by Sandra Brower.
Epiphany is a good season to think about the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist. ‘Epiphany’ means ‘manifestation’ or ‘appearance’ – we often associate it with an ‘aha’ lightbulb moment. The lightbulb moments in our lives are moments when we see something clearly, more clearly than we’ve seen before. And often these revelations aren’t produced by intensive thinking or pondering on our parts – they just come to us… in the moment.
Good fires bring light and heat in the dark and cold. And heat has the power to soften. About seven years ago our family spent Christmas in Eswatini, and one of the highlights was visiting Ngwenya Glass, where recycled glass was fashioned into all sorts of beautiful objects. There were massive stoves where the glass would melt and become malleable. And we saw the workers take the molten glass from the fires and mould it into exquisite objects. The fires in the glass factory enabled the crooked to be made straight and the rough made smooth.
Eureka moments, in Scripture, are more often than not, associated with the Spirit of God. John says that while he baptizes with water, someone more powerful would come who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit. Throughout Acts, as people begin to follow Jesus, the disciples ensure that they have received the Holy Spirit; there is no New Testament conception of a follower of Jesus who does not have the Holy Spirit as their guide. What does it feel like to have the Holy Spirit as a guide? It feels like a kindled heart. John the Baptist speaks about the baptism of the Holy Spirit being like a baptism of fire. His language is harsh. Even the crowds find him confusing for they ask him: ‘What, then, should we do?’
The hymn, Come Down, O Love Divine, speaks of hearts kindled by a holy flame, and how that flame freely burns, ‘till earthly passions turn to dust and ashes in its heat consuming.’ It’s John the Baptist language; it speaks of the purifying nature of fire, of how the Holy Spirit guides us to do the right thing. To the crowd’s question, ‘what, then, should we do?’ John answers: ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise.’ It’s not rocket science, but our lizard brains are often centred on self and not others.
When Jesus was baptised by John, a voice from heaven says, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved’. But what do we make of the Holy Spirit descending on him? I mean, it’s not as if the Spirit hasn’t been with the Son all along. They are together in creation, the Spirit is there at Jesus’s conception, and has been with him as he grew in strength and wisdom, and the Spirit continues to be with Jesus throughout his ministry, guiding him and teaching him all the ways of his Father in heaven. So his baptism is not the first time that the Spirit shows up in his life. But the voice says something else in that moment: ‘with you I am well pleased’.
Right after the event of Jesus’s baptism, the rest of the chapter talks about the ancestors of Jesus, through his earthly father’s lineage. The Gospel of Matthew starts with Abraham and names all the generations to Jesus, son of Joseph – husband of Mary. Luke starts with Joseph – husband of Mary, and traces Jesus’s lineage beyond David to Adam, son of God. While it might be boring to read, it is included to emphasise that Jesus is not only the Son of God, he is also the Son of Joseph and Mary. He is human. The Father is well-pleased with Jesus because of what he does for us. Taking on our baptism at the beginning of his ministry is rich with meaning. One of the early church writers, Irenaeus, spoke about how Jesus passed through every stage of our human life, owning it and bearing it. The miracle of Christmas, that is revealed to us in the season of Epiphany, is that we – just as we are – can be the dwelling place of God’s Spirit because of Jesus, who becomes one of us.
Approaching Lent, and perhaps having celebrated its start with ashes on our foreheads, let’s remember that a kindled heart leaves ashes behind. When we feel convicted, when something is tugging at our hearts – that is good news! Because it means that God is dwelling close to us. Hearts of stone are hard to move. But kindled, malleable hearts, speak of a soul that is yearning for God, yearning for grace, and yearning for love. Don’t be afraid of the fire.
Theology Everywhere 
“What do we make of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus?”
This links to “You are my beloved son. In you I am well pleased.” Why would he need to be told who he was?
Most of our thinking about Jesus seems to be from a post-resurrection point of view and from a post-Nicene creed theology. Although we proclaim that Jesus was both truly God and truly human, all too often, in reality, we take the Docetism stance and assume that, while Jesus was in the form of a human, he still had all power and foreknowledge of God. We assume that he was fully aware of who he was, what his mission was, what the outcome of that mission would be and what he would achieve by it. Some Christian outreach courses even claim that he told people that he was God.
This way of thinking rather nullifies the temptations in the desert, the agonising in Gethsemane and the word from the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” These and other statements like ‘I am ascending to my father and your father, to my god and your god’ (John 20:17) and ‘I do nothing on my own authority, but in all I say, I have been taught by my Father’ (John 8:28) suggest that Jesus during his time on Earth saw himself as one chosen by God. This why the blessing at his baptism serves as a call and why his receiving the Holy Spirit is of such significance. It also explains why he needs to go into the desert for a time of preparation and why the challenge to him during the temptations is “If you really are the chosen one of God, then you should ….” We are so used to seeing Jesus as God the Son that we miss the point that for Jesus, during his earthly humanity, he was the son of God in the sense of Psalm 2 verse 7. His call then, and still today, is “Follow me!” We tend to prefer, “Worship me!” That is less demanding.
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