John the Baptist, Jesus and judgement in Luke 3
The gospel lectionary reading for the First Sunday of Epiphany/the Baptism of Christ in this Year C is Luke 3.15–17, 21–22. We have recently been exploring Luke iii during Advent, having read the first 6 verses of this chapter with the proclamation of John the Baptist's ministry in Advent 2, and the detail of his preaching in Advent 3.
Since we have just been celebrating Jesus' birth, and his baptism happened every bit an developed, this is one of the odd moments where the lectionary year rather telescopes Jesus' life and makes him a fast developer! I call back the pick of the reading is very odd, not so much in cutting out Luke'due south interpolation of Herod's opposition to John (which the other Synoptics place elsewhere) merely because of the way it truncates John's teaching equally the context for Jesus' baptism. It is as if nosotros can think of Jesus' baptism in isolation from the ministry and education of the one who baptised him—which we can't. (Here again, James Cary'southward plea that we read longer passages of Scripture has buy. This Sunday, consider doing something more than sensible than the lectionary and read a long excerpt from Luke three!)
The curt account of Jesus' baptism is very similar in the three Synoptics. (Interestingly, John 1.29–34 agrees with the Synoptic accounts at primal points—but fails to mention that the Spirit descending on Jesus was really at his baptism. Information technology is nigh as if John assumes we have already read one of the other gospels, perhaps Mark.) But there is one betoken where Marking's business relationship seems to be ambiguous, and Matthew and Luke clarify information technology in different means. Marking 1.10 explains that the Spirit came downwards on him 'when he came up out of the water', and popular imagery pictures Jesus surfacing from full immersion, but notwithstanding standing in the river, as this happens. Matthew 3.xvi corrects this impression: after his baptism, 'Jesus went upward immediately from the water' which can just mean that he has climbed out of the river. And Luke three.21 makes the same matter articulate in another way: 'when Jesus had been baptised and was praying', including his distinctive and customary emphasis on prayer. But Luke doesn't include Matthew'due south highlighting of the incongruence of Jesus' baptism in his conversation between Jesus and John (Matt iii.14–xv); instead, he emphasises the role of the Spirit. When Jesus goes into the desert after his baptism, he is 'full of the Holy Spirit' (Luke iv.ane) though this on its own is not enough to equip him for ministry. On his render from the strenuous demands of the testing in the wilderness, he returns to Galilee 'in the power of the Spirit' (Luke 4.xiv), both Spirit references being unique to Luke.
But when I was reading this passage, the affair that leapt out of the page came several verses earlier, in John's description of the one who was to come subsequently him:
The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might perhaps be the Messiah. John answered them all, "I baptize you with water. But one who is more than powerful than I will come up, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will cognominate you lot with the Holy Spirit and burn down. His winnowing fork is in his hand to articulate his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his befouled, merely he will burn upward the chaff with unquenchable fire." And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the proficient news to them. (Luke 3.15–xviii)
There are several significant images of eschatological sentence here. First, the hope of the Holy Spirit being poured out ('baptism' ways being immersed in or overwhelmed by) is connect with 'the last days' in Joel 2.28. Although we might naturally associate 'fire' with the tongues of flame at Pentecost in Acts 2, merely in fact it is an image of sentence, as the phrase 'unquenchable burn' makes articulate. (Two interesting things to notation here. Start, the Greek term isasbestos from which we get, well, asbestos! Second, burn is primarily an image of devastation, not torment.) John seems to await Jesus to exist one who will bring the judgement of God to his people and to the wider world.
Mark's account of John's preaching and ministry is very cursory, but in Luke and Matthew the writers both make stiff links betwixt John and Jesus—Matthew fifty-fifty recording John as preaching 'Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens is at hand' (Matt iii.2), and an exact parallel with his account of the preaching of Jesus (Matt 4.17). But at the same time, Luke and Matthew (with John i) likewise include articulate differentiation: John's ministry building is preparatory; Jesus is greater than him; he is non worthy; and his baptism foreshadows a more powerful feel. Jesus confirms this differentiation in his ain teaching:
I tell you, amid those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than him. (Luke 7.28 = Matt 11.eleven)
Whilst John anticipates the coming of the kingdom of God and the eschatological souvenir of the Spirit, in Jesus and his ministry the kingdom has come and the Spirit is (later Jesus' ascent) outpoured. This is the moment of the turning of the ages.
Luke's account of John'southward ministry is longer than Matthew's, and has some distinctive emphases. (This is evident if you lot look at a Synopsis, such as Throckmorton; you can also see the texts in parallel in an online synopsis such as the one hosted past the Academy of Toronto, though the layout does not make the differences quite so evident.) He includes John'due south specific commands clarifying what repentance looks like in response to iii sets of questions, from the multitude, from tax collectors and from soldiers. Once more nosotros see a Lukan focus—that the 'good news' includes those who might be considered beyond the pale, likewise as those who are more than respectable. (I am intrigued to annotation that Matthew'south mention of the 'Pharisees and Sadducees' in Matt 3.vii becomes for Luke 3.7 a much more general 'multitude'. See the later explanation in Luke vii.30.) The inclusion of the hated cost collectors finds fullest expression in Luke'due south unique business relationship of Jesus' encounter with Zacchaeus in Luke 19.1–9, forming a contrasting pair with the see with the 'rich young ruler' in the previous chapter. The soldiers demand not necessarily accept been Gentile Roman soldiers, but could hands exist Jews serving with Herod's forces. This good news is indeed inclusive: all face the coming judgement of God, and all without exception need to repent. This expert news comes as a souvenir, only demands a response; the phrase 'What shall we practise?' occurs regularly in Luke and Acts (Luke 10.25, eighteen.18, Acts 2.37, 16.30 and 22.x). And the 'fruit' of repentance does not consist of nice personal qualities only (as all through the New Attestation) specific upstanding deportment of obedience to God'south commands. The connection between judgement and repentance is made clear by Luke as he sandwiches this teaching on repentance betwixt the 2 warnings of sentence in verses seven to ix and verses 15 to eighteen.
But was John right to come across Jesus as eschatological judge? He starting time talks of God's judgement in terms of the axe at the tree (note the parallel in Luke 3.vii with John fifteen.6). Only and then he talks of Jesus as the one who executes this judgement. The winnowing fork is used to thrown harvesting grown in the air, and then that the wind blows the chaff abroad and the heavier, valuable grain falls to the footing to be collected. It is not clear whether John sees Jesus as actually doing this sorting himself, since he has the winnowing fork 'in his hand' and on the metaphorical threshing floor wheat and crust have already been separated—so mayhap Jesus will pronounce judgement over the separation that John's ministry building has already brought about. Merely, every bit the gospel unfolds, does Jesus fulfil what John anticipates?
There are 2 pointers to advise that he doesn't. The showtime is his 'sermon' at Nazareth, the so-chosen 'Nazareth manifesto'. In Luke 4.sixteen–19 Jesus reads from Is 61.i–2, just it is striking that Jesus (or Luke) omits the final phrase of the Isaiah passage 'and the mean solar day of vengeance of our God' suggesting that judgment has given way to mercy. The second pointer is John's own puzzlement about Jesus' ministry, expressed in a bulletin sent from his captivity (which the lectionary cuts out of Sunday's reading!) which contrasts strongly with the confidence we find in this passage: 'Are you lot the one who was to come, or should nosotros expect someone else?' (Luke 7.xx). Jesus' answer focusses entirely on the things he has mentioned at Nazareth most healing and restoration and again makes no mention of judgement.
But in contrast to that, there is other very clear language of judgement on the lips of Jesus. Luke gives this a sharp edge in his (again unique) account of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem in Luke 19.41–44:
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, "If yous, even you, had simply known on this day what would bring you peace—simply at present it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come on yous when your enemies volition build an embankment against you and encircle yous and hem you in on every side. They will dash yous to the ground, yous and the children within your walls. They will not leave ane stone on another, considering you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you lot."
Rather awkwardly (for united states every bit readers), Jesus is here connecting directly the destruction of Jerusalem past the Romans with judgement by God for non recognising Jesus' arrival as the presence of God himself visiting his people.
Secondly, Jesus himself talks nearly the partition that he volition bring, and makes mention of the fire of judgement that John has talked about:
"I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Merely I accept a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! Do yous think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you lot, but division. From now on there will exist five in one family unit divided against each other, three confronting 2 and 2 confronting 3. They volition exist divided, father against son and son against father, female parent confronting girl and daughter against mother, mother–in–constabulary against daughter–in–constabulary and girl–in–constabulary against mother–in–law." (Luke 12.49–53).
John is right most sentence and Jesus, with two of import qualifications. The showtime is that this judgement is postponed—in the case of Israel until the destruction of the temple in 70AD, and in case of all humanity until the return of Jesus as gauge at the stop of the historic period. And the second qualification is that the ground of sentence shifts; for John it is avoided past repentance, baptism and the fruit of that alter in tangible alter of life. In Jesus' didactics this is taken upwards into the question of decision well-nigh following him: judgement is no longer on the footing of beingness part of the indigenous Jewish people of God; nor on the footing of whether we change and begin to obey God's simply commandments; but it is now on the basis of being incorporated into the renewed people of God by accepting Jesus as Lord, and living a new life of holiness empowered by the Spirit. And all this is possible only considering of Jesus' atoning expiry and resurrection for u.s..
This is confirmed by the imagery in the brief language of the baptism of Jesus itself. In Mark's account, the focus is on Jesus' experience:he saw heaven opened and the Spirit descending, and the divine phonation addresseshim. Here in Luke, the divine voice is addressed to Jesus, just the opening of heaven and descent of the Spirit 'bodily' appears to be a public event. Matthew's account leans more to Luke than Marking; we are to 'behold' the sudden opening of the heavens, and the divine voice affirms Jesus to the oversupply. The splitting open of the heavens alludes to the longing expressed in Isaiah 64.1, that God would come down and rescue his people, vanquishing their enemies, and the opened heavens are an apocalyptic sign of God's revelation in both Ezekiel and Revelation. The sending of the Spirit is an eschatological human action in Joel ii.32 brought to completion in Acts 2.
The linguistic communication of 'my son, my beloved, in whom I please' take us back to at least two pregnant OT passages. The first is Gen 22.2, where God calls Abraham to offering his 'son, whom y'all beloved' as a sacrifice; the end of that narrative is the fulfilment of Abraham's merits that 'God will provide the sacrifice'. The second is the Servant Song in Is 42.1, where God's servant 'in whom I please' will be anointed with God'south Spirit, volition bring justice to the nations, and has been called 'in righteousness' (Is 42.6).
But the whole episode suggests a range of other OT passages as well, some more strongly signalled than others. The combination of a pigeon and the Spirit over the water reminds the states of the start of creation, when the Spirit of God broods over the chaotic deep. Exercise we have here a suggestion that Jesus is the one who brings the new creation (2 Cor 5.17?)
A dove also comes across the water in the account of Noah and the flood in Genesis vi–9. Noah's begetter believed that Noah would bring people 'rest' and relief from the curse of sin (Gen v.29), and he leads a faithful remnant, rescuing them from the judgement of God on the sin of the globe later the 'heavens were opened' (Gen 7.11). Could Jesus exist the one to rescue united states of america from sentence, and give usa true rest (Heb 4.1–eleven)?
Ezekiel (Ezek 1.1, 2.two) stands by a river, sees heaven opened, and receives a vision of God in which he is commissioned for is prophetic ministry promising God'southward people a render from exile. Is Jesus the one who will finally bring his people dwelling house?
And as we have seen, passing through the waters of the Jordan was a fundamental moment in the saga of God's deliverance from slavery in Arab republic of egypt, when they finally completed their journeying and entered the promised land (Joshua 3–4). Is Jesus (his name being the Greek version of Joshua) the ane who volition finally deliver God'south people from all their slavery to sin, and complete the promise of God's deliverance?
As the gospel unfolds, we notice that the answer to all these questions is 'Yes'—Jesus really is the 1 who was to come to liberate his people, and not merely them, simply the whole world.
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