Today we mark the beginning of the Epiphany season by observing the Baptism of our Lord. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’s baptism in the river Jordan tells us something about Jesus before it goes on to show Jesus in action. The knowledge of who Jesus is precedes knowledge of what Jesus does. The important reason for this precedence is that we rightly understand the works of Jesus only in light of the identity of Jesus. This precedence in knowing who Jesus is over what Jesus does was a major insight of the German martyr theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He lectured on the identity of Jesus in 1933 at the University of Berlin under the dark shadow of Hitler’s rise to power.
Many in that time, also in the church, were hailing Adolf Hitler as their Führer, virtually as their new Messiah. They did so because they judged on the basis of his visible works: uniting the people, putting down the dissenters, restoring pride and power, liberating the nation from oppression, promising greatness to come. Only 12 disastrous years later would they learn who Hitler really was. Bonhoeffer was teaching to the contrary that Christians do not look for messiahs in politicians, because they already have one. Nor do they judge on the basis of visible works which can be deceptive. Much later in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says that many will come doing wonders so as to deceive even the elect. But Christians, knowing in the Spirit the Messiah whom they have in Jesus the beloved Son of his Abba Father, the God of Israel, have learned that the genuinely creative and redemptive work of God in the world comes by Jesus surprising way of humble service and self-giving, the way of the cross.
Such lifelong Christian learning, the discipleship of our minds, happens to us this year of the Gospel of Mark as we in the Spirit follow Jesus on his life’s way through the cross to his glory. Our learning is inaugurated here in the beginning at the baptism of Jesus. He is identified by the heavenly voice as the beloved Son, that identification simultaneously making that heavenly voice to be that of Jesus’s heavenly Father. This mutual identification of the Father and the Son is then confirmed as the Spirit, in the figure of the dove, alights upon Jesus, picking him out from the crowd for us to focus on. This anointing with the Holy Spirit, moreover, makes Jesus the beloved Son the anointed one whom Israel awaited, which is what the word Messiah (in Hebrew) or Christ (in Greek) means.
When we continue with Mark’s story in several Sundays, the Spirit who has anointed Jesus will compel Jesus into the wilderness to be tested by an enemy, the Unclean Spirit who opposes the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit thus inaugurates the Epiphany combat of Jesus which follow as Jesus enters Galilee to expel the demons, heal the sick and forgive sinners. We are shown in this way that the grace of God enacted in Jesus is a militant grace. It goes to battle against the forces of darkness. It breaks into the strong man’s house and binds him up in order to plunder his goods, which are suffering human beings addicted to power or pleasure or, even perversely, addicted to pain, desiring their own subjugation as weighed down by failures, burdened with guilt. Or, alternately, high on their own sense of righteousness and power, unfree in any case to live as joyful children of God in the workaday world of Galilee.
So Mark wants us to know from the outset who it is that we are dealing with, the beloved Son on whom the Holy Spirit abides, each sent by the heavenly Father, the God of Israel. Knowing this from the get-go, we will properly understand all that Jesus does and suffers on his life’s way. And knowing this, we will be equipped as disciples ourselves to follow him in the power of the very same Spirit through the cross to the crown.
So we should notice that all three of our Scripture lessons today are bound together by specifying the work of the Holy Spirit. Our short excerpt from the very first verses of the Bible in Genesis shows us that the Word of God and the Spirit of God go together, distinct but inseparable, in acts of creation and new creation: The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. Genuine acts of creation are reserved to God alone. We human beings can be creative since we are made in the image and likeness of God, but being creatures, we do not summon into being that which does not yet exist, out of something without form and void, sheer absolute darkness. Rather, when we creatures are creative we work with existing materials, fashioning and reshaping them according to our intelligent design and moral purpose. But God alone creates, as we say in theology, out of nothing: light out of darkness, order out of chaos, life out of death, life-giving righteousness out of death dealing sin, and so on. God so creates by his Word and Spirit, his Word which commands and his Spirit which animates and enlivens.
We Lutherans, descended from the Reformation, have historically been very good on the Word of God, which we sing as our great heritage. But we haven’t been so great on the Word’s own testimony to God’s Spirit, whom the creed tells us is the Lord and giver of life. The word of God proclaims the identity of Jesus as the beloved Son given for us but it is the Holy Spirit who instills in us the confident trust in the man Jesus such that he really is our own in whom we too are beloved and well pleasing to God. Thus in another place St. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirits, against all discouragement and despair, that we are indeed the children of God. We need to know about this precious gift of the divine Spirit, the Lord who gives us true life by grasping hold of our heart of hearts, because otherwise we put a terrible and false burden on ourselves, whether or not we really believe. Oh no! Confident trust in the Word of God is the pure gift of grace by the Holy Spirit literally inspiring us to believe in spite of our unbelief, just as the Spirit first inspired Messiah Jesus at his baptism to go into battle for us.
So you notice that that what applies to the Christ at his baptism is reapplied to his Christians, that our baptism is a baptism into his baptism. Here in the sacrament, daily to be remembered with a hearty “amen,” the same heavenly voice announces our adoption as beloved children of God, sending into our hearts the same confident trust which is the Holy Spirit. So our second lesson today from the Acts of the Apostles testifies. Let’s listen to the chief part again: Paul asks, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" And they said, "No, we have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." And he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" They said, "Into John's baptism." And Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus." On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and prophesied. Practically speaking, I wonder how many modern Christians, other than the Pentecostals, have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit! No wonder, folks are tormented about whether or not they truly believe and wanting relief from this torment, decide that Christian belief is beyond them, over their paygrade. So in reality it is. Luther taught us to confess, “I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in my Lord Jesus Christ or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts and united me with his faithful people.”
Luther’s teaching is verified today by the comparison made between John’s baptism and baptism in the name of Jesus, the beloved Son, together with his anointing Spirit and the Father in heaven speaking love. As Paul explains, John’s baptism was a human act signifying repentance and hope for the forgiveness of sins when Messiah comes. I repeat, a human act. A good human act, but a human act subject to all the uncertainties of any human act. Even John the baptizer, according to Paul, redirected the question of belief away from himself to the one to come, the mightier one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. And notice, on hearing this word of God, Luke tells us, something happened to these folks in Ephesus. They did not do something, something happened to them: they were baptized, passive voice, hands laid upon them, passive voice, and the Holy Spirit was given, passive voice, so that they burst out – now at last active voice! –, in the confident praise and proclamation of hearts born anew into a living faith. Who you are as newborn Christians by baptism, precedes what you do as Christians! See again as well the collaboration of the Word and the Spirit, each distinct but inseparably operating together. Knowing who they are, consequently or rather, now knowing whose they are, these folks in Ephesus burst into action, giving all the glory to God for all his rich mercy in Christ.
So if you are wondering where today is this outpouring of the Spirit which Scripture witnesses to us here and now, look around you and see! Simply recognize the spiritual reality that occurs every time we gather around gospel word and sacraments which follows us thereafter, so to speak, into the workaday world of our own Galilee or Ephesus. For you, like these folks at Ephesus, are made the temple of the Holy Spirit; you each become a prophet, that is, mouthpieces of the Spirit to speak the word of God in the community of Christ, voicing praise and thanksgiving, sharing comfort and consolation, lending the courage to the discouraged, simply being faith operating in love. When you do not fall for the hucksters, but rather when you build up the community, accompany the grieving, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, forgive the trespasser, love the enemy, make peace, rejoicing in all that is good and beautiful – in short when you are the little Christs, anointed with the same Holy Spirit, of the great Lord Jesus Christ by your baptism into his baptism, then hearts, your own and those around, are touched with the assurance that we are indeed the beloved children of God. So the Holy Spirit brings the word of God home to create what had not been, the beloved community of Christ and his people, harbinger of God’s new humanity, a light in the darkness which the darkness has not overcome. This is who you are, whose you are, you, the baptized, in whom the Father’s Word, now in flesh appearing, is spoken into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit.