The Baptism of Christ: Expectation, Fulfilment, Revelation

 A sermon for the Baptism of the Lord

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Today’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord is all about expectation, fulfilment and revelation in Christ.

 

The expectation we read about first is, in hearts of the people who made up the crowds, and actually concerned John the Baptist.

 

There’s a real ‘could this be?’ feeling in the crowds gathering around John at the River Jordan. Could he be the one our hearts have been yearning for, the one promised, the one whom we expect?

 

Expectations can, of course, be misplaced. Expectations can be met, but they can also be dashed. ‘I had high expectations for so and so’. ‘Well, that wasn’t what I expected’. And then when expectations are met we can sound really quite disappointed. ‘Yes, well that’s what I expected’.

 

Perhaps all too aware of that, both John the Baptist and Jesus Christ do not pander to expectations.

 

John reframes the peoples’ expectations by demonstrating that he is not the Messiah, that is someone else. And if the crowds harboured hopes that John would be a crowd pleaser as well as a crowd drawer, they could not be more wrong: ‘you brood of vipers’ he calls them in St Mark’s gospel, and today is about sorting people out with winnowing forks.

 

And Jesus too does not behave to expectations. He will not collude with what people want, and expect, him to be. He will not be pinned down to human expectation, whether that’s by eating with the disgusting people other exclude, or kneeling down and washing feet like the lowliest servant. They call him king, but his thrown is a cross and crown made of thorns. Not what’s expected of the Anointed One of God.

 

In that knowledge, then, the expectation we have today is about the fulfilment of the hope we have in Christ. It is always right and good to approach worship, to approach prayer, to approach reading your Bible, to approach receiving Christ in the sacrament with a glad and expectant heart. That expectant heart is the heart that desires fulfilment, not on its own terms but on Christ’s.

 

Fulfilment in its truest sense is not about human expectation being met or satisfied, but about an expectation that sets aside self so as to be filled, fully – fulfilled – with the presence of God.

 

The expectant person is like an empty vessel ready to be filled, fully, with the water of life drawn from the wells of salvation. ‘With you O Lord is the well of life and in your light do we see light’ (Psalm 36).

 

In this morning’s gospel John points away from himself and to the coming Lamb of God, for in Christ will all expectations will be both disrupted and fulfilled.

 

The Messiah, the Anointed One, is not going to be a better version of political, moral or spiritual leadership than the crowds are used to.

 

The Messiah, the Anointed One, is the very presence of God in human form, as revealed in Bethlehem - the Word Made Flesh – and now manifest to the whole people of Israel and all the nations.

 

At the Baptism of the Lord expectation and fulfilment collide in the revelation of what is before the people. The fullness of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is fully present, as from all eternity, and the Father declares, as the Spirit descends: ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’. (Luke 3.22)

 

The Creation began with the Spirit brooding over the swirling waters from which order came and God gratuitously, and without any expectation on the creation’s part, brought creation into being.

 

Now the human John pours the waters over the Christ – fully human, fully divine – and what has been from the beginning is revealed in history and time: human expectation and divine fulfilment meet in the revelation of the Messiah, the Anointed One.

 

This is a scene of utter, transcendent beauty, wholly of God and impossible to have imagined or dreamt up by a human mind. Our expectation cannot match the capacity of God’s fulfilment.

 

And the, literally, wonderful thing is that we have access to this wonder and mystery. In the sacraments channels of God’s grace are opened to humanity.

 

In our own baptism we become son’s and daughters, also beloved of the Most High, of God, and in the Eucharist, we feed on his Body to become more deeply his Body.