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Sunday 12 January 2025 Baptism of Christ
Transformed by God’s Spirit
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
Context: a service which may have time for open prayer or discussion after the sermon – this may take the form of prayers, or commitment for the coming year – but it would also work in a more traditional morning or evening setting
Aim: to celebrate the baptism of Jesus and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit
There are some moments when it seems as if time stops: right in the middle of the noise and hubbub of events, everything goes still, and eternity breaks in.
The way Luke’s Gospel tells it, the baptism of Jesus takes place in all the noise and hubbub of John the Baptist’s ministry. John is moving among the crowds who have come out to see him: warning the people about the judgement to come, listening to their questions, giving advice on how to change their lives – share your possessions with the needy, don’t exploit others, don’t extort money, live within your means.
The actual baptism of Jesus passes almost unnoticed – ‘When all the people were baptized, and when Jesus had been baptized...’ – but then comes the moment the scene freezes. Jesus is praying after his baptism, with the crowds milling round him – and eternity breaks in. The Holy Spirit descends, and God speaks.
And, in Luke’s Gospel, that’s where the whole story stops. There is a full pause in the narrative, while a great long genealogy shoulders its way into the story: a sort of ‘Who do you think you are, Jesus?’, tracing his human ancestry back through generation after generation.
But the Spirit of God has touched his life in the present moment, and for this thirty-year-old man, nothing will ever be the same again. For Jesus, the Son of God, the Beloved, the quiet years are ended, and his ministry has begun.
Jesus is not the first person in the Bible on whom the Spirit of God has descended. This breathtaking, transforming moment is well recognised in Scripture. It happened to the early leaders of Israel, such as Gideon in the book of Judges; David, King of Israel; the prophet Isaiah, whose words were quoted by Jesus when he came back from the wilderness, ‘in the power of the Holy Spirit’ (Luke 4:14ff). It is the moment when an ordinary life is transformed, and a chosen leader emerges to speak God’s word and call people back to God’s ways.
And so, when the Holy Spirit came down on Jesus at his baptism, John the Baptist, and maybe some of the people in the crowd, understood. Only a few minutes before, they were asking each other whether John the Baptist might be the Messiah. But, by the Spirit and Word of God, in that moment, he is revealed, there in the midst of them.
However, Jesus’s ministry is different from those other inspired leaders. As John recognises, the Messiah will not only be filled by the Spirit but will also baptize others with the same Spirit. The Spirit of God will no longer be a rare visitor, touching just one or two in a generation, but the transforming power of God in everyone who comes to Jesus.
The promise was fulfilled in rushing wind and tongues of fire, in the days after the resurrection of Jesus, as we shall celebrate in the season of Pentecost. But the promise was given back then, in the baptism of Jesus, when the Spirit descended on God’s Son.
From the beginning of the early Church, we see God’s Spirit transforming lives. The terrified and baffled disciples in the upper room went out into the troubled world of their time and shared God’s message with great power and extraordinary courage, and thousands were added to their number.
There was always something a bit unruly about God’s Spirit: inspiring women as well as men, causing problems with the authorities, opening God’s salvation to the despised Gentiles. Paul’s letters to the churches often seem to be aimed at helping churches cope with the unexpected results of God’s Spirit at work among them.
This is the age we are still living in – for which, God be praised! Jesus, Son of God, Messiah, lives, heals, saves and challenges today. Listen to him! Dare we open our hearts to the unruly, transforming power of God’s Spirit, through the baptism that Jesus confers? And what might happen when we do?
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