Thomas J Parlette
“As He Was Praying”
Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22
1/9/22
According to Luke, John the Baptist was baptizing people on the banks of the Jordan River. Then Luke makes one of the most startling pronouncements in the New Testament. He writes, “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too.”
Every year on the First Sunday after Epiphany, liturgical churches celebrate the Baptism of our Lord. For us, it’s a major event. The Son of God submits to being baptized at the hands of a somewhat eccentric preacher called John the Baptist.
Mark describes John as wearing clothes of camel’s hair, living on locusts and wild honey and making his home in the wilderness. John admits that he is not worthy to carry Christ’s sandals. In fact, he seeks to deter Jesus from being baptized at his unworthy hands. I should be baptized by you, he says.
It’s a remarkable scene. He who was without sin, submits himself to religious rite that most of us associate with the symbolic act of washing sin away. The sacrament of baptism is so important to our identity as Christians that is required in one form or another by all Christian denominations that I know of.
And notice what happens next, after Jesus baptism. Luke writes, “And as he was praying, heaven 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.”
You’ve heard or read those words many times, I’m sure. It’s a very familiar scene. But have you noticed those words coming immediately after Jesus’ baptism… “as he was praying…? It’s easy to breeze past that phrase and go right to the part about heaven opening and the dove descending and the voice itself. It’s easy to cruise right past that about praying.
It’s not surprising really that Jesus was praying. Prayer played a major role in his ministry, we see him do it a lot. Here he was, the very manifestation of God on Earth, and yet he felt the need to be in continuous communication with God.
That’s probably not the case for most of us. We have a very limited acquaintance with God – Sunday mornings, maybe Wednesdays, at least a short word or two most days of the week. If we’re doing that, we’re feeling good about our connection to God.
Herb Miller, in his book, Evangelism’s Open Secrets, tells about a student work director at a large University who was giving a guest speaker a tour of his campus ministry building. As they walked down a hallway, the guest saw a sign marked “Prayer Room”, and he was curious.
As they walked past the sign, it became obvious that the director had no intention of showing him that particular room. But the guest’s curiosity was piqued, so he reached for the door knob to take a quick peek.
As he opened the door, his nostrils were assaulted by a musty smell. He reports that “the room was stuffed with boxes, boots, clothes hangers and other junk. On the little altar stood a pair of worn cowboy boots, an old box overflowing with hats and gloves, and a roll of toilet paper.” Remember, this was the prayer room for the university’s campus ministry. A bit embarrassed, the director quickly explained, “We used this for a storage room over the summer. Just haven’t gotten it cleaned out yet.”
Herb Miller writes, “At first it seemed like a sacrilegious thing to the visitor – stacking a prayer room full of junk. But then he realized that the room was a parable of his own life. He was so busy traveling around the country speaking and doing good things, he had lost the habit of praying. The time he had formerly spent talking with God each day was now crowded full of other things.”(1)
I suspect that happens to most of us. We are so busy that we have crowded out the one necessary practice for a truly fulfilling life. But Jesus never let that happen. Immediately after he was baptized, Jesus was praying – and what happened next? Luke tells us, “The heaven opened.”
Some of you might remember the name Sister Elizabeth Kenny. She was a self-trained nurse in the Australian bush country in the first half of the twentieth century. Sister Kenny developed a new and successful approach to treating people suffering from polio. Her method, which was bitterly contested at the time within the medical community, differed from the conventional medical practice of the time. The conventional practice, referred to as “splinting,” called for placing affected limbs in plaster casts, a practice that was not only quite uncomfortable, but ineffective as well.
Instead of putting patients with polio in plaster casts, Sister Kenny applied hot compresses to the affected parts of her patient’s bodies followed by passive movement of those areas to reduce what she called “Spasm.”
Sister Kenny stumbled upon this treatment out of necessity. She had been called to the bedside of a seven year old girl who lived in the Australian bush. She had extreme pain, a high fever, and the muscles of her leg and foot were contracted. Sister Kenny did not recognize the symptoms, so she sent a rider on horseback to a telegraph station twenty miles away to get some expert advice over the telegraph. Finally the reply came back, “The symptoms you describe indicate infantile paralysis. There is no known cure. Do the best you can.”
So with no other option, she devised her unique program of hot compresses and passive movement – which she also applied to polio victims. Later, when she received recognition for innovations, Sister Kenny was asked, “How did you come up with this treatment? What did you do first?”
And Sister Kenny answered, “Well, the first thing I did was kneel down and say a prayer.”(2)
When we pray, the heavens open, and in Sister Kenny’s case, she was led to a treatment that relieved the suffering of thousands of polio patients.
After Jesus prayed and the heavens opened, we read that the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.”
In the north of England, they have been digging coal for over a century. The miners who dig for coal go miles away from the central shaft, so there is always the danger of the men getting lost. On one particular day, two miners did lose their way out of the mine. Their lights finally went out, and they were in danger of losing their lives. After wandering around in the darkness for a long time, they sat down, and one of them said: “Let’s sit perfectly still and see if we can feel the way the air is moving because it always moves toward the shaft.”
There they sat for a long time, when suddenly one of them felt a slight touch of air on his cheek. He sprang to his feet and said, “I felt it!” They set off in the direction the wind was moving and reached the central shaft and made their way back to the light of day above ground. (3)
As you probably remember, the Hebrew word for Spirt – ruach- is also the word for wind or breath. In a very real way, we also need to feel the movement of the air. We need to experience the movement of the wind of God’s Spirit in our life.
That’s what happens when we pray – the heavens open, and the wind of God’s spirit blows… and we become new people. That’s the promise of baptism. We can have new life in Christ Jesus.
William P Barker tells about a machinist with the Ford Motor company in Detroit who had, over a period of years, “borrowed” a bunch of parts and tools from the company which he had not gotten around to returning. While this practice was not condoned, it was more or less accepted by the management at Ford, and nothing was really done about it. The machinist, however, experienced a Christian conversion at a conference he attended. He was baptized and became a devout believer. Even more importantly, he took his baptism quite seriously.
The day after he got back from his conference, he arrived at work loaded down with tools and all the parts he had “borrowed” and not returned over the years. He explained the situation to his foreman and added that he never really meant to steal them and hoped he’d be forgiven – since he had finally brought everything back.
His foreman was so impressed that he cabled Henry Ford himself – who was visiting a European plant- and explained the entire event in detail. Immediately Ford cabled back: “Dam up the Detroit River and baptize the entire city!”(4)
When Jesus prayed on the day he was baptized, the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit descended, and a voice came from heaven: You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Baptism at its best results in us becoming a new person. In baptism, we also discover that we, too, are children of God.
The late Rev. Dr. John Claypool, once told a moving story that came out of World War I. At the end of that terrible conflict the government of France was faced with an unusual problem. In their army hospitals were over 100 soldiers who had developed total amnesia caused by battle trauma. These men could not remember anything about themselves – their names, their families, their hometowns – nothing. They had no idea who they were. They were totally separated from their origins.
So, the government announced to the whole nation that all families who had relatives missing in action should come to a specific hospital on an appointed day. A large platform was set-up, and with the families gathered around, the soldiers were led out one by one in the hopes that somebody would recognize them, and they could be reunited with their loved ones. And many of them were.(5)
When Jesus prayed on the day of his baptism, the heaven opened, and the Holy Spirit descended, and a voice came from heaven: You are my son, whom I love. With you I am well pleased.”
When we pray, we open ourselves to the Spirit of God as it blows through our lives and we become new as we realize that we are children of God.
And for that, may God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1, p 11.
2. Ibid… p 12.
3. Ibid… p 12.
4. Ibid… p 13.
5. Ibid… p 13.
