Sermon
delivered at All Saints’ Church, Winterslow
– Sunday 13 January 2019 – Baptism of Christ
Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17; 21-22
May
I speak in the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may my
words be a blessing to all who hear them. Amen
“When
Jesus had been baptized and was praying the heaven was opened and the Holy
Spirit descended upon him in the bodily form like a dove; and a voice came from
Heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased”.
I think everyone here is very familiar with this passage
and artists throughout the centuries have depicted the scene in wonderful
icons, frescos and paintings showing Jesus arising out of the River Jordan with
a dove descending upon him. Perhaps the most famous is that by Leonardo de
Vinci which is currently on display in the Uffizi in Florence. The scene is magical but it has always left
me with a major theological conundrum – if Jesus was the Son of God, if Jesus
is part of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, why did the Holy Spirit
have to descend upon him when he was some thirty years of age? Wasn’t he born
with the Spirit already?
The topic has been questioned and debated by theologians
and indeed to say that Jesus was not divine at birth would have sent people to
a fiery death at the stake in medieval times; but many like me have sought an
answer to this question and it is a mark of a mature faith that we are prepared
to sit down and ponder on things such as this.
I do not profess to know the answer but I am prepared to share with you
my own thoughts on this.
At this time the Jewish people where hopeful that a
Messiah would come and end their sufferings under Roman occupation. Isaiah had prophesied his coming and many
false messiah’s had appeared – Judas Maccabeus for one. The people were desperate for a leader to
appear and rise up against the occupiers and sweep away the puppet government
of Herod Antipas. It is therefore not surprising that they should seek to
enquire whether John the Baptist, this strange but charismatic individual
should not be the promised Anointed One. John is emphatic that he is not the
One but has been sent ahead of Him; that he baptizes with water but the Messiah
will baptize with the Holy Spirit.
We read in Luke
1:39 that John’s mother was Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, the mother of
Jesus. We read there that Mary went to see Elizabeth who had been filled with
the Holy Spirit and that Elizabeth’s unborn child “leapt in her womb” at the news that Mary was expecting the child
Jesus. Earlier in Luke 1:15 Elizabeth’s husband, the priest Zachariah is told that “even before his birth he will be filled
with the Holy Spirit”. It seems
improbable, then, that John, who describes himself as “lesser than the one who
is to come” should be Spirit-filled at birth yet “The One”, Jesus, is not.
An explanation which I like to think is very plausible is
that whilst Jesus was divine from birth it was necessary for there to be a
public declaration at the beginning of his ministry of the presence of the Holy
Spirit within him. In Old Testament
times the Holy Spirit was certainly present and we read how the Spirit came
upon Moses, Elijah, Saul and David at specific times for specific purposes
connected with God’s will. We also read
how the Spirit could also be taken away – as with King Saul. It was not until
Pentecost, and the departure of Jesus from his earthly life that the Holy
Spirit became available permanently to all who sought. During Jesus’s time on Earth the Holy Spirit
was with him – we read time and time again of the power of the Holy Spirit
being used for miracles and healing. When
Jesus left us, he left the Holy Spirit available to all who believed that he
Jesus was indeed the Christ, the Messiah, the Saviour. In his great commission at the end of Matthew
he asks the disciples to go out in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
to baptize and teach. When the Holy
Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism it came to stay and to be passed on to
all who believed in Christ as the Saviour.
This is fundamental to our belief as Christians. From
time to time I hear people say to me “Yes I believe in Christ, that he existed
that he was a prophet and a good man who taught great lessons on being good –
but as for being the son of God and rising from the dead, that’s pushing it a
bit too far”. For me, such sentiments do
not accord with the true meaning of being a Christian.
But have I answered the question – why did the Holy
Spirit publicly descend upon Christ only in his thirtieth year? My view is that
Jesus was born a human being. It was necessary for him to act wholly humanly
and in that he needed to ask to be baptized.
You will recall that John at first refused to do so saying that surely
Christ should be doing the baptizing; but by asking John to do it he was
setting an example for everybody in the future – the wonderful gift of the Holy
Spirit was freely available to all members of the human race who asked for it –
just as Jesus did. As Paul says in Philippians
2:6-8:
“[Jesus]
who though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as
something to be exploited but emptied himself taking the form of a slave being
born in human likeness and being found in human form he humbled himself and
became obedient to the point of death …”
Jesus’s divinity, in my view, is beyond question and this
passage with its declaration of the God’s words makes it clear to me that
Jesus, though humble, was indeed the son of God.
A few years ago, on the Alpha Course Holy Spirit Weekend, I considered whether it was actually necessary to ask the Holy Spirit to come into my life when I had been told, many years earlier that once I had been confirmed in the Church of England and the bishop had laid his hands upon me then the Holy Spirit had arrived. I don’t disagree with that because the method in which the Spirit arrives can take many guises so long as it has been genuinely sought. The more charismatic churches look at certain manifestations such as being “slain by the spirit” – falling down in other words, or suddenly speaking in tongues. Those manifestations may arise but not necessarily in everybody. We are told that there are numerous gifts and fruits of the Spirit. Indeed I am currently part of a Men’s Group in Salisbury which is studying this with a view to discerning what our gifts are. Some say mine is preaching – you might have a totally different view! For others it might simply be encouraging others or prayer ministry or pastoral ministry. However, what I have discerned from study and more commonly experientially is that having been blessed with the Holy Spirit within us we need to keep it topped up.
Last week the warning light
came on my car to inform me that the tyre pressure was low. I checked the tyres
on my car to find that two of the tyres were about 3 psi lower than the
manufacturer’s recommendation. They
needed topping up to work efficiently.
Nicky Gumbel, the founder of the Alpha Course described the Holy Spirit
as being like a gas pilot light inside you.
A lot of the time it sits there quietly burning away without any
noticeable heat but once in a while the main gas will whoosh up and fire up the
boiler. So with us – we need topping up and from time to time having the main
gas value turned on. Of course, there
are many in the world today, and many in our western world in particular where
there is not pilot light. The Holy Spirit is yet to descend upon them. That is where
we as Christians need to be missional but to do so we need to have that boiler
working well.
As you came in this morning you were given a small
drawing of a dove. It won’t surprise you to learn that your dove represents to
the Holy Spirit today. At our time of
intercessionary prayer I invite you to come up with your dove and place it on
the table here at the front. That dove can represent your own request for more
of the Holy Spirit to come into your life now, to whoosh up your boiler, it can
represent a prayer for the Holy Spirit to come upon somebody else, family and
friends or even unborn children – like John. If you feel that the Holy Spirit
is missing in your life – you have a flat tyre so to speak – you can ask it to
fill you now. If you wish you can write a name or a prayer on the back or even
just colour it in. At the back of the church there will be more paper doves for
you take away if you wish and keep in your purse, wallet, bible or whatever to
remind you either of the prayer you have made today or as a reminder for the
future.
Please don’t feel you need to come up and do any of these things if you
don’t want to but this is an opportunity for you to declare today that you
accept the living Jesus as Saviour and the baptizer of the Holy Spirit.
