Jesus’ public ministry began with
his baptism by John, and if you think about that a little, you may wonder why
Jesus was baptized at all. In fact, it may have seemed odd to some of the
gospel writers. Shortly before today’s text from the Gospel of Luke, we’re told
that John was “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of
sins.”1 If Jesus was, as Christians soon came to believe, the
sinless Son of God, what did he have to repent for?
Every year on this first Sunday
after the Christmas season we remember the Baptism of our Lord, and the gospel
is taken in turn from Matthew, Mark or Luke, in a three-year cycle. This year,
it’s Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism. To be more exact, Luke seems to speak around
Jesus’ baptism. “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had
been baptized ....” Jesus’ baptism is referred to only as something that has
already taken place along with baptisms of other people. Then we move to what
followed — Jesus praying, the descent of the Holy Spirit on him and the
heavenly voice declaring him the Father’s beloved Son. We might think that Luke
wants to downplay the fact that Jesus received this “baptism of
repentance.”
Matthew’s gospel deals with this
differently. There the Baptist objects when Jesus comes to be baptized, saying
Jesus ought to be baptizing him. But Jesus tells John that it’s “proper”
for him to be baptized, and John does so.2 In John’s gospel, on the
other hand, the Baptist points to Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world” and sees the Spirit descend on him, but in that account,
Jesus is never actually said to have been baptized!3
Those accounts contrast with the one
in Mark’s gospel. Most biblical scholars believe Mark to have been the earliest
one written, and that Matthew and Luke made use of it. In t
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