Power [Epiphany 1C: Baptism of Our Lord - Luke 3:15-17, 21-22]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

 

Power

 

The Gospel of Luke has been building to this very moment.  John and Jesus: they are the miracle babies featured in the opening chapters of this book.  We know they are special; their stories dominate the seasons of Advent and Christmas.  And everything in those now ubiquitous stories tell us that these two are unique: angels and prophecies and immaculate conceptions and a host of inspired canticles.  Luke goes out of his way to show us that these two babies, Jesus and John, are a big deal – a cosmically big deal.  And so it is fair for us to expect, since the book does continue after the first two chapters, that those two extraordinary infancies will produce two extraordinary, noteworthy men.  And, that those two men will most likely feature at least somewhat prominently in the remaining twenty-two chapters of Luke’s Gospel. 

 

Chapter three picks up decades after the manger scene.  We find ourselves on the banks of the Jordan, surrounded by a buzzing multitude.  And here, by the water, in the midst of the crowd, are those two blessed babies, now fully grown.  And it turns out, the crowd, that large host of humans, has gathered to see and hear, and even be touched by, one of those two men.  One of them has become something of a celebrity – perhaps, say the whispers, even the promised Messiah. 

 

Now one might think that the more famous of the two would be the child born of a virgin, whose birth was announced by the host of heaven, and who was declared a child prodigy by the most learned Temple scribes.  But much to our surprise, the star of the show is actually the guy with the really old mom.  It’s a bit of a twist.

 

John is the star and Jesus, well, he is in the audience.  While John was out there screaming at hypocrites and dunking sinners, Jesus was…actually, no one knows.  At age twelve he was holding court in the Temple; eighteen years later he is in line to be baptized by his older, much more charismatic, cousin.

 

Despite the grandiose angelic chorus that announced Jesus’ birth, it is John whom the people are ready to crown as their king.   According to Luke, all of the people, every last one, not some, not even most, but all, were questioning in their hearts whether John was the Messiah.  There was something about him, maybe the fire in his eyes or the fire in his rhetoric, that filled the people with expectation.  They were ready to follow him out of that river and straight to Rome; they would dry off on the way to take down the Empire.

 

What’s surprising about this is that John was a little rough around the edges.  He wore the camel skin suit and ate bugs for breakfast.  He wasn’t terribly polite.  He had a habit of a calling people names and burning political bridges.  And given his rugged appearance and his reputation as a bit of loner, I question his ability to effectively organize a military force capable of liberating the small community of Jews from their powerful Roman oppressors – which was likely what many in the crowd expected of the Messiah.

 

But what choice did they have?  They were desperate to be freed from the hands of their enemies, free to worship without fear.  They were desperate for someone to give them hope, for someone who was willing to stand up to powerful people and political bullies.  John doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything.  And the other messianic possibility, Jesus, was just an anonymous face in the crowd.  According to this chapter of Luke’s Gospel, no one was questioning in their heart whether Jesus was the Messiah. 

 

Well, maybe one person.  And that person is John.  John is actually a great hype man.  He makes Jesus sound really cool.  John describes Jesus as powerful.  He does the Wayne’s World “I’m not worthy” thing.  He tells the rapt crowd that Jesus is going to baptize them with fire and that he carries around a winnowing fork.  This Jesus sounds really intense and definitely like the kind of guy who could lead a revolution.  I mean, he is already armed with a pitch fork.

 

I’ve always been curious about this description of Jesus.  It doesn’t seem all that consistent with the stories we find in rest of Luke’s Gospel.  What exactly did John expect and if John had lived to see Jesus’ ministry play out, would he have been disappointed?  Because by any traditional metric Jesus wasn’t terribly powerful.  He was betrayed by one of his best friends.  He was arrested and mocked.  He died on a Roman cross having never come close to overthrowing the Empire.  Never once did he wield a winnowing fork or set anyone ablaze.

 

Jesus displayed very few of the traits the people in that river-side crowd expected of their Messiah.  After John’s big introduction, Jesus simply slips into the water with the crowd.  He doesn’t take the mic.  He stands off to the side and offers up a silent prayer.

 

John called Jesus powerful.  And I don’t usually think of Jesus that way.  Maybe I’ve been working with an outdated definition.  Because when I see what people call “power” in this world, mostly it seems loud and violent and arrogant.  It feels like dominance and conquest.  And if you read the rest of Luke’s Gospel the guy forcefully crowned with thorns would be described as just about anything but powerful. 

 

Unless power is something else.  If Jesus’ ministry is what power looks like, if the stories of Jesus found in the Gospel are meant to show us the true nature of power, if they are meant to teach us how to be powerful, in the most subversive way possible, maybe John was right: maybe Jesus is powerful.  Maybe power looks like love and humility.  Maybe power isn’t dominance but instead lifts up the lowly.  And if so, maybe the waters of baptism, those mystical waters that change us into Jesus’ likeness, are what make us powerful, but in that same subversive way.

 

Powerful enough to love our enemies and heal the broken and feed the hungry and embrace the outcast and walk the way of the cross.  Maybe those mystical waters fill us with the power to live like Jesus, the power to be like Jesus. 

 

Jesus never did lead a band of revolutionaries from river to Rome.  He never claimed an earthly throne or inhabited a royal palace.  What he did with all that power was: he washed feet.  And that is how Jesus started his revolution – one that is still changing the world.