Then he consented
Against a backdrop of Roman imperial ambition, John the Baptist wrestled with the idea of baptizing Jesus; the one that he was preparing people to receive. While the emperor and dominant power structures sought to impose, grasp for power and self-glorify, Jesus asked John to let him share in our hopes, fears, sins and salvation of even the lowliest of us. When John the Baptist consented, he chose to relate to the world in a different way. Following Jesus sometimes puts you at odds with the power structure and prevailing popular sentiment. How do we handle when being a Christian makes us fundamentally weird? How do we consent?
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Transcript
Then he consented.
The situation with the Emperor was not good. For a while, he focused his attention on sending troops into other regions to try to conquer them or impose an influence in order to take riches, but that put enormous pressure on the country’s resources and created strain. Then, he focused on building an enormous palace to celebrate his own ambition, with the belief that grander parties were a priority rather than the true welfare of the country. Then, he focused on constructing a grand triumphal arch to celebrate the power and might of the empire as well as his own perceived magnificence, and this put further strain on the resources of the country. The order needed to sustain his control required violence to maintain it, and anyone deemed disloyal was under threat.
Of course, I’m speaking of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, and it is important to be reminded of the actual historical context of Jesus’s own lifetime. Learning history matters because we tend to repeat it.
Like we reflected on Christmas Eve, to truly understand the deep teachings of Christian practice, we must understand the way that Jesus’s own life, death, and resurrection–and the life of the early Christian community–was lived out under the pressure of an imperial consciousness. It was a system that sought to impose a certain order on the population so that those who ruled would gain and maintain power and control.
Christianity was born, as it were, out of a rejection of such an imperial consciousness, and an authentic practice of the faith has always resisted the imperial impulses of each successive period of history.
Empire claims that might is right, that violence is a valid tool in the pursuit of a certain order that, supposedly, is meant to protect the entire community but which actually benefits only a small section of it.
We never forget that the Holy Family themselves fled their homeland and were refugees seeking protection from a governor who used his own might to kill many young male children in the hopes of eliminating the one who was prophesied to be the threat to his own rule. The observance of the Feast of the Holy Innocents on December 28 always gets lost in the sparkle of the Christmas season, but it is a reminder to us of the way the life of Christ Himself is a counterpoint to the claims of imperial power.
Jesus’s presence and teaching are a light that lay bare the ambitions of imperial agendas.
When it comes to Jesus’s life, today’s focus on his baptism in the Jordan River presents us with a powerful opportunity to reflect on what discipleship truly means. We don’t just observe Jesus’s baptism, we seek to embody it in our lives in such a way that the deep teaching of Jesus’s life transforms the way we live our own.
First it helps to remember that baptism did not begin with Christian practice. Baptism, or a ritual mikvah bath, was a Jewish rite of purification, and the baptism that John was offering was one which sought to prepare people and nurture an awareness of the coming of the Messiah. John initially refused to baptize Jesus, because he wondered how the Messiah can actually share in a baptism that prepares people for an awareness of himself.
Jesus, however, desired to share fully in the life of the people, and that meant to enter into their own purification, searching, and hoping. This meant he would share in the baptism itself.
At this point the text says this about John: Then he consented. A simple line with an enormous meaning. Then he consented. The word there actually means that John left the position he once held to be true in order to live in a different way.
It is the same word that was used when the disciples left their nets to follow Jesus. They consented to following Jesus. They changed the course of their lives.
It is the same word used in the Lord’s Prayer when we say “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” that we step away from a pattern in order to live in a different way.
Then he consented.
Like we have said before, perhaps the greatest lie, the most dangerous soul-error, when it comes to the practice of Christianity, is that one could somehow separate the person of Jesus from the actual teachings of Jesus. When we only focus on a certain image we have of Jesus, it is far too easy to project our own ambition and agenda onto the figure we have created, seeking to claim a spiritual mandate for our own selfish agenda. This is how an empire can claim to “be Christian” and support behaviors which blatantly contradict the teachings of Jesus himself.
Caring for the stranger and refugee, the poor and the orphan, those who are in need. Loving not only our neighbors but also our enemies. Laying down our lives for our friends. Emptying ourselves and our ambitions in order to be filled by the indwelling presence of the Spirit. Recognizing our essential union and shared life and organizing our social structures to support that deep truth. Those are core groundings of authentic Christian practice.
The more we put the actual teachings of Jesus back with the figure of Jesus, the less and less comfortable we become.
In sharing in the baptism of John, Jesus demonstrates what it looks like to enter into the hopes of another, to honor their life and their seeking.
So, we see that there is a distinctly different energetic force in the pursuit of the empire than there is with the pursuit of holiness, as embodied in Jesus’s life. There are two distinct energies here.
An emperor is only concerned with seeing their name on monuments or carved on stone. Jesus is only interested for his name to be marked on our hearts–a sign of our transformation.
An emperor believes shallow spectacle will somehow rally people to celebrate the power and might–to evoke such pride. Jesus cares nothing for spectacle and seeks only transformation and the healing of hearts so that people and all creation can have lives of wholeness.
Where an emperor grasps for more, Jesus tells us that only by emptying ourselves can we be filled with what truly gives life.
If you’ll look at the Baptismal Rite itself (on page 302 in the Book of Common Prayer), we can see how the liturgy encourages us to focus on the transforming presence of Christ in our lives. It helps to see what we are actually doing on an energetic level.
Notice how we have three renunciations that each, in turn, concentrate our attention on what we are called to renounce and resist: spiritual forces of wickedness, evil powers of this world, and our own sinful desires. Our attention draws closer, and then we pledge that we will turn, actually pray and work for a change in orientation in our lives. Like we’ve said: our lives are our practice.
We pledge to move from one way of being to another as we recognize the claim of Christ on our lives. Baptism is a radical sacrament, because it shows us that our lives are never meant simply to align with the pursuits of the culture.
And baptism reminds us that our practice of faith costs us. It costs us the comfort that comes with benefitting from the imperial consciousness. It costs us the comfort of conformity, with fitting in and being able to share in the benefits of social systems that oppress and harm.
Any so-called religious practice that merely rides in on the coat tails of a political system to share in power and prestige is, simply, false religion. Jesus calls us to nurture a consciousness of transformation, of healing and wholeness, that is marked by emptying ourselves of our ambition and agendas.
Then he consented.
More and more, this many years into being a priest and a struggling follower of Jesus, I see that truly being a disciple of Jesus, trying to nurture an authentic practice of faith, makes you just plain weird.
Jesus makes us weird in the eyes of the empire, and if we don’t recognize that we are weird, maybe there is something we need to pay attention to.
And there’s no better place to start than with baptism, the sacrament that weaves us into the incredible weirdness of the Kingdom of Heaven.