Old Testament: Isaiah 42:1-9
Gospel: Matthew 3:13-17
Epistle: Acts 10:34-43
Today is the Sunday in the Church when we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. But before we take a look at that however I want to recognize that Friday was Epiphany. Thus this Sunday is the start of the weeks of Epiphany as we count the weeks towards Easter. Epiphany is the day in the year when we recognize the Wise-men from the East coming to worship Jesus as a child. But that surface story provides a springboard for exploring topics such as the divine revelation of God to humanity, Gentiles' place in the Kingdom of God, and the role of the Church to be used by God to reveal himself in the present.
Turning toward our passage today from the Gospel, I want to look at a little background information concerning baptism from a pre-Christian perspective. The first train of thought for John the Baptist, and perhaps Jesus and the early church, was the idea of ritual washing found in the Old Testament and particularly the Pentateuch. (Ex. 29:4; 30:17-21; 40:30-33; Lev. 17:15-16; Deut. 21:6) Many passages mention water and washing in terms of the ritual purity practices for both the average lay person and especially the Priests and High Priests. We are familiar with this practice in the Old Testament, but in the inter-testimonial and Second Temple period this ideas take on different meanings, including the practice of Gentiles being baptized as a part of converting to Judaism, along with circumcision.
The second train of thought concerns the Qumran Community and their use of ritual washing. There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to the Qumran Community, including who even occupied the caves. Theories have run from some form of the Pharisees and Sadducees, which played big roles in the Gospels, to groups such as the Zealots, Essenes, or even an unidentified and unique community. Not only do we not know much about the inhabitants of the caves, we really don't know much about their practices and beliefs. Archeological evidence however, has shown that were a number of cistern and bath structures that could have been used for some type of washing ritual. In addition, one of the Dead Sea Scroll (the collective texts found at Qumran) known as the "Community Rule," mentions ritual washing ceremonies and other beliefs of the community. Ritual washing was important to them, but again there is a lot of disagreement among scholars as to what connection these rituals had with things such as initiation rites or repentance, which John the Baptist and early Christians attached to the ritual.
Interestingly, John the Baptist's message had a number of similarities to the Qumran Community. Some scholars have postulated that he was a part of that community because of their similar beliefs as well as the geographical proximity between Qumran and where John did his ministry. Like the Qumran Community, John preached an apocalyptic message of divine judgement and wrath. This time of judgement would either be welcome, for those in the community or those that accepted John's message and repented, or it would be a time of disaster for those that failed to do so.
Jesus' Participation in the baptism of John can thus be seen in a number of ways in terms of what preceded his ministry. It is not fully clear where John's ideas and practices of baptism came from, but they were not entirely unique and similar at least to the Jewish community at Qumran. However, by being baptized, Jesus placed himself fully into the human reality. He followed the people of his day and engages in an activity when he had no need to repent of any sins. Jesus provided an example that his followers would deem important--Indeed Matthew ended his Gospel with the Great Commission, sending Christ's followers out into the world to baptize. Finally, we see from Matt. 3 that this was the start of Jesus' ministry and the Father approved of the act and in some way Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit at this moment as he started his ministry.
The baptism was an important event in his life and was the start of something new. This remains true for believers even today. As we are baptized we are dipped into the water and symbolically the old self dies and as we come up through the waters, the new self in Christ is put on. I think this week, as we reflect on Jesus' baptism, let us also reflect on our own baptisms: the excitement we felt, the giving of our testimony, and the closeness we felt to the Lord. I hope this will be a time of encouragement for you.
Grace and Peace.
Resources:
The Qumran Baptism and John the Baptist's Baptism by Leonard F Badia. A summary of the issues as presented by Badia can be found here: "The Qumran baptism," Indian Journal of Theology 33.1-3 (Jan.-Sept. 1984): 10-23.
What is the pre-Christian history of the baptismal ceremony? from Christianity Today.
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