, He brings forth fountains of grace and hope to our world, and as at His birth the angels brought forth shepherds and magi, here this allegorical second birth brings forth something greater – His teaching ministry is birthed in the Jordan and brings forth the voice of God the Father and the descent of the Holy Spirit – a manifestly clear sign of the salvation yet to come.

But, like our own pointing and waiting, we are not there yet. What, in this perspective, makes the Baptism great as a festival of the Church is that in this way it is the prefigurement of the Crucifixion. The whole destiny of Jesus is contained within it. It is the culmination of Christmastide because it is the source of the impetus that will carry us on to Easter, this is the beginning of His ministry and that ministry will end on the cross, a second and greater cleansing.

This is what the Byzantine icons tell us. Christ goes down into the Jordan as on Calvary he will sink into the chaotic waters of death, to redeem them and to banish death. The river is dark with the murk of evil, but the shimmering light which surrounds the figure of Christ cleaves it like a sword. It is a reminder to us of his Sacrifice when on the Cross he will enter the darkness again and this time transform it into the radiance of the Resurrection light, offered to us all as joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.

So we do not have a little figure of Christ to dip into a little bucket today, because statues and costumes only point the way, as John pointed to Christ. Now our salvation is begun, and the work of witnesses to that begins and never ends until He comes again. We mark the seasons, keep the feasts, because it is a way to evangelise, but for us who have come to believe, today we enter the mystery which no chalkware or damask can imitate – the life of the world and the Triune Godhead stand in the water, and command our attention. Our work today is not in singing or in costume, but in listening and living according to this dynamic event which, more than Christmas, is what Isaiah was looking to, what all God’s faithful people longed for – and it has come to you in Baptism, when we made vows which, now, we will make anew.