Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 15 Jesus replied, "Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." Then John consented. 16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." — Matthew 3
The Importance of Symbolism
I was once seeing a young mother who had three daughters. I
liked this woman very much but I loved those daughters. On many
occasions I told her it was far from certain that I’d fall in
love with her, but I was already in love with those girls. This
sister and I wee close friends. We enjoyed spending time with
each other. At some point at each evening would come bath and
bed time. The girls wouldn’t make a fight of it, but would move
along dutifully up the stairs while I spent some quality time
with my friend. And once the splashing and the arguing and the
giggling and the scuffling around up there settled down, I’d
tell my friend good-night. She’d always want me to stick around,
but I’d tell her it was time for me to leave. You see, I didn’t
want the girls to fall asleep still seeing my car in the
driveway. I needed to go. I needed for them to see me go
and know that I went. Their mom and I weren’t going to do
anything to shame ourselves or embarrass the children. We knew
that. But the symbolism of my departure was important. Although
it eventually became quiet up there, I knew the girls were still
watching. I was a minister. It was important to me that these
children saw a consistent testimony from me, that I set an
example of Christian behavior for them, whether we actually
behaved that way consistently or not. These are things my mother
taught me. Sacrifices she made in order to paint a picture of
what authentic Christianity looked like.
There is a difference between modeling Christian conduct and
being a phony. A phony seeks to gain something by putting on
airs and pretending to be something they aren’t. Modeling
Christian behavior involves sacrifice: setting an example for
those of newer, weaker or lesser faith. People learning by
watching. Not by what you say but by what you do. What they
don’t teach pastors in seminary is how utterly unfair a pastor’s
life can be in that he has to feign perfection when he himself
is not perfect. He can never have a moment of anger, of
indiscretion, of weakness. He must be as plastic as a department
store mannequin and as upright as a dress marine. Failing that
test, as we all do, he must at least appear to be these things.
For a pastor to be caught being human is a grievous sin. It
causes people to question and some even to stumble. Many have
lost their faith because of something their pastor did, failed
to do, or said. This causes me to question the pastor’s ministry
in so much as, did the pastor connect these people to Christ or
to himself?
As opposed to keeping the appearance of being perfect, Jesus
Christ actually was perfect. He didn’t need to hide His
shortcomings because He had none. This is a difficult concept
for people to grasp, especially since Hollywood consistently
presents Jesus as an enigma. He always comes across in the
movies as aloof and a little distracted, disconnected from the
people around Him and, possibly, from reality. That classical
portrayal makes Jesus a cipher if not a robot. But that
portrayal does not jive with the record of scripture. Jesus was
an enormously popular man. You cannot possibly become that
popular without charisma. Hollywood never gives Christ charisma.
He is consistently portrayed as humorless and stiff. Jesus could
not possibly have been either.
Send me hate mail if you wish, but, for me, the closest way I
could describe the personality of the human, living Christ is
that of President Barack Obama. Jesus Christ was entirely God
and entirely man at the same time. He had a personality. A sense
of humor, Warmth. Compassion. Flashes of anger. It’s all in
scripture. But, what He also must have had, what is less obvious
from scripture and entirely missing from Hollywood, was
charisma. Jesus had to have been a powerfully charismatic man,
like Obama. People flocked to Him, gave up their lives, their
families, to follow Him. Some guy they hadn’t heard about two
days before, these people just walked off jobs, sold homes and
possessions, and followed Him. Laid down their very
religion—Judaism—and followed Him. Don’t sell me on a plastic
Jesus. A boring Jesus. A Humorless Jesus. Did He have Barack
Obama’s specific personality? No, I’m not saying that so much
but saying He generated precisely that kind of hope and
excitement. He likely had a smile at least as engaging as
Obama’s. Barack Obama
inspired a planet—not just America, but the whole world—to
believe. Now, do that times a hundred, and you’ll at least begin
to understand the Person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus, Who knew no sin, went to a deeply flawed man to repent of it.
Jesus’ cousin, John The Baptist, presumably had not seen Jesus
since they were boys. The two men were a kind of Ying and
Yang opposites: Jesus seemed disciplined, structured and
ordered. John seemed impulsive and living life by chaos. The two
symbolized specific attributes of God The Father and a
transition from a time where the God of thunder and vengeance
and strict Law ran the show, to a passing of the torch to God
The Son, Whose mercy holds back the Father’s wrath each one of
us have efficiently earned.
There was no mechanical reason for Jesus to be baptized. He
choose to be baptized as an act of obedience to The Father and
as a symbolic act to mankind. Jesus modeled the behavior He
wants us to follow: not just to stop committing sin but to
actively turn away from it. To commit to an effort to disavow
sin and purge it from our lives. Jesus could have met John in
secret. As the Lamb of God, Jesus could certainly have requested
and received a private time with John, away from the crowds,
where he could be quietly and discreetly baptized. This, of
course, was not the purpose of Christ’s baptism. Christ’s
baptism was language. Language used to communicate the
turbulent transition from Law to Grace, and how expensive that
change would be in terms of human sacrifice.
Biblically, water has a dual nature, representing both God's
grace and God's judgment. Jews believed Sheol—the land of the
dead and the common destination of both the righteous and the
unrighteous flesh—lurked beneath the sea (actually Gennesaret,
a big lake and not a “sea” if any kind). Biblically, water
represents balance: too little = death. Too much = death.
Mankind exists in balance with water, in the hollow of God’s
will.
For baptism, water symbolizes the grave. God placed the
entire planet into a grave when He vented His judgment on the earth,
saving only Noah and his family [Gen 6-9]. For three days and
three nights the prophet Jonah was trapped beneath the sea in
the belly of a fish (which we presume to be a whale, which is
not a fish but a mammal and could not possibly remain
consistently submerged underwater longer than an hour). This
transformation of Jonah models our sacrament of baptism which
itself echoes Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. The earth
began as water, lifeless, with God's Spirit moving over it. Rain
is God's anointing on the land and, by extension, on the people
there. The trauma of being held underwater—even momentarily as
we do in our baptism—is an unnatural phenomena. It feels like
death. No matter how we prepare for the sacrament and know the
pastor is not actively trying to kill us, it is the body’s
reflex action to want to fight and struggle back for air—for
life.
Jesus was not baptized for any other reason than obedience to
God. He followed the very same path each one of us must follow
in order to see The Father and escape His wrath and righteous
judgment. The dove descending upon Jesus upon his emergence from
the sea, symbolizing His eventual resurrection, did very little
to offset the sheer terror of hearing God speak audibly. This is
probably why He doesn’t do a lot of that sort of thing. First of
all, many of us would die of heart failure if we heard the voice
of God and would likely stroke out if we ever saw the face of
God. God is simply beyond human imagining. His voice, spoken at
Jesus’ baptism, was likely the most infinitesimal subatomic
fragment of a glimpse of God’s actual glory. That the
entire multitude, likely several hundred to several thousand,
did not drop dead at the sound of God’s voice was the clearest
indication of God’s restraint in this matter. The Father chose
to speak because His speaking was the official starting gun of
the ministry of Jesus Christ: This is My Son, in Whom I am
well pleased. [Isaiah 42:1]
This moment marked the end of John the Baptist’s ministry and
the beginning of Jesus Christ’s. And, through Him, hope for each
one of us.
Christopher J. Priest
28 August 2011
editor@praisenet.org
TOP OF PAGE
Next: Chapter Five: Report What You See
