AN ARTICLE that I read recently called the baptism of Jesus “a fragile problem of apologetics”. To understand Luke’s version, we must determine whether he’s using Mark only, or one other source as well. Differences intimately between Mark and Luke may suggest two sources. But when, for instance, we notice that Luke and Matthew say the heavens were “opened” (toning down Mark’s more violent “heavens split apart”), it might be that each later writers thought Mark’s language crude, and “improved” it.
There is reason, then, to think that Luke is tweaking Mark, not following one other source. But the absence of the Baptist remains to be puzzling. He is mentioned initially of the lection, as is his imprisonment. But he is just not recorded as being present at Jesus’s baptism, never mind as having himself been the Lord’s baptiser.
The article that I discussed sees this as Luke’s solution to the “delicate problem”. Matthew made John express a priority in regards to the theological proprieties, in order that Jesus could reassure him (3.14-17). Instead, Luke sets John aside. By mentioning John’s imprisonment before Jesus’s baptism, Luke even provides a reason for his absence from the baptism itself. This is ingenious. It may even be right. But the ingenious solution creates an issue of its own: if not John, then who did baptise Jesus? Before we tackle this, we must scrutinise more of the detail of Luke’s account.
The indisputable fact that the descent of the Spirit happens not at the baptism but after it supports the ingenious solution. Jesus has begun to hope after his baptism, without being told by anyone to achieve this. It looks like a natural and instinctive response to that water baptism. The water baptism is individually (and, for now, uniquely) followed by a descent of the Spirit upon Jesus. There is at the least a touch — possibly greater than a touch — that it’s the descent of the Spirit which “really” matters in Luke’s mind. After all, lots of of individuals had received water baptism. Only one, the Lord, receives this Spirit baptism.
At this point, John’s Gospel offers further insight; for his approach is different again. He doesn’t mention Jesus’s baptism in any respect. Yet, as often in John, necessary things are referred to only obliquely. Unlike Luke, John doesn’t play down the part played by the Baptist. Instead, he weaves it even into his prologue, giving the best possible prominence to the part played in God’s plan by this holy man.
John tells us repeatedly that the Baptist baptises with water. Thus far, he’s in agreement with Luke: (John 1.26) “I baptise with water”; (1.31) “I got here baptising with water”; (1.33) “the one who sent me to baptise with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptises with the Holy Spirit’.”
Instead of excluding the Baptist from participating within the Spirit’s descent through baptism, John’s Gospel makes him the prophet of the Spirit’s descent, a witness to the Spirit’s descent, and — most distinctive of all — the one that gives a primary full expression of the water/Spirit distinction.
There is something almost Britishly self-deprecating in regards to the way by which Jesus is protected — by all of the Evangelists — from having to trumpet his own importance. It makes me consider the conferring of holy orders. The support and confidence of sending congregations, not the private conviction of the candidate, turn a postulant into an ordinand.
Does this mean that baptism was unimportant to Luke? No one who has read the Acts of the Apostles could think so. It is historical indisputable fact that the visible sign of baptism— water — continued to be essential to the ritual (for want of a greater word), and in addition that the weather of water and Spirit were as fixed and essential in Luke’s time as in ours.
Luke’s ingenious solution to the “delicate problem” helps by reminding us that, in what we call a “sacrament”, the bit that matters most could be the invisible reality being signified — yet, without the visible reality, the sign is null and void. Again, holy orders illuminate: the private qualities of a person priest are irrelevant to the validity of the sacraments that they have fun. Here, finally, is confirmation of Luke’s ingenious solution: for him, the query who baptised Jesus is irrelevant. The sacrament, not the human effecter (for want of a greater term), is what matters.
