St Michaels Church Podcast
A different King, a different Coronation | David Turner | 8.09.24
This morning's reading is from Luke's Gospel, chapter 3, verses 21 to 38, which can be found on page 1029 of the church, Bibles, or on page 11 of the little pink Luke's Gospels that are dotted around. When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, 'You are my son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.' Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. And he was the son, so is thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Mathert, the son of Levi, the son of Melchae, the son of Janai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mathathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Nagai, the son of Math, the son of Mathathias, the son of Semen, the son of Josek, the son of Joda, the son of Joenen, the son of Reza, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shialtyor, the son of Neri, the son of Melchae, the son of Adi, the son of Cosum, the son of Elmadom, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Elizar, the son of Jurim, the son of Mathert, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonim, the son of Eleachim, the son of Melia, the son of Menor, the son of Matatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Saman, the son of Naishin, the son of Naishin, the son of Aminadab, the son of Ram, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terra, the son of Nihor, the son of Serok, the son of Ru, the son of Pelleg, the son of Iba, the son of Shella, the son of Canaan, the son of Arphak Set, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamak, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalala, the son of Keenan, the son of Enoch, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God for the Lord. David. Well, thank you, Sam, for reading so sturlingly. That's not a reading you can inflict on the faint hearted, but Sam, you read it beautifully and helped us there. Thank you very much for your welcome. It's a great pleasure for me to come back to St. Michael's. I've spoken here before and have been to many events over the years here. I'm reader at All Souls Lang in Place. I've been for some time and I've just very recently retired after 20 years as a circuit judge. So it's lovely to be here this morning. Thank you. You're in a Luke series, these Sunday mornings, and today we come to an important moment, the baptism of Jesus. There's an early moment in the coronation service, which is technically called the recognition. The service itself is largely unchanged since 973, when in Bath Abbey, Dunstan, then Archbishop of Canterbury, crowned Edgar, King of England, and the coronation ceremony has continued pretty much in the same way ever since. And millions of us, of course, watched it in May 2023. The recognition is the moment when the sovereign is introduced as the rightful monarch and is acclaimed by the congregation. It's a moving moment. King Charles was there only because of his lineage, who he was. He was his mother's eldest son, and her father unexpectedly had become King George VI and so on. Genealogy matters. It did in ancient Egypt, and it's still false today. Tell me you've never, in your Bible reading, skimmed over a list of names. I've prepared a bet that you have in Genesis, or Chronicles, or Ezra, or elsewhere, and yet God has put these lists in his word, and that signals that they matter. We may be fans of the television program, "Who do you think you are?" I certainly am, but we're less enthusiastic about Bible lists, if we're honest. If we'd been Matthew or Luke's editors, we might have said to them, "Put it in an appendix." But lists matter. Jewish people kept them carefully because they consulted them, and they provided details of a person's history, and of a person's identity. Genealogy tells us who someone is. It's culturally, politically, and religiously significant. It weeds out pretenders and phonies. It asks questions, "Who is this? Have we got the right person?" And that's why we read Luke's genealogy of Jesus. It was there at an important moment in redemption history. Luke knows that because he's a careful author. We'll see that as we go on with this series. Here is the moment friends, when Jesus becomes a public figure, and he's introduced to the world. It's the moment of his baptism, the moment his ministry begins, the launch point for Jesus. It's Luke's recognition moment. And it's written to tell us who we're dealing with, who Jesus is. Well, Luke tells us, verse 23, he's about 30. He was 12 when we last heard anything of him. That's there in chapter 2, verse 42. He's been a carpenter in a northern backwater of Israel for the last 18 years. His parents have been pretty obscure. He's not been to the right school. He's not been a religious or political operator. He's not joined the army or founded any organization. He's made no public pronouncements, no bold claims. He's not had an ounce of earthly power or influence up to this point. And yet we know that all that follows meant that Jesus' name literally came to divide history, to shape the way we view life and the world, God and goodness, meaning and morals more than anyone who has perhaps ever lived. To trigger what Tom Holland has called the most disruptive, the most influential and the most enduring revolution in history. Well, here in these simple, uncluttered, economical, trinitarian sentences which we read together this morning is where it all begins, the silent years of Jesus are over. His public ministry is beginning. Look, the early Christians didn't make the trinity up. Here, in history, on the Jordan Riverbank, one particular day, God clearly identified himself to the world as trinity. Perhaps it's the first time. God has clearly identified himself to the world as trinity. It's certainly one of the great trinitarian texts of the New Testament. All three persons in the Godhead are present simultaneously. Each acts indivisibly and inseparably. The doctrine of the trinity is all over this passage. Jesus, the Son, turns up to be baptized by John and offer himself to the Father in life-giving rescue and mission for us. The Holy Spirit descends from the Father to empower in a special way the ministry of the Son, and then the Father speaks of His enduring love for the Son. One amazing, unforgettable moment in the life of Jesus, which we see. The early Christians used to say that anyone who doubted the trinity should go to the Jordan, and you will see it. Let me on try and unpack this a little bit further in four very simple headings. Here they are, the Son and His baptism, the Spirit and His anointing, the Father and His affection, and Jesus and His credentials. Well, let's look at those, the Son and His baptism. John the Baptist, you remember, was a giant figure. He stood on the cusp of a new era. He was the forerunner of the Messiah. His whole ministry was geared to announcing the Messiah as Isaiah 40 had predicted. He was, as he says in Luke 3, verse 4, preparing the way for the Lord. He was, as Jesus himself later said, Matthew 11, 11, the greatest of the prophets. There were cousins, of course, John the Baptist and Jesus. John, about six months older, but there's no evidence that they knew one another or spent time together as a child, as children. Jesus hikes that 67 odd miles between Nazareth in the north and the Jordan River. In John's Gospel, chapter 1, verse 33, John the Baptist makes clear. He didn't recognize Jesus at first, but this is to become an electrifying moment. John considered himself to be the herald of God's long expected arrival in the person of the Messiah. When that happened, as Isaiah had said, chapter 3, verse 6 of Luke, all people will see God's salvation. So this is an electrifying moment. And it happened in the context of John baptizing other people. You see what happens here in chapter 3, verses 10 to 14. He calls people to repent through deliberate acts of love and equity, which they're to give to their neighbors, chapter 3, verses 10 to 14. And then, in turn, they confessed their sins, went down into the river to be symbolically washed and began a fresh start. The act symbolized as it still does, dying to old patterns of sin and rising to a fresh start living righteously for God. John's was not a definitive baptism, no. It was rather a preparatory one while they waited for the one to come. Jesus, who as John said, his sandals, he wasn't even worthy to carry. John was getting people ready to see and meet Jesus, and then to accept them. And Jesus, for his part, was now ready to appear on the public scene for the first time. It was, as Luke 3, 3 tells us, a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And there were literally crowds coming, verse 7. As Glenn Scrivener quips in one of his books, Jesus chooses this failures convention to be his launch event. Now, there's a problem here. Some of you may have in your mind, "Why on earth did Jesus need to be baptized?" Well, it's a fair question. And it's a point John himself makes in the Matthew a kind of this. All the gospels cover this episode one way or another. And in Matthew 3, verse 14, John, we read, tries to deter Jesus from taking this step, "I need to be baptized by you, but you come to me," says John. Well, it was a reasonable protest. Why would you risk signaling to others that you may need to repent if you're the sinless one? Look, the only qualification for this bath was that you needed cleaning up yourself. Why would you risk someone drawing the wrong conclusion, getting the wrong idea about you from day one, if there's nothing to repent of, and you've no sins to be forgiven, and if you're the incarnate perfect son? Well, Luke doesn't answer that question. His whole focus is on the cosmic interventions which follow, which underline here, supernaturally, who Jesus is. But Matthew does give us an answer. He'd also, in his chapter 3, verse 15, Jesus first recorded words to us since he was 12. When we last hear his voice in Scripture, he says in chapter 3, verse 15 of Matthew, "Let it be so now. It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness." It's an enigmatic phrase. In short, God had required it. It was what righteous people would do, and Jesus was therefore doing it. His answer was it was fitting for him to do everything that was right. And just as there were to be no sins of commission in the life of Jesus, so too here we learn there were to be no sins of omission either. Here was an act of extraordinary, voluntary identification with the people he came to save, with us, with sinners. No, it's a bit of a shock. Here is Jesus identifying with sinners from day one in his baptism. This is incarnate ministry underway. Why was he baptized? His own answer is to fulfill all righteousness, to do what God requires to be done that a perfectly righteous life would happen and would satisfy God. His baptism is an act of humility. He consents to be counted with us. He says in effect, I'll stand where they stand. I'll go through what they go through. I'll not stand above them. I'll be with them. I'll take the cleansing waters as one of them. I'm on the side of sinners. Consider me to be one of them. I'm trusting God for all that baptism symbolized. And remember Jesus needed to live a perfect life so that that perfect life could be credited to our account, yours, mine. The taking of human sin was never just about three hours on the cross, on good Friday. No, Jesus whole ministry involved taking our place from this point onwards. This was a job he wanted. This was a job he accepted so he identifies even in baptism with sinful people. He demonstrates what practical obedience might look like. Paul makes the point very well for us in 2 Corinthians 5, 21. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus deliberately that day engaged in an action which was unnatural to him, but he did it for us. He went as our representative into the waters of confession and baptism, and at that moment he offered the perfect human response of submission and faith. Well, that's the son and his baptism. Second, the spirit and his anointing. If you'd been in the crowd that day, you might not have been any the wiser initially. As Luke says in this wonderfully understated account, verse 21, "All the people were being baptized." Jesus was among them. He looks like everybody else. He joins the line, the cue, just like everybody else. He waits his turn, just like everybody else. There was nothing to single him out. If you'd not known what was going on by looking at him, you would have just thought this is another Jew coming forward to prepare himself to meet the Messiah. But no, there's more going on. And Luke wants us to see that. What makes this unique and unforgettable and life-changing and mind-blowing is there at the end of verse 21. As Jesus was praying, heaven was opened. Now, don't ask me to explain what that looked like. Something extraordinary occurred. What do we see if we talk of the heavens opening? We see rain. But here in visual form is a sort of symbol of the very opening of the way to God. Verse 22, "The Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove." Again, it's hard to picture it. The ancients had longed for God himself to come into the world, to set things right, somehow to rescue and deliver them from everything that made life such a mess. Isaiah 64, verse 1, you may remember, "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down." I mean, how many of us have prayed that so often? Well, that's exactly what Marx, a kind of this episode, says. Literally, as Jesus came up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn apart or torn open, and he uses the same word for "rend" as the Greek version of Isaiah 64, verse 1, "The Spirit descending on him like a dove." Here is divine confirmation. This is a recognition moment. Here is divine confirmation, public and visible confirmation, by the two members of the Trinity, that Jesus was the right man at the right time. John 1, 33 confirms that Jesus, that John had said he'd been told by God that the one on whom he saw the Spirit descending and remaining was the Messiah. Here's the recognition moment. It was happening before their very eyes, supreme confirmation of the identity of Jesus. The recognition moment with the crowd there on the bank of the Jordan. But look, somebody says, "Does this mean that the Lord didn't know the Holy Spirit up to this point?" Well, no, of course not. He was a member of the Trinity. They were in eternal communion. In Romans 8, 9, Paul says, "The Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ." No, this was not their first meeting. This wasn't like a non-believer being converted and receiving the Holy Spirit for the first time. No, this was anointing for special service, with special power for the duties which were to be carried out by Jesus the Messiah. Again, Isaiah had articulated it centuries before. Isaiah 61, verse 1, "The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor." He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. And in the next chapter, Luke 4, 21, a few pages on, we hear Jesus say in terms in His first sermon. Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. You know, what Jesus was called to do and was being called to do at this very point was so infinitely greater than any work any person had ever done before. It was so profound, so far reaching, so eternally significant, so much greater than the work done by any prophet, priest, or king before that he was given the Holy Spirit without measure at that point to energize that unique work. Roman, Hebrews 9, 14, confirms for us that it was through the eternal spirit that Christ offered Himself on blemish to God and shed His blood for us. And remember a little echo of this on that first Good Friday when there was another rending, not that on that occasion of the heavens, but on that occasion, a rending of the temple curtain from top to bottom, Mark 1538. And whether it's heaven or whether it's the temple curtain, the message is the same. Here is Jesus making access to God possible for all of us. He opens the way symbolically here for all of us. What about the dove image? And we know that from banners and artwork and so on. So much is left unexplained here in Luke's minimal account. The third person of the Trinity is not a bird. This is a symbol of some kind. What is it symbolizing? Well, we're not told expressly. I think it symbolizes the divine house style. That's there too in Isaiah 42 with its talk of God's spirit-filled servant, not breaking the bruised reed, or snuffing out the smoldering wick. Jesus has always tender with the weak and the failing. He's dove-like and not hawk-like. He's the one who says, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, for I am meek and lowly in heart." He's dove-like. And here I think is made visible. The invisible reality that the Son and the Spirit arrive on the scene of salvation together. They work out the will of the Father together and it's done with extraordinary heart-rending gentleness. And they do that because they exist eternally together in the invincible love and unity of the one true God. This is a big moment. The Son and his baptism, the Spirit and his anointing. Third, the Father and his affection. The voice of the Father here, I think, is Luke's primary focus, his culmination. It's his breathtaking moment of really a quiet majesty. You can sort of feel the silence. And then the voice of God speaks. It's open, audible, public, verbal endorsement of the highest authority. Testimony to Jesus doesn't get any bigger than this. And it's this ultimate testimony that launches Jesus into his ministry. What does the Father say about Jesus? It's there in verse 22. "You are my Son whom I love, with you I am well pleased." Lovely words. There was never a time. There never will be a time when God was not pleased with Jesus. The Father testifies to a relationship that has been since all eternity. And now the love between the divine persons of the Trinity is going to be expressed through the confines of Jesus' humanity and on for us. The Father finds complete satisfaction and great delight in his beloved Son. And the good news of the gospel is that that experience is transferred to the Christian because God now looks down on us and sees just what he saw in Jesus that day. He tells each of us exactly the same thing if we're his in Christ. "You are my beloved child. In you I find my delight." And that's the message of the gospel. The heavenly Father's love for Jesus is transferred to us. We're represented in God's eyes by our Messiah. The Son and his baptism, the Spirit and his anointing, the Father and his affection, and then finally Jesus and his credentials. Luke's genealogy, and you'll know this, is very different to Matthew's. Matthew has 42 names. Luke has 77, as poor Sam discovered, as he prepared to read the lesson. Both are necessarily selected. They follow different family lines. Look, each of us has two family lines. We have a maternal and a paternal family line, and the commentators wrestle a bit with the technical explanations and what generations have been missed and whose following what and whose son is whose and so on. And ultimately, they're a bit non-committal. Matthew seems to be writing to a Jewish readership, and he traces the legal line back to Abraham. He makes a sort of legal case for Jesus. Luke is writing primarily to Gentiles, and he's aware, and there's a little clue there in verse 23, that Joseph's role as Father had been a bit of an issue. Father, so it was thought Luke tucks in, and he seems to trace the Mary line to convince us of Jesus' humanity, not now back merely to David or Abraham, but to Adam, and even to God, verse 38. It's Jesus' humanity here that Luke is stressing, not his ethnicity. And Luke's point is the gospel is something that is universal. It's for everyone. He connects Jesus not just to a Jewish or Gentile line, but to all of humanity. He's a human being like us. That's the message this lineage screams, real flesh and blood. He's got a story. Here are 75 generations of it. Luke roots Jesus in the concrete, historical, messy, sinful realities of the human story, of our story. Look, Noah was a drunkard. Abraham was a liar. David was an adulterer and a murderer, deeply flawed people like us. And yes, of course there were heroes in the family tree, but there are sinners too, and you can only read these names, and you see that immediately. Well, in verse 31, we learn he's David's heir. Being an heir of David didn't make you the Messiah, but look, if you couldn't prove it, it might disqualify you. It might mean you were an imposter. Credentials mattered to identity. He's also the son of Adam, verse 38. When the first Adam sinned, fell, plunged us into sin and misery. Jesus didn't fail. And in the very next chapter, the temptations, Luke 4, we see that. Jesus got through that on our behalf. He's the one who alone can reverse the course of Adam's sin, the curse that we still carry with all its hideous implications. He's, as Paul said, the second Adam. And Paul explains all that powerfully in 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus here recapitulates the human story in order to change its ending. That's the wonder of the gospel. His ministry will be to create a new race of human beings marked by the dove-like character of the Holy Spirit. It's called the church. We can hardly believe it, but it's an immense and wonderful privilege. He's the son of David. He's the son of Adam. He's also verse 38, the son of God. Because Luke wants us to get the big picture here. This is not just a great moral prophet we're talking about, not a philosopher, not a leader, not a good teacher, not just a great man. No, this is God with us and for us. Here is, before our very eyes, the unfolding of the culmination of all history, not just the story of Israel. It's the hope of all humanity. And all humanity is inseparably and eternally connected to him. That's Luke's point here, I think. The fate of everyone who ever lives is strangely linked to Jesus. It's a staggering claim. And you know, it's a comfort to me, and maybe to you, as I read these genealogies in Luke and Matthew, that God's dealings are always with actual people and not ideal people. For I'm no ideal person, and you may not be either. It's a comfort to me, as I look at these genealogies, that God uses all the messy stuff and the dodgy people to accomplish his purposes. It's a comfort that the Jewish Messiah has gentile blood. It's a comfort that reality runs on God's timetable and not ours. Look, a thousand years passed between David, King David, and great David's greater son, Jesus appearing. A thousand years. And these lineage, narratives reassure us that when God promises something, we really can take it to the bank and rely on it. And the joy of the church is a little bit like the genealogy of Jesus. It's made up of people we mightn't choose, having experiences we wouldn't want, and facing events we didn't plan, and yet we know that Jesus in that changes the face of history. Even his thoughtful critics can see that. Well, in Luke chapter three, that story is just beginning, but it's a story that isn't over yet. That's the good news. Jesus wonderfully invites us to add our names to that story, to the only family tree that ultimately matters, and that endures for eternity. And the only qualification for all that, as we'll remember in a moment in the Lord's Supper, is a bit like the qualification for baptism, a sense of complete unworthiness. That's the only qualification and a conviction above all that Jesus is who he says he is. This is Luke's recognition moment, the Son of God who loves us and who gave himself for us. [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]