We have moved from ‘Christmas’, in the church season of readings, and have moved into Epiphany. That’s odd as, just as Downton Abbey’s meme indicates : “Christmas doesn’t end until Candlemas“. Hands up who knows what that date that means? OK, hands down (mine was never up!)
We are in Luke Chapter 3, but recall that chapters were never included in the Bible until the early 13th C. It was, originally, one continuous set of prose – initially, often without vowels! Anyway, Luke Chapter 3 is interesting. If, as Ehrman suggests, given that the authors of Mark and John’s Gospel didn’t need to mention the genealogy of Jesus, was Luke 1-2 added later? i.e not in the original version of Luke’s Gospel.
Why not start at Luke 3:1 and see if it makes much of a difference…
We have John the Baptist (who is never described in the Greek as such in the New Testament) teaching upon repentance. We have heard this so many times, but we may have missed the link with the baptism, and importantly, the perceived ‘threat‘ – see below – western Christianity has taken on board…wrongly, in my opinion.
All 3 synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke : synoptic as they can all be seen (‘optic‘) together) speak of Jesus being baptised by John. Recall, that John is not the Messiah, he was just a wandering pastor who led a large group of followers and had a thing about ‘cleansing people’ in the River Jordan, ‘alternative rivers also available‘. But, if John was really the prophet Elijah, by baptising Jesus, this might herald the cleansing of Israel and its transformation. By this cleansing, people could make a change of direction in their life. The Greek word for this transformation was metanoia: oft translated as repentance…’a change of mind’.
John says that he baptises people with water, but, whoa, Jesus will baptise people with the Spirit and with fire… (small print: we might not always pick up on this point of fire)
Unquenchable Fire
In both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospel we have ‘unquenchable fire’, albeit Mark is astonishingly quiet on any form of fire. If Matthew and Luke used Mark’s Gospel as a framework to write their understanding of Jesus’ life, here’s yet another area that they add additional bits: for extra emphasis?
Jesus is baptised. Big question, if baptism is to change the direction of the individual
because of all that they had done wrong in their life, why Jesus then?
[Possibly, so that God could say “You are my beloved”, vibing from Genesis and the creation story?]
In the Gospel of the Ebonites, it says that Jesus’ baptism was ‘fire kindled in the Jordan“, the one that cleansed.
Fire
We may note that fire is used a lot within the scriptures. Dr Eitan Bar explains that “fire is never depicted as a symbol of eternal torture in Hellfire. Still, it does represent many other significant concepts, particularly purification.” In the Exodus story of the burning bush, Moses notes that the bush is burning but is not destroyed. In Numbers 19:1-10, a heifer is slaughtered and burnt, but they use the ashes to create water for cleansing purposes. God is seen within fire: it denotes God’s presence. Not literally, but metaphorically.
If we have a fire in the house, we can use ashes with water to clean the glass on the front of the fire – better than anything you can buy for the job. Might also be good for the oven door. Often we read of fire being like a refiner’s fire.
But what of the fire in the New Testament? Following Augustine and Calvin, fire was seen in a literal sense. In Matthew’s corresponding retelling of this story from Luke (Matthew 3: 11-12) we are told of the process of using a winnowing fork to separate the wheat from the chaff – the latter will be burnt in that ‘unquenchable fire’. But Matthew was (1) using a farming metaphor and (2) speaking of Israel needing to change its ways. When we consider it, individually, we can see it as separating the good stuff we do from the other stuff, so we grow closer to God. In Luke 22:31, Peter is told by Jesus that “he might be sifted like wheat” – so, not to be burned up, but cleansed.
Hell
We may like many western religious folk have been tainted by Dante’s depiction of Hell (seen here from the Getty collection) as roaring fires burning up the sinful. Odd that in our scriptures, Hell is often translated from Hades, amongst other words. Hades is a place of cleansing, where God can mingle with us, depicted as ‘shades’ or shadows – so, not in bodily form.
Some people seek to emphasise the pain which might be felt if we don’t believe what they earnestly believe – think about that, for a moment.
In Judaism, the word for fire is “what transforms all it touches into light and likeness with itself. God enlightens and purifies so we can become more and more like God.“
So, possibly, the baptism by Jesus can be seen as one that cleanses, transforms, asks us to change our minds, progressively, so we can know the mind of God.
It is that uninterrupted privilege of being transformed – could that be like Heaven as well?
What are your thoughts on that?