These last couple of weeks I have been struggling to shake off a sinusitis bug I have had since just after Christmas, and I’m afraid the consequent sinus headaches have made sermon preparation difficult. Hence, this week I’m repeating a sermon from – oh my – fifteen years ago. The original text is here.
Video worship – The Baptism Of Jesus As His Ordination And Ours
Here’s the video for this week’s devotions. A text version of the talk is below.
My ordination service was memorable for all the wrong reasons. For one thing, I never experienced the spiritual exhilaration that others report, only a sense that at last I was no longer under suspicion from the church authorities.
For another, my sister and brother-in-law weren’t there. They had been invited, they had booked into an hôtel, and they had ordered a buffet there afterwards for a family celebration. But there was no sign of them.
You have to understand that this was in a time when few people had mobile phones. So my father went outside to look for them. When they didn’t arrive for the service, we decided afterwards to find a phone box. Then we discovered that they had been to a wedding the day before, and my sister had suffered a fish bone getting stuck in her throat at the wedding breakfast. They had tried to get a message to me, but it hadn’t got through.
I have often viewed the baptism of Jesus as his ordination service. Here is the public confirmation and commissioning of the ministry to which he had been called since before the beginning of human history.
And like our ordination services, the place of the Holy Spirit is significant here. At an ordination, we often sing the ancient hymn ‘Veni Sancte Spiritus’ (‘Come, Holy Spirit’) and we lay hands on the ordinands, praying that the Holy Spirit will equip them for their calling.
So in this talk, I want to reflect on what the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus tells us about the public ministry he is about to begin.
10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’
These words are loaded with scriptural resonances from elsewhere, and when we realise that their significance for the ministry of Jesus will become apparent.
Firstly, Jesus ‘saw heaven being torn open’ (verse 10).
When heaven is opened in the Scriptures, it usually means God is about to reveal his glory and his will. Ezekiel’s inaugural vision that makes him a prophet begins when ‘the heavens were opened and [he] saw visions of God’[i]. Stephen the martyr, on trial for his life and facing stoning, saw ‘heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.’[ii] The revelation Simon Peter receives to mix with Gentiles and ultimately proclaim the Gospel to them begins in a trance when he sees ‘heaven opened’[iii]. There are at least eight examples in the Book of Revelation itself[iv]. And so on.
Therefore in this incident the Father is telling Jesus that something important is about to be communicated.
We may think that such spiritual experiences are rare, unusual, or even non-existent for us. However, there are occasional times when we are conscious that the presence of God is close or even virtually tangible. It does not feel like the sky has a ceiling and our prayers bounce back down to us without reaching heaven. We have those times when we know the lines of communication are clear.
If we do, then this passage tells us to pay attention. God may be opening heaven to say something important to us, or to do something important with us.
I wonder whether we stand to attention at such times?
Secondly, Jesus saw ‘the Spirit descending on him’ (verse 10). This has echoes of the creation story in Genesis 1, where ‘the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’[v] before the six days of creation begin.
So here too God is about to begin a work of creation. Except creation already exists! With Jesus he begins the work of the new creation. Through Jesus all things will be made new.
This shows us that Jesus is way bigger and more important than the ways in which we often treat him. For all our confessions of him as Son of God and Saviour, there are too many times when we treat Jesus as if he were someone who helps us to improve our lives, or who mentors us in good ways of living. We treat life with Jesus as some kind of deluxe addition to life.
But that is not why Jesus came, it is not why he ministered, and he will not have it. Jesus came that we might say goodbye to all that is old, decaying, and twisted due to sin and instead to welcome in a world where not only are we individually made new in our lives, but that all creation will be made new. Even our bodies will be made new at the Resurrection.
Following Jesus is not like buying a new car, where we look at the specifications and say, I’ll add on some extra features, like a parking camera to help my reversing, and a heated driver’s seat to keep me comfortable.
No: the ministry of Jesus is one where our old life is put in the grave and we are raised to a completely new life. It is one where we look forward to the old world going and living in the new heavens and new earth.
To welcome Jesus into our lives, then, requires that we are willing to sing the words to the old chorus ‘Spirit of the living God’: ‘Break me, melt me, mould me, fill me.’ When we allow him to do that in our lives, he will make us new and make his world new.
Thirdly, Jesus saw ‘the Spirit descending on him like a dove’ (verse 10, italics mine).
That the Spirit descends like a dove takes our last thought further. The most obvious biblical precedent here is of Noah using a dove to find out whether the flood waters had receded[vi].
This is an indication, then, that as Jesus comes to make his new creation, he does so as One who rolls back the damage of the past, and who shows that the judgment of God no longer pertains to all who own the name of Christ. Yes, ‘Break me, melt me, mould me, fill me’ can be challenging, disconcerting, and disturbing, but Jesus also comes as the gentle One who restores where we have been broken by the actions of others and who tells us that no longer have to live under our past, because through him God has offered us forgiveness.
If you are already broken, let Jesus put you back together in a new and beautiful way. Maybe you think that the brokenness will still show. Maybe in this life it will, but don’t let that daunt you. After all, the risen Jesus showed his scars to the disciples.
Think if you will about the Japanese art of kintsugi. This is the practice of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold. Even the flaws and imperfections are beautified, to make a more attractive piece of art. See that as a picture of what Jesus wants to do in your life. Why not invite him to do his work of restoration in you?
Fourthly and finally, verse 11:
And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’
The first thing that has always struck me here is that the Father proclaims his delight in his Son before he has even begun his ministry. It is a powerful statement of unconditional love.
But if we want to dig into the biblical background here, then the obvious stopping-off point is the so-called Servant Songs in the Book of Isaiah, especially the first of those songs[vii]. It begins with the words,
‘Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations.’ (Verse 1)
The main difference is that whereas in Isaiah the designation ‘servant’ is used, here in Mark it’s ‘Son’. We draw the conclusion that God’s own Son came as the Servant of the Lord. The Son of God is the Servant.
Later in Mark Jesus will tell his disciples that servanthood rather than status is what matters in the kingdom of God, and that even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many[viii].
But it’s established right here at the beginning of the Gospel that Jesus will carry out his ministry of salvation in the form of a servant. The Son of God will bring in the new creation and all heal the broken not in the way that many assume an Almighty God will do, with force and irresistible energy, but by treading the path of servanthood.
And so he comes to serve – not in the sense that he waits on our every indulgence but that he provides our every need and he knows that the only cure for the wounds of he world lies at the Cross.
When we receive that, he then enlists us to serve him by serving others that they may see through us the nature of God’s transforming love. That is what Jesus is ordained to do. This is what all his followers, reverends or otherwise, are all ordained to do as well.
[i] Ezekiel 1:1
[ii] Acts 7:56
[iii] Acts 10:11
[iv] Revelation 4:1; 5:3; 8:1; 10:8; 11:19; 13:6; 15:5; 19:11.
[v] Genesis 1:2
[vi] Genesis 8:8-12
[vii] Isaiah 42:1-7
[viii] Mark 10:35-45
Sermon: Baptism And Ordination
There is only one time in my life when I have eaten at a Hilton Hotel. It was after my ordination service. Well, why not do things in style on an occasion like that?
Actually, the truth was more prosaic. We had pizzas in a lounge area. Two couples from my church had booked a cheap deal at the Leeds Hilton for the weekend of my ordination at the Methodist Conference, and they invited my parents and me back as a way of fixing something that had gone wrong. My sister and brother-in-law had booked into another hotel, but never turned up at the ordination service. Only later did we discover that my sister had been in A & E the previous day, having got a fish bone stuck in her throat. In those days, few people had mobile phones, so we weren’t able to discover what had happened until after the service, when we found a payphone.
So that is my abiding memory of my ordination – pizzas at the Leeds Hilton. Well, apart from a sense of relief that all the years of testing and suspicion from the church authorities were finally over.
You might expect a group of ministers to trade ordination stories, but why raise that subject in an ordinary sermon when the Church only ordains a few of her members?
Because we are all in some sense ‘ordained’ by God to minister in his name. We call it baptism. The baptism of Jesus, which we read about today, was effectively his ordination, his commissioning. And although we seem so far removed from Jesus’ unique status as the Son of God, there are sufficient similarities between the themes of his baptismal ordination and ours. In particular, let’s think about how Jesus’ baptism equips himself for the work of the kingdom, and therefore how God equips us.
The first theme is less obvious in Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism than the other Gospels. It’s the theme of identification with sinners. Here in Luke, John lays out clearly that his baptism is a sign of repentance, and that it must be accompanied by a lifestyle that demonstrates such a turning away from sin. It’s therefore surprising that Jesus, who is universally presented in the New Testament as sinless, desires John’s baptism. The other Gospels record a conversation where John says to him, ‘It should be the other way round: you should baptise me.’ Jesus replies, ‘Let it be so to fulfil all righteousness.’ Luke omits that conversation, but still has Jesus undergoing a baptism of repentance, despite his sinlessness.
What are we to make of this? The classic Christian explanation down the centuries has been that Jesus received John’s baptism as a sign of identifying with sinful humanity. His baptism foreshadows the Cross, when he would die, representing sinful humankind as its substitute.
Jesus’ death for sinners was, of course, unique and unrepeatable. Unique, because only he as the sinless God-man could offer it, and unrepeatable because he accomplished everything at Calvary. So how could this be a model for us, when we can’t do that?
In a lesser way, is the answer. We too are called to identify with sinners. It shouldn’t be too difficult, because we are sinners ourselves! The temptation we have as forgiven sinners who are called to pursue a holy life is to lapse into a self-righteous attitude that looks down on others, disdains them and leads to us separating ourselves from them. It leads to situations where people think they shouldn’t attend a church, because they’re not good enough.
This has application for us, inside and outside the church. Inside the church, it affects the way we care and pray. There is more than one example in Scripture of people praying for the people of God, and not saying, ‘They have sinned,’ but ‘We have sinned.’ Daniel prays for God’s people that way, while in exile in Babylon, even though he was not responsible for the exile. He identifies with sinners in the family of God, rather than staying loftily above them. His prayer makes a difference.
Outside the church, identification with sinners is critical, too. It’s no wonder that the great Sri Lankan church leader, D T Niles, defined evangelism as ‘one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread’. The Gospel is of course urgent and essential, but as fellow sinners we need to remember that we are beggars, too. It’s just that we’ve found bread.
In every aspect of ministry, then, as Christians, both within and without the church, identification with sinners is an important principle enshrined here in Jesus’ baptism.
The second aspect of Jesus’ baptism that equips him for ministry is that he receives the Holy Spirit. So often we emphasise the fact that Jesus did what he did and said what he said because of who he was – the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God. If that is all we do, then we create an understanding of Jesus that says, he had an unique status which enabled him to do certain things, but we don’t have that standing and therefore we can’t begin to approach doing any of the things he did.
But look what happens here. While he is praying, heaven is opened (verse 21) and the Holy Spirit descends on him in bodily form like a dove (verse 22). Only after this does his ministry proper begin. Sure, there have been signs of what is to come with the incident in the Temple when he was twelve (2:41-52), because Jesus knows who he is, but the actual ministry of good news to the poor and broken only starts after this incident. Next, the Holy Spirit will eject him into the wilderness to fast and face temptation. Then he will announce his work in the Nazareth synagogue by reading Isaiah 61, beginning with the words, ‘The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me’. Following that, he will conduct his ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit.
So whatever the difference between Jesus and us because he is the Second Person of the Trinity, eternally begotten of the Father, there is a strong connection between his ministry and ours. Jesus, for all his divine status, could not and did not begin his ministry until he had been empowered by the Holy Spirit. Jesus, the Son of God, conducted his ministry as a man in the power of the Spirit.
Exactly our call, in other words.
I find it significant that Jesus receives the Spirit while he ‘was praying’ (verse 21). As one American United Methodist minister puts it, ‘being on your knees can help you walk on air.’[1] He goes on to say:
The life and health of a church are directly proportional to the prayer life of the congregation. The praying church is the healthiest church. When parishioners spend time in prayer, they are a more compassionate and happier people. Their spirit permeates the congregation. When people spend time in communion with God, the sweetness of the Holy Spirit radiates throughout the church.[2]
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the early Pentecostals sought what they called ‘the baptism in the Holy Spirit’ at ‘tarrying meetings’ – that is, meetings where they waited prayerfully upon God. While the gift of the Spirit is a gift of grace, and I also do not want to suggest that the Spirit is absent from us, I think it is also true that the Spirit is more manifest among those who show the greatest seriousness and passion to receive and depend upon him. Too often we operate on auto-pilot, earning the old barb that ‘if the Holy Spirit were withdrawn from the church, ninety five per cent of activities would continue just the same as before.’ Jesus didn’t operate that way. He challenges us to be prayerfully dependent upon the Spirit.
The third and final aspect of Jesus’ baptism that equips him for ministry is an affirmation of who he is. Listen to what the voice from heaven says to him:
‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ (Verse 22)
Both the theological colleges I attended had weekly communion services. Often we had well-known guest preachers. Yet I only remember one sermon from each college. From my time in Manchester I remember Trevor Huddleston preaching on words from Romans 12, ‘Hate what is evil.’ From my time in Bristol I remember Tom Smail preaching on … the baptism of Christ.
He came to us at around May one year, just before the end of year exams, when many of the student body were fraught over revision or leaving college and beginning ministry. He was one of the few who did not treat the congregation in the chapel as a bunch of soon-to-be-clergy; rather, he majored on this verse: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
And what he said about it was so healing I remember it to this day. He talked about being loved unconditionally by the Father as a child of God. There was no better message for a stressed group of people. You are loved. Period. It is the grace of God. You have been adopted into his family out of sheer grace. Jesus had not even begun his ministry here, but already the Father was ‘well pleased’ with him. The costliest acts of Jesus’ obedience were still to come, but here the Father is already ‘well pleased’ with him. He embarks onto his public ministry affirmed in his identity as the Son of God, who is loved by his Father and pleasing to him.
Now translate that into our lives. Could it be that God says something similar to us, and that it is the foundation of healthy ministry. If you know you are a child of God, you have an identity that will sustain you when people attack you or manipulate you, as surely they will. If you know you are loved unconditionally by the God of boundless grace, you will not measure your acceptability to that God on the basis of your performance. So if something goes well, all the glory goes to him. If you are judged a failure, by yourself or others, that makes no change to the love the Father lavishes on you.
Our security as Christians is not in our achievements or our popularity: both will wax and wane and are not to be trusted as accurate measures of our discipleship. No: our security as we launch out to serve God in Christ is in the fact that we have been adopted by the Father into his family as his beloved children, and his grace means he is pleased with us before we ever do anything for him. The call to identify with sinners is a challenging one; so is the call to depend prayerfully upon the Holy Spirit. But the security to walk this way is in the unconditional love of the Father.
[1] Royal Speidel, Evangelism in the Small Membership Church; title of chapter 7.
[2] Ibid., p 57.
Fresh Expressions: Emerging Church And The Historic Denominations
Going off at a tangent from a post by Pete Phillips, Fresh Expressions is a joint initiative of the Church of England and the Methodist Church to support ‘new ways of being church’. In a strangely modernist way they have identified twelve categories of new expressions of church!
But the thing is this: the historic denominations are increasingly interested in new forms of church. Is it for creative reasons? Is it desperate? Is it the Holy Spirit? What seems to be being swept under the carpet is the huge potential for clashes of values.
For example, won’t we have to start facing some sacred cows such as entrenched doctrines of ordination? Don’t existing ones play the power card in a way that postmoderns and Jesus-followers should be highly suspicious of? You don’t need to go the whole ontological way that the Anglicans do, just take the Methodist view that although ordination confers no separate priesthood, nevertheless it is ‘representative’ (which is pretty close to specialised priesthood) and it confers presidency at the sacraments on the grounds of ‘good order’. That may have been a pragmatic way of restricting presidency to the presbyters in years gone by without officially conceding a sacerdotal approach, but how does it read now? Let’s play reader-response in the 21st century with it. Who can keep good order? Normally only presbyters? What does that say about everybody else?
(Of course Methodism now allows ‘extended communion’ where authorised people can take communion into homes. It started out as something for the sick, but the Big Bad Rule Book can be interpreted to allow this for home groups. Nevertheless it’s only seen as delegated from the presiding minister at a Sunday service, and the people still need to be authorised.)
How far we have come from a Last Supper modelled on the Jewish Passover that was celebrated in the family. And how far we have come from a Saviour who took a towel and a bowl of water.
Although you can’t say the emerging church is all of one mind on every issue (it’s a ‘conversation’, it likes to think) nevertheless it’s pretty clear that it embraces an understandable postmodern suspicion of the link between truth and power, and it is deeply attracted to the radical picture of Jesus in the Gospels.
So this post is really to ask whether the emerging churches and the historic denominations can fully embrace each other. Either there will be compromise of principles on one side or the other (you can bet that those who still perceive themselves as powerful will expect the others to conform to them). Or there will be persistent conflict: the romance will break up. Or the new wine will break the old wineskins.
Someone please tell me I’ve got it wrong, and why. But my spiritual gift of pessimism comes into play on this issue.
Big Circumstance 