Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Baptism of Christ 2025

For many people, Christmas is a time when families gather. For many this is a delight, for some it is fraught with difficulties, with triggers and old enmities burnished for a 24-hour period, only to be put back in the cupboard for another year on Boxing Day. Families have different ways of rationalising this. We tell each other that blood is thicker than water.

But for us Christians, the opposite is true. In the font we learn that water is thicker than blood. The baptism we share relativises and contextualises everything else, all relationships and all boundaries. The waters of rebirth cut through blood ties and cultural belonging, placing all other allegiances and solidarities in a different arena; one which we do not and cannot own, but one which we share with millions of people we have never met and will never meet. Today, we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord, one of the three revelations of the Epiphany, the other two being the visit of the Magi to Bethlehem, and the sign of water transformed into wine at the wedding banquet of Cana. Each of these is an intense expression of God’s profound solidarity with the human condition and a promise of its fulfilment. This is what the Word Made Flesh looks like: not a philosophical concept, but a human being, through whom promises are made afresh and in whose orbit reality changes for those who accept him.

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’s baptism happens just before he is driven into the desert to be tempted by Satan. That is quite a scene-change. At this point in the Gospel, Luke is working at speed: the birth of Christ, the infancy narratives, John’s proclamation, Christ’s baptism. From there, we are ready to move into the details of Jesus’s ministry. But not yet. There are some theological principles which need to be settled before we get into the teaching, healing and miracles on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Of all the gospel writers, Luke is the most passionate about redrawing circles of belonging. Again and again, he shows Jesus confounding cultural norms, sometimes explicitly, sometimes quietly, but always expanding the visible reach of God’s love. And there is a mini-fanfare for all this in today’s Gospel.

If you look at artistic depictions of Jesus’s baptism, you will often see the dove of the Holy Spirit hovering over his head. John the Baptist is almost always there alongside him, and sometimes (often in Orthodox icons) there is a small figure of an old man lurking in the water-weed – he represents either the old river gods, or the preceding centuries before the coming of Christ. Sometimes there are angels attending Christ, occasionally a few disciples at the side to hold his clothes. Very rarely are there crowds. But the Gospel tells us that John’s baptism was a kind of mass event. This wasn’t a handful of religious nutters sneaking out of Jerusalem to enjoy a niche activity. Luke speaks of crowds, and again and again keeps using the word ‘all’. In fact, Matthew, Mark, and Luke each record in repeated throwaway details that this is big scale stuff. But Luke draws out one particular feature which is distinctive to his own telling of the story. He tells us that the heavens open and the Father’s voice is heard once all the people have been baptised. Only once Jesus and the crowds have shared in the waters of the Jordan, then the Father acclaims Christ as the Beloved Son. This is a public proclamation, and it is a declaration of intent. Surely, Christians are called to be good; but much more importantly, Christians are called to be holy.

It’s perfectly reasonable to ask why Jesus had to be baptised. Frequently in confirmation classes or at church doors, people make the point that if Jesus was sinless why on earth did he undergo baptism? After all, aren’t we told that this is a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins? The answer is two-fold. Christ’s baptism is an Epiphany, a revelation of his identity, as the dove and the Father’s voice acclaim him mastering the waters of chaos. This is a hinge moment, a summing-up of what has happened so far, and a setting of the scene for what will come. But secondly, Jesus’s baptism inaugurates this as the sacrament of belonging for all who would follow him. Some four hundred years later in Christian history, drawing on St Paul, the north African bishop and teacher St Augustine would speak of the Totus Christus, the whole Christ, head and body together, Jesus organically united with his followers. Once Jesus and all the people had shared in the waters, the voice comes ‘You are my son, the beloved.’

Throughout the Christmas season, we have been hearing how God acts ‘for us and for our salvation.’ Protestant scholars in particular sometimes speak of what they call ‘the great condescension’, God’s extraordinary outpouring of Godself for the sake of the world, taking the form of a slave, that we might become rich. The baptism story, too, is given for us and for our salvation. Not, in the words of the hymn, merely ‘to make us good’, but rather to make us holy. Right at the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus not described as merely a good man, or a helpful teacher, but the Eternal Son, the one closest to the Father’s heart, who has spoken to us the final and full message of salvation. Some early Christian writers use an extraordinary image to help us understand what is going on at Christ’s baptism. They say that Christ left the robe of his divinity in the water, so that those of us who are baptised emerge from the waters wearing that robe. Christ was baptised so that we could be baptised. We are clothed with Christ, given a dignity which is not our own, but which is shared gratuitously, joyfully, fully with us, so that we can share Christ’s dignity along with all the baptised of every age and every place. ‘You are my son, the beloved.’

That is why water is thicker than blood. The goal of the Christian life is that we may know ourselves and one another to share the identity of the Beloved Son, the one in whom the Father is well pleased. That we might not just be good, as if rearranging the ethical deckchairs in our lives will somehow speak for itself, but rather to be holy, in and through Christ, taking on some of the fiery characteristics of self-giving love. Not in our own strength, but energised by the transformative waters of our baptism, and wearing the robe of the Beloved Son. From here springs a solidarity which reaches out to those different from us, and which knows that our own personhood is dependent upon acknowledging and loving another’s strangeness.

This baptism scene inaugurates Christ’s ministry. From here he will become a spring of life for those who meet him, he will become the light which cannot be hidden or snuffed out, he will give himself as bread for the world. In this Eucharist, we renew our discipleship and are fed together by the same Christ, who teaches that we, too might be epiphanies of his love. Not in our strength, but in a dignity which is his, and shared with all who are baptised into his death and resurrection. On the Feast of the Baptism, we stand on a precipice. Which way will we turn? Back to the old familiarities, or into the ever-expanding communion of liberated life? That life is shaped by worship and by a desire to be where Christ is. Such is the shape of the solidarity we are called to, together. One body with one head, hearing the voice of the Father addressing his Christ, the one in whom we live, and move and have our being. May we dwell in him, and he in us.