Sally A Brown, Professor of Preaching Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary
We learn in the verses immediately preceding today’s text that crowds gathered at the Jordan both fascinated and terrified by John’s message of an imminent divine epiphany, a day of reckoning. John adjures them to “repent and be baptized.” According to Jewish law, one could not come into the presence of God “unclean.” Ceremonial washings were required under various circumstances. (For examples, see Leviticus chs 14-16). Preparing for the coming judgment, John says, requires repentance and baptism.
The verb “to baptize” occurs three times in today’s text. First, Matthew tells us, Jesus comes to the Jordan specifically “to be baptized.” Mark and Luke simply state that Jesus “was baptized;” John makes no mention of baptism at all.
Next, baptism is the subject of a brief controversy between Jesus and John. John says it is he who needs to be the recipient of a baptism only Jesus can perform, presumably the baptism with Spirit and fire of which he has just preached. But Jesus insists; his baptism by John is necessary “to fulfill all righteousness”—another instance of the “fulfillment” motif we have already encountered in Matthew, albeit unclear in its reference to “all righteousness.”
Finally, after Jesus “was baptized,” says Matthew, the Spirit descends. Was it only Jesus who perceived the opening of the heavens, the alighting of the Spirit upon him, and the identity-confirming divine voice (“This is my son, in whom I am pleased,” alluding to Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1)? Or did others see and hear, too? Mark and Luke are unspecific. In John, it is the Baptist who sees the Spirit descend on Jesus.
Being plunged into water, for ancient cultures, was a brush with death. The mighty waters of the sea were the habitation of deadly chaos. The apostle Paul, a student of Jewish law, would describe baptism as undergoing death with Jesus, so as to share in Christ’s resurrection (Romans 6:1-4). Strikingly, Pope Francis, in his encyclical introducing the Roman Catholic church’s “year of Mercy” (December 2015-November 2016) said, “Mercy is entering into the chaos of another.” Submerged in the Jordan, Jesus took on the chaos of the human condition. Then, clothed in the power of the Spirit, he confronted all that is deathly in our stumbling, selfish, strife-torn human story—all the way to, and through, death.
Christians around the world continue to be baptized in the name of the One who willingly made our deadly chaos his own, so that, sharing his resurrection life in the power of the Spirit, we may live as children of God’s new creation.
Insights into Biblical Greek Grammar and Syntax 