Jesus Receives the Spirit (and is Baptized)

First Sunday after Epiphany, Year C 2025; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22.

John the Baptist, yet again? Not really. Part of this reading came up only a month ago on the third Sunday of Advent, but the added (and removed) verses this time change the emphasis considerably. While the baptismal practice of John provides a context for this story, John himself disappears between the first and second parts of the reading. Even the baptism of Jesus itself is not really the point here; it is an occasion at which God’s purpose for Jesus develops, and is revealed to others.

As noted before, Luke’s “orderly account” (1:1) consolidates John’s story, even to having his arrest by Herod depicted before this point. While our knowledge of the other versions (see Mark 1:9) will probably have us mentally import John into the baptismal scene, and this doesn’t really matter, Luke does not depict Jesus’ baptism as at John’s (or anyone else’s) hand in particular.

This lessening of the connection with John may result not just from Luke’s tidy editorial mind, but from ongoing tensions involving followers of the Baptist (see Acts 19) and differing understandings of John’s role. While all the synoptics include John’s statement of his deference to '“the one” coming after, and Matthew’s version even provides an exchange that foregrounds the problem of deference (see Matt 3:14-15), Luke’s point is made by moving past John, whose work is done. This is now a story about Jesus, not John.

Questions always arise about the meaning of Jesus’ baptism. There is no sign in any of the NT accounts that Jesus could or should need to undergo a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (3:3), which is otherwise the purpose of John’s ritual activity. The puzzle is addressed one way or another in all the Gospels, but Luke’s strategy is mostly to deemphasize the uniqueness of the event—that is, of baptism itself— for Jesus. John’s absence from the narrative contributes to this, but Jesus’ actual baptism is almost incidental, a point after which the real action takes place.

The one distinctive Luke adds is a communal or even political setting. Jesus was baptized, according to Luke, with “all the people”— not in a crowd that is, but as part of the whole community, the laos (“people”). Jesus is baptized because he is one of this people, this community of Israel. We noted when discussing the Advent version of this passage that such “people” language is quite carefully presented by Luke, as a way of distinguishing between a crowd and a collective.

This implies two things: first, it makes Jesus’ baptism itself—as opposed to the following revelation—mostly an act of solidarity and community, rather than something highly individual. He is baptized because all the people were coming out to listen to John and prepare for God’s reign, and Jesus is taking his place among them. Second, it underlines that John’s mission was not one of individual altar calls but a collective rallying-cry for the renewal and preparation of Israel as a polity, a people. This is important for what follows.

Ethiopian Celebration of Timkat (Baptism/Epiphany), 2011, Fasiladas' Bath in Gondar, Ethiopia (Wikimedia Commons)

The key event in Luke’s account is not the baptism itself, but what happens after it: “when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus had been baptized and…praying, the heaven was opened” (3:21). Uniquely, Luke has Jesus praying after the baptism, and the manifestation of the Spirit happens at this point, not in the water. This puts the emphasis on Jesus’ relationship to the Father whom he is addressing in prayer, rather than to John, or to baptism. The descent of the Spirit amounts to a heavenly reply in this conversation with his Father, a response to Jesus’ prayer rather than just as a commentary or addendum to the baptism itself.

Each evangelist treats the appearance of the Spirit somewhat distinctively. Mark’s version reads like a private experience for Jesus: “he saw” (Mark 1:10) etc. Matthew makes it quite public (Matt 3:16-17). Luke, while closer to Matthew, combines elements of both. The opening of the heavens seems a public event and not a private revelation. So too the unique Lukan point that the descent of the Spirit is “in bodily form, as a dove” suggests something accessible to the senses of others present. Yet when God speaks, it is (as in Mark, not Matthew) a personal address to Jesus: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Why this scene, apart from the fact it was inherited in the tradition? It could seem to be a redundancy for Luke. We have already been shown clearly that Jesus is the Son of God, not just in the annunciation and birth stories, but in the adolescent Jesus’ episode in his “Father’s house.” There is no room for some notion that Jesus has to “become” God’s Son in this event, or that he—or readers— need to know that he is. Nevertheless something important and different has happened.

The subtle point about Jesus’ solidarity in baptism with “the people” may help us. The divine voice is quoting Psalm 2, which is a royal acclamation that hails the Lord’s anointed king in Zion. God’s acclamation of Jesus here is thus a kind of coronation. The Spirit is being given to Jesus, not to create a relationship that already exists, but to mark and equip him for a new purpose. The upshot of this event then is the Father’s proclamation of Jesus’ identity as king, as Messiah, to lead and save his people.

The baptism scene immerses Jesus in the people as much as in the water, then singles him out for a task whose meaning depends on his solidarity with them in the renewal of Israel. Jesus has been presented not just as an isolated individual (whoever’s son he might be) undergoing some revelatory experience, but as the one who will offer leadership and liberation from the midst of his people.

This Gospel is set for the Sunday after the Epiphany, largely because in eastern Christian tradition the Epiphany (or “Theophany”) itself celebrates the events recorded here, more than the visit of the Magi. The tendency to re-title this day “Baptism of the Lord” can efface that epiphanic connection, especially where this slides into becoming just a celebration of baptism per se. Luke’s story reminds us that baptism is not the point, however necessary; our baptismal solidarity, with one another and with Jesus, is about something other than ourselves. While at a later point in Luke’s two-part work Jesus’ followers are also understood to receive the Spirit that came upon him then (see Acts 2), this story presents him as the unique Son, the one who comes to lead and liberate.