The Baptism of the Lord – HD [Proper 1], rcl yr b
Sunday, January 7th, 2024
GENESIS 1:1-5; PSALM 29; ACTS 19:1-7; MARK 1:4-11
the Holy Spirit came upon them
The feast we are celebrating today is the Baptism of the Lord, but with the emphasis we find in the readings, the attention given to the Holy Spirit, it almost feels like a sort of Pentecost.
Pentecost itself, and the descent of the Holy Spirit, feels miles and miles away from where we are. We have Ordinary Time to get through, then Lent, then Holy Week and Easter Sunday, then the whole season of Easter before we get to Pentecost, the day we celebrate the Holy Spirit, and the descent of the Holy Spirit, onto the gathered disciples.
Today though, beginning with the collect, and miles and miles away from Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is clearly present. In the collect, we hear that the Son is anointed with the Spirit at the baptism of Jesus. And that God’s children are born of water and Spirit. In Genesis, we hear of a “wind from God” that sweeps over the face of the waters. In Acts we hear of Paul meeting some disciples who knew nothing of the Holy Spirit, because they were baptized into John the Baptist’s baptism; these disciples were baptized again but this time in the name of Jesus, and when Paul lays hands on them the Holy Spirit comes upon them. And in the Gospel reading, we hear John the Baptist tell of “the one who is more powerful,” one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit; and when Jesus comes to receive John’s baptism, the Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove.
So lots about water, baptism, and Jesus’s baptism; but lots too about the Holy Spirit. Almost like it’s a little Pentecost.
We shouldn’t really be surprised that the Spirit is already acting upon this stage. In two ways. First, it should’t be a surprise that the Holy Spirit is making an appearance this early in the church’s liturgical calendar. I mentioned a number of weeks ago that the church’s calendar is cyclical, but not cyclical like a figure skater, or a hockey player warming up, doing endless circles around the rink. We do visit the same feasts and seasons year after year, but it’s a cycle that draws us both deeper into the life of Christ, and a cycle that draws us up, higher into the heavenly places. Like a corkscrew and a cyclone.
And so it shouldn’t surprise us to find a little bit of Pentecost well before we get into Lent, just like we will find Good Friday and Easter on each Sunday of the year, just like we will find intimations of the Holy Trinity all over the place too. And as we go deeper, and as we are drawn higher, we learn to have eyes that can see that the Holy Spirit has never been far from us; in fact today we are reminded that the Holy Spirit has been given to us, poured into our hearts, since our own baptisms, much like the way that the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus.
And so just as we experience the whole of the church year with the knowledge of both the crucifixion and the resurrection—even Good Friday!—we experience the whole of the church year in the knowledge that the Holy Spirit has been given to us as individuals, and thus to the church, well before Pentecost— and so the Holy Spirit hides in plain sight, in the nooks and crannies of the whole liturgical year.
When Basil the Great wrote his little book on the Holy Spirit in the 4th century, he writes of the Holy Spirit in another way, bringing us the second reason why we shouldn’t be surprised at the Holy Spirit’s presence today. In a time when theological debate about the Holy Trinity was such that the diversity and the number of arguments were making moderates either blush with possibility or blanch at the impossibility of it all, Basil was arguing against everyone. In particular though, he was arguing against those who imagined the Holy Spirit as subordinate, or unequal, to the Father and the Son.
But Basil makes his argument that we can recognise in our readings, by starting with the very first verses in the whole Bible, verses that reach back to before the beginning of all things. How could the Holy Spirit be a subordinate if the Holy Spirit was there from the beginning, taking part in the very creation of the world?
Basil then goes on to catalogue the many ways the Holy Spirit was active well before Pentecost, and well after, too; Basil points out that there is very little that Jesus does apart from the Holy Spirit—from healings, to the casting out of demons; and then that the Holy Spirit was present at Jesus’s baptism; and then later, too, in the perfection of all things in God’s final judgment. The Spirit, after all, is that which perfects; and it is in God’s judgment that we will be made fully perfect, with the help of the Spirit of God.
So the Holy Spirit is active in the swoop of creation, and of all history, because the Holy Spirit is coeternal with both the Father and the Son; and so it is no surprise to find the Holy Spirit in the nooks and crannies of the whole Biblical story.
But there’s one more reason, a third reason, that we can discern the work of the Holy Spirit in this way, in the nooks and crannies of the church year, and the nooks and crannies of the Bible’s telling of history: and that’s because we are on the other side of our own baptisms; that is, because the Holy Spirit has found a way into the nooks and crannies of our own lives. Having been already granted the Holy Spirit in our baptism, we are already being perfected, though sometimes in ways hidden to us.
Basil points out something similar. In baptism we die and rise in Christ, and we are made new; we are cleansed from our sins; and in this spiritual wholeness the Holy Spirit is able to begin to bring us to perfection.
Growing up we used to have fishtanks, and whenever they were put in a bright room, and hit directly by the sun, the whole tank would become bright and fill the room with its own reflected and refracted light, bright waves appearing on the ceiling and the walls. Basil speaks of the work of the Holy Spirit on the human person in such a way. It’s quite arresting. When a sunbeam falls on a transparent body, he says, (think of that tank of clear water), that body becomes brilliant, too, shedding forth a fresh brightness of its own. “ … so souls whererin the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves become spiritual, and send forth their grace to others.”
Just like our salvation is wrought by grace, and in the work of God in Christ, so too is our sanctification, our own being made perfect, is the work of God the Holy Spirit. Does that body of water, like that fish tank, know that it’s shining brightly? Probably not; it’s just busy being a fish tank. Similarly, the light of the Holy Spirit is at work in us, and even visible in us, in ways we don’t always see ourselves.
And so if you are waiting on the Holy Spirit … the Holy Spirit is here, visible in the church year, and at work in the creation we live in, the creation of which we are a part. The Holy Spirit is present to you simply because you are as lovingly and wonderfully made as you are. And if you are waiting on your own perfection … (I’ll give you a hint: you are waiting on your own perfection …), have patience and know, that by the virtue of your baptism, the Holy Spirit is at work in you already, making you holy, making you ready for the last day—that you are a body full of that light, even giving glimpses of that light of God the Holy Spirit to others, by the grace of the God we know as three co-eternal persons, indivisible in their shared divine work of creating, redeeming, and perfecting; divisible only by their relations: as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. AMEN.