LUKE 3:15-22

Laterally Luke…The Baptism of Our Lord…2019

Expectation’s in the air! You can breathe it. You can feel it. Taste it, even! Back then, that is! Can we preach to help people recover that sense of expectation today? In an age when expectations are universally low. Except, that is, of one disaster after another! An all-too-obvious example is the way so many of our politicians constantly fail our expectations to the point where we have stopped having any expectations except poor ones! Is it much the same with religious leaders & what they espouse? Including preachers? Preaching about expectations back then to people who have few or none, now, isn’t going to be much help, is it? Also, a word of warning: don’t let’s try to avoid the real today issues by preaching expectations in the next world? That’s pure escapism! Often to cover up our inadequacies in this one! 

The key not only to preaching all this, but actually living it, is to grow into our Baptism as Jesus grows into His. Let our Baptism really happen to us & in us as Jesus lets His happen to Him & in Him. An interesting thought for Someone who doesn’t need to be baptised in the first place, but chooses to align Himself with us, as one pf us? What we make of our Baptism & what we let our baptism make of us determines our usefulness to God & each other in this world, quite apart from any other! 

So, how & where might we start raising the kind of expectations rising in JB’s time by preaching them for our own day? A starting point: explore how JB’s preaching raised expectations of Faithfulness towards God, that lead to Justice for ordinary folk, which means a Fair go for everyone. FJF! Notice how both JB & Jesus Himself emulate YHWH by starting, not with those at the top, but with God’s ‘little ones’ at the bottom of the ladder. Starting with what we’ve got may be hard to accept, but fits in with God’s way of doing things ‘on earth as it is in Heaven’!

  

Both Jesus & JB build on faithful revelations of God before their own day. You & I are called to do so now! So, let’s preach Jesus & how His life & work make God’s expectations come to reality in His own Person by His Spirit. As they need to do in us!

Brian

Afterthought: The lesson of Jesus’ Baptism by JB & His growing into it, letting it happen to Him, is a well-rounded spiritual, Biblical, & ground-level approach. We can expect the same today.