Sermon Seeds: Heaven Opened

Sunday, January 12, 2025
Baptism of Christ | Year C
(Liturgical Color: White)

Lectionary Citations
Isaiah 43:1-7 • Psalm 29 • Acts 8:14-17 • Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=e&d=13&y=384

Focus Scripture: Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22
Focus Theme: Heaven Opened
Series: Posted Sentinels (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

Concepts of heaven vary among world religions, secular cultures, and even within common faith traditions. Heaven may be considered a physical place, a spiritual location, a way of being, or a transcendent state. How one gets to heaven has just as many variations or perhaps even more. For many, heaven is the home of the deity or deities and may only be accessed through divine favor and blessing. Traditional notions of heaven in Christianity juxtapose heaven with hell. The first is the peaceful and powerful province of the Holy One, along with the angels and the saints (with the lowercase “s”), where your soul enters upon physical death if your life on earth met certain conditions. The alternative destination is hell, a place of desolation and relentless suffering ruled by satan and his minions where punishment for a life not well lived cannot be escaped. The entry conditions vary based on theological tradition, but across those divides, heaven is the place to be.

The biblical witness often speaks of heavens, which modern readers would understand as the vast and increasingly knowable universe beyond our atmosphere. Ancient readers certainly had some understanding of the natural realm beyond the earth’s orbit. After all, the gospel reflects the use of stars as markers and directional aids for both humble shepherds and wise persons in their journey toward Jesus. Still, heaven and the heavens are largely cloaked in mystery and otherworldliness.

Jesus enters the world to, in Luke’s account, a series of revelatory moments. From the angelic visitations, the maternal and prophetic declarations, and the temple encounters in his infancy and adolescence, the main characters in the opening chapters fully recognize the significance of his being. The accompanying discourses and conversations reflect an understanding of his mission and future ministry as well as his position in salvific and covenantal history:

Luke’s Gospel is embedded in Israel’s story of God’s relationship with humanity and the world. Though it was canonized sometime after its writing, it extends Israel’s scriptural tradition. Special emphasis falls on covenants. Abrahamic promises in particular are synthesized with other covenants in Israel’s traditions. Luke is composed from individual episodes that are here arranged in three primary sections: the setting and preparation for Jesus’ ministry (1:5–4:13); proclamation and extension of God’s commonwealth (4:14–21:28); passion and resurrection (23:1–24:53). Luke is also embedded in Israel’s relationships with surrounding cultures. It participates in Hellenism not only in its language but also in its literary conventions. The Roman Empire especially bleeds through every page (Carter 2006). Luke’s audience seldom experienced the empire’s upper stratum directly. Rather they confronted systems that flowed down through client kings, governors, and local elite collaborators, including a high-priestly hierarchy, magistrates, and tax collectors. These systems sustained a world divided between unpropertied and propertied populations, those who subsisted from their own labor (90 percent) and those who lived from the labors of others (10 percent) (De Ste. Croix). Luke’s Jesus proclaims God’s commonwealth as an alternative to these imperial systems. Anything new in God’s commonwealth is also in continuity with Israel’s covenant community. Continuity comes with critiques aimed at abuses in imperial systems, but the critiques also aim at renewing Israel’s heritage. Luke anticipates extending God’s commonwealth to the nations, but this too is grounded in God’s promises to bless all the nations of the earth.
Robert L. Brawley

The focus text describes the baptism of Jesus. The people have been confused by the ministry of John, the son of Elizabeth. His followers have been filled by his teaching and have diligently and faithfully ascribed to the way of life that John has promoted. In the text, we witness a transition in leadership as the fully human John describes the one who is coming with Spirit and fire. John knows he is not the Messiah, believes the Messiah is coming, and considers his ministry vastly inferior to the Messiah he exalts.

The reader learns that Jesus was in the crowd and was baptized. There’s no indication within the selected passage that John, or anyone else, suspects Jesus to be the Messiah. All emphasis and speculation had centered on John as a possibility and his straightforward rejection of that theory. Only when Jesus has been baptized and prays is his identity revealed by Spirit and Voice as heaven opened.

Luke portrays Jesus’ baptism as an encounter in which only two characters have a role to play: Jesus (in solidarity with “all the people” who are responding to the call to turn to God) and God. The baptism of Jesus provides the occasion for an open heaven to send the Spirit upon Jesus, accompanied by the voice of God from heaven, directly disclosing to him his identity as beloved Son of God. Not a new insight for Jesus (cf. 2:49), but dramatic confirmation nevertheless, both for him and for readers: this is who he is. This divine witness to Jesus occurs while he is praying, an element that appears only in Luke’s account of the event, the first in a series of pivotal moments in Jesus’ life when Luke depicts him at prayer (6:12; 9:28; 11:1; 22:41–42; 23:34, 46).
John T. Carroll

The baptism of Jesus demonstrates their abiding solidarity with humanity, particularly expressed in Luke’s account. Jesus is with everyone else who is being baptized that day. His presence as the intersection of human and divine does not become revealed until after the rite has concluded and all the people have been baptized. His humble approach to his ministry as well as his generosity in sharing his experiences and divine access are defined from the onset.

Heaven opened for all of them just as John baptized all of them, including Jesus, the Messiah who will soon be revealed.

The expectation of a dual baptism pictures contrasting outcomes that await the repentant (Spirit, an image of restoration and salvation) and the unrepentant (fire, an image of judgment and destruction). The ensuing narrative develops the profile of a people divided in response to the message of prophet and Messiah, beginning already with Herod Antipas (vv. 19–20), as well as in their resulting destinies. John’s oracle regarding baptism with Spirit and fire finds dramatic fulfillment with the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost, where the Spirit appears in tongues “as of fire” (Acts 2:3–4). Later reminders of John’s promise, however, speak of the Holy Spirit, but not fire (Acts 1:5; cf. 11:16; 19:1–7). Spirit becomes the dominant motif in the narrated fulfillment of the prophecy, and fire simply one feature of the Spirit’s tangible manifestation. In the present context, however, with the accumulating images of Spirit and fire, then grain and chaff, John is highlighting the division in Israel to be effected by the ministry of the coming one.
John T. Carroll

Jesus, in this pericope, does not speak with words. He communicates with his actions, positioning himself among the people. That is his identity, God with Us, not just at birth but throughout his life. The Voice does the speaking, and Spirit descends. The Trinity reveals their fullness, union, and proximity just as heaven’s closeness and connectedness to earth is made visible in this encounter.

Later, Jesus will teach his disciples to pray for the earth as in heaven, but that was not the first time his life articulated that the two are not as distinct and separate as our traditions have led us to believe. Posted sentinels wait, observe, and note the moments, means, and manner that facilitate and reveal heaven opened.

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
Dad had insisted on fresh, clean, potable water for the baptism. He couldn’t afford it, of course. Who could? That was the other reason for the four extra kids:
Silvia Dunn, Hector Quintanilla, Curtis Talcott, and Drew Balter, along with my brothers Keith and Marcus. The other kids’ parents had helped with costs. They thought a proper baptism was important enough to spend some money and take some risks. I was the oldest by about two months. Curtis was next. As much as I hated being there, I hated even more that Curtis was there. I care about him more than I want to. I care what he thinks of me. I worry that I’ll fall apart in public some day and he’ll see. But not today.
By the time we reached the fortress-church, my jaw-muscles hurt from clinching and unclinching my teeth, and overall, I was exhausted.
There were only five or six dozen people at the service—enough to fill up our front rooms at home and look like a big crowd. At the church, though, with its surrounding wall and its security bars and Lazor wire and its huge hollowness inside, and its armed guards, the crowd seemed a tiny scattering of people. That was all right. The last thing I wanted was a big audience to maybe trip me up with pain.
The baptism went just as planned. They sent us kids off to the bathrooms (“men’s,” “women’s,” “please do not put paper of any kind into toilets,” “water for washing in bucket at left.…”) to undress and put on white gowns. When we were ready, Curtis’s father took us to an anteroom where we could hear the preaching—from the first chapter of Saint John and the second chapter of The Acts—and wait our turns.
My turn came last. I assume that was my father’s idea. First the neighbor kids, then my brothers, then me. For reasons that don’t make a lot of sense to me, Dad thinks I need more humility. I think my particular biological humility—or humiliation—is more than enough.
What the hell? Someone had to be last. I just wish I could have been courageous enough to skip the thing altogether.
So, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.…”
Catholics get this stuff over with when they’re babies. I wish Baptists did. I almost wish I could believe it was important the way a lot of people seem to, the way my father seems to. Failing that, I wish I didn’t care.
But I do.
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

For Further Reflection
“It is a long Baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion and in pain than to live untouched. Yet how will you sustain?” — Tillie Olsen
“Baptism reminds us that there’s no ladder to holiness to climb, no self-improvement plan to follow. It’s just death and resurrection, over and over again, day after day, as God reaches down into our deepest graves and with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead wrests us from our pride, our apathy, our fear, our prejudice, our anger, our hurt, and our despair.” — Rachel Held Evans
“And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.” — Toni Morrison

Works Cited
Brawley, Robert L. “Luke.” Gale A. Yee, Ed. Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014.
Carroll, John T. Luke. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
Conduct a baptism renewal ritual.

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/baptism-of-christ-c-january-12/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.