
Thoughts on Humility
3:15As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,
3:16John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
3:17His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
3:21Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened,
3:22and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
A few weeks ago we had such joy at the 10 o’clock service when Della baptized her and Jere’s first grandchild, Whitley Susanna Wells. We at Emmanuel were honored to welcome her into the Christian faith and family, the community of believers around the world.
What a change from Episcopal baptism in my day! I recall my baby sister Polly’s when I was eight. My parents, Polly’s godparents and I gathered on a quiet weekday afternoon with Dean Milton Richardson around the handsome marble font in the niche at Christ Church Cathedral, Houston. In the 1928 Prayer Book the words for baptism were relatively short and they were supposed to be included in Morning or Evening Prayer on a Sunday service. But many folks had private baptisms, as we did.
The current prayer book completely reimagined the Rite of Baptism as a unique entire liturgy. Always celebrated as the main Sunday service, it has become a central part of our identity and practice as Episcopalians. Now, at every baptism, the entire congregation welcomes the newly baptized, pledges to do everything in our power to support them in their new life in Christ. And each of us renews our personal commitment to live out our faith following the five promises of the Baptismal Covenant—always with God’s help.
The earliest Christian baptisms were also communal events. The gospels tell us that Jesus was baptized with other people, and in today’s lesson from Acts, Peter and John summon the Holy Spirit to baptize a community of converts in Samaria. Large group baptisms were normal as Christianity spread through Europe in the Middle Ages. Entire tribes, clans, and feudal villages were baptized at once along with their leader or lord.
Now let’s look more closely at the reading from Luke. It’s often interesting to compare the treatment of the same incident across the four gospels. For example, John the Baptist appears at Jesus’ baptism in three of the gospels. In Mark and Matthew, John baptizes Jesus; in the gospel of John, the Baptist tells others that he saw the Spirit descend on Jesus.
Jesus’ Baptism in Luke
But John the Baptist isn’t present at the baptism in Luke. It might seem odd, since John the Baptist looms so large in the first two chapters of Luke. We hear about John’s parents Zechariah and Elizabeth, the surprise blessing of their conceiving John in their old age. On the last Sunday in Advent we read in Luke about the meeting between Elizabeth and Mary. There, even in his mother’s womb John leapt in recognition that Mary was bearing the Messiah..
Only Luke devotes this much time to John’s life and ministry, including the exhortations to the crowds we just heard. But it all ends abruptly here.
From today’s verses we might assume that John baptized Jesus here, too. But he doesn’t. He cannot. Instead, in the three verses that are omitted from the reading we learn that John has been thrown into prison by Herod.
Luke knew the account in Mark and Matthew, but he told the story differently. As one commentator said, in Luke Jesus doesn’t come onto the scene until John is gone.
That makes sense dramatically. But I think there is more to it. In Mark and Matthew, Jesus is center stage when he is baptized by John. The Holy Spirit descends on him in that moment and the voice from heaven comes.
But here Jesus is just one in the crowd.
Humility
Only afterward, when Jesus is alone, praying, does he receive God’s blessing. Then the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descends visibly in the form of a dove and the voice from heaven comes “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
That difference from the other accounts may not seem like much, but I think it is significant in at least two ways.
First, throughout Jesus’ ministry, he goes away by himself to pray to the Father. Luke makes that practice begin at Jesus’ baptism.
The second thing that struck me was the deep humility with which Jesus behaved. It is completely in keeping with the message of humility that runs through this gospel. The humility of Jesus’ birth in a stable, his being worshipped by lowly shepherds who lived in nearby fields contrasts so markedly to the visit of the Magi in Matthew. There the foreign dignitaries find Mary and the baby Jesus in a house and they bring lavish gifts to honor him.
Time and again in Luke’s gospel, God lifts up the humble, the last and the least. And God casts down the rich and powerful. We heard it in Advent in Mary’s song, the Magnificat. And we will again later in the year in Luke’s Beatitudes and the Woes.
So it’s not surprising that in Luke at the pivotal moment in his life, Jesus embodies the humble obedience that will carry him through to the cross.
Humility is in short supply in our celebrity and wealth obsessed culture. We’ll get to think about that over and over as we read through Luke this year until December.
Jimmy Carter
In the USA we have been blessed with humble, faithful leaders. Outstanding among them was President Jimmy Carter. A while ago I checked out the memoir of his childhood, “One Hour Before Daylight”. It’s a beautiful book. I recommend it to the sky, particularly the audio book, which he reads himself.
President Carter had an extraordinary memory for animating details of the people, events, and adventures of his rural boyhood. He evokes the everyday delights, dangers, and hardships in Depression-era farming. When he was born in 1924 farm life was much the same as it had been for generations. (It only began to change after 1936, when Rural Electrification Act was passed.) He was a bright, energetic, and curious boy. He credits the Black foreman of the Carters’ farm Jack Clark and his wife Rachel with opening him to the wonders of the natural world around him. He recalls with relish the feeling of the earth beneath his bare feet. His love for the land itself surely undergirded his pioneering environmental and conservation work as President.
President Carter’s death last month opened floodgates of well-earned praise for his many decades working for justice and peace here–and especially abroad. We learned so much in those tributes and in the eulogies at his funeral. Every one is worth reading or listening to. Probably my favorite was his grandson Jason’s, who noted that President Carter had gone to the poorest and most marginalized villages in the world. That is the Christ vision of the gospel of Luke. Jason said that when his grandfather “saw a tiny-600 person village that everybody thinks of as poor, he recognized it. That’s where he was from. That’s who he was.” Because he could and did humbly identify with those poor villagers, engaging them as neighbors with love and respect, Jimmy Carter and his team empowered the villagers to work together virtually to eliminate the dreaded Guinea worm disease from the face of the earth.
As you know the root word for humility is humus—the earth. Jimmy Carter’s humility came from in his faith in Christ, and his deep, lifelong connection to the earth itself. I plan to read some of this other books, like “Faith: a Journey for All”, and “The Virtues of Aging” which he wrote when he was in his mid-70s, like me. I cannot think of a better model for a life of faith, service, and meaning.