Progressive reflections on the lectionary #48
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 Baptisms and big main character energy
Happy new year friends - I’m back at my desk this morning and we begin 2025 with a small passage from Luke which has a big story to tell.
Before we kick off let’s remind ourselves of a thing or two about Luke’s gospel.
Luke is the first half of a two part work which we could call ‘Luke-Acts’. It might make more sense for us to read them together, although if we did we might have to deal with the troublesome ‘join’ of the two. That’s for another time.
The writer of Luke is not embarrassed to admit that he has ‘studied’ other texts and provided an ‘orderly account’ having done so. As a result his work might be flagged as somewhat high in terms of plagiarism, he depends heavily on the gospel of Mark certainly, he also seems to ‘develop’ on Matthew in places - but without any citations. Turnitin would have something to say about that.
One of Luke’s key concerns is to demonstrate that Jesus is ‘the Christ’ - although we use this term almost as a sort of surname it means ‘the anointed one.’ Its a title, essentially, which derives from the Jewish belief that a Messiah would be sent by God to restore the fortunes of the shattered and scattered nation of Israel.
So in today’s passage, which is Luke 3: 15-22 with a passage about Herod locking John up in jail excised, we get two set pieces - firstly a little bit about John going around baptising people and telling them that someone ‘greater’ is coming (“I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals…”) and then we have the baptism of Jesus after which the following, climactic, event happens ‘while he was praying’: “the Holy Spirit descended upon him [Jesus} in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:22) (Side note: some manuscripts have it as: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you” which is a whole other rabbit hole to go down.)
Bearing in mind the interlude in which John is imprisoned it’s not absolutely clear, here, whether the writer intends us to understand that the baptism was done by John before his imprisonment, or done by another after the imprisonment. So much for an orderly account!
Luke’s telling of Jesus’ baptism, though, is a substantially rewritten account of that found in Mark and Matthew in which it is quite clear that the baptiser is John. ‘Luke’, it seems, is keen to ensure that the significance of the baptist is not overplayed, perhaps in case he is perceived as a rival to Jesus. As we have previously noted, Luke goes to the extent of adding in the birth narrative to ensure that John is seen as the new Elijah: the necessary fore-runner of the Christ.
So Luke’s account reminds us that the baptist is a necessary but inferior character, and then goes on to include the dramatic image of the dove which also appears in the other two synoptic accounts. In the fourth gospel we only have the baptist’s word that the spirit descended on Jesus - but there too we have a different role for John who specifically denies that he is the new Elijah.
The difference in Luke’s account is that the dove doesn’t descend immediately after the baptism but afterwards ‘while he [Jesus] was praying.’ This may be insignificant, but its a detail that neither of the other two synoptics include, and its clearly different from John too.
Hopefully I don’t need to say that I don’t think we need to conclude that a dove really did land on Jesus’ head - rather this is a piece of symbolism, and this makes some sense when we think about the following too points:
Firstly - the ‘dove’ in this passage is a word (περιστερὰν) which applies to a group of birds that we would probably simply describe as pigeons. Although artists have taught us to imagine a rather refined looking pure white bird, it might be more accurate to envisage a slightly more characterful creature. Crucially this is a ‘common’ bird, not a special one, and one considered an appropriate sacrifice to show remorse for ‘sin’.
Secondly - this common bird represents something very different to the other ‘big’ bird of the time, which was the imperial eagle. Luke’s account is all about representing Jesus as ‘the Christ’ - but he and the other evangelists must also set the scene for what sort of messiah Jesus will be. The writer does that here by juxtaposing the military power represented by the mighty eagle with the sacrificial status of the common pigeon/dove.
Although this account is often talked about in terms of baptism, it’s perhaps better to think of it as a passage about the nature of ‘the Christ’ - in technical terms this is a passage about ‘Christology’.
Progressive Reflections On the Lectionary are intended to be useful to people who preach, or are interested in why on earth anyone still reads the Bible.