St. Paul's Presbyterian Church

A link with the past and the future – Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 Many of you know that I have a keen interest in history. I continue to love all kinds of historical novels and a good conversation that focuses on issues of the present but with a historical perspective. About 10 years ago, I started to re-develop an interest in my own personal history specifically as it related to my own ancestry. I started with the information that I had secured from my mother and an old family bible and then started researching. It has been a fascinating journey – one that has opened some doors and connected me to branches of the family going back many generations. While preparing this message, I was reading a commentary by N.T. Wright. In it he makes an interesting observation. He noted that many of the Maori people in New Zealand can tell you which of the original eight long canoes their ancestors arrived in when they first immigrated to the country between 800 and 1000 A.D. The oral history of this people – like the oral history of so many ancient peoples – is extremely accurate. And while there may be some embellishment of the facts, it is no doubt true that these people are able to accurately trace their ancestry back more than 1,000 years. I don’t know how successful you have been in tracing your family history but most of us would have a hard time getting anything accurate back more than maybe 400-500 years and that would be due in large part to the fact that written records were kept. The Maori are a people like many ancient civilizations. They migrated to one area and stayed there for generations. Their range of travel was limited to a specific geographical area. Many of us in our Western world have come from far and wide. If we are successful in tracing our heritage back, we would no doubt find that our ancestors did not originate in the land from which they came to Canada but rather followed a migration path from other parts of Europe moving by generations from one side of Europe to another or even from Africa or Asia. This movement of peoples was caused in large part by people fleeing from conflict and social disruptions. Often everything of value or record was left behind and the possibility of staying in touch with the old country faded as life moved on. The Jewish people were something like the Maori. They were very conscious of their ancestry. They knew that the whole nation was related to Abraham. So in one way or another, they were all related. They were one big family. In spite of every effort to wipe the people of Israel from the earth, the promise of God to Abraham – that he would father a nation – has never been broken. And as strange as we may find it to be, for the people of Jesus’ day and even those who came before and those who came after, it was critical to trace their ancestry. It rooted them in who they were. For Luke the baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan needed to be rooted in the history of the people for if there was no genealogical connection that could be traced, people could find reasons to reject Jesus as the true Messiah of the people. After all, the prophets had predicted that the Messiah would come from the house of Jesse who was the father of David. And while the list in Luke does not exactly match the list in Matthew, the point of both is the same. It is to show the link between Jesus and David and between David and Abraham. Of course the question then is asked: But wasn’t Jesus only the blood child of Mary? Why then Joseph’s line? It is more than likely that Joseph and Mary shared a common ancestry. It would not be beyond belief to discover that they were cousins to one another and therefore in some way related. Regardless of how one wishes to look at the genealogy, it is clear that the intention of God to use Mary as the mother also included a plan to use Joseph as the father and so the child born of Mary and of God would also be the son of Joseph. And so Jesus is born into the family of Joseph, a descendant of David and a descendant of Abraham. For the Jewish people who witnessed the baptism of Jesus and who knew the genealogy of Jesus and made the connection that Jesus was indeed the Messiah promised by God, this was indeed good news. But what of those of us who cannot with any absolute certainty trace our ancestry back to Abraham? We know from the Gospels that while Jesus was sent to redeem the people of Israel and restore the nation to a true life with God, he also spoke of a wider mission. In so many places in the Scriptures, it is asserted that anyone can become a descendant of Abraham. As we learned last week, the decision to become a child of God is one that is not reserved for just a certain people. While many people could claim Jesus as their Messiah by blood, there were many others who claimed him as their Messiah by faith. And not one of those people was denied the right to call Jesus their Lord and Master or claim God as their God because they could not trace their lineage back by blood to Abraham. And that is good news for all of us! But what should we make of the baptism of Jesus? Well, for one thing it is a sign that Jesus was going to take the same path to God that all of us are called to take. He was going to prepare himself in the same way as everyone else. But just as the baptism of so many others was a first step, it was a first step for him in revealing to the people of that day the fullness of the path that God was calling the people to follow. But the baptism of Jesus is not just an action that is left hanging as we would hang waiting for what comes next. He prays. What he is praying for we are not told but no doubt he was praying for strength and encouragement as he knew that this step was marking the beginning of his public ministry. And in that moment when he was in prayer, that is when the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended on him in the form of a dove and a voice was heard from the heavens declaring Jesus to be the beloved with whom God was pleased. Jesus is confirmed as the promised Messiah. And just as the dove returned with the olive branch as a sign to Noah that the flood had receded and that the dry land had appeared again, the dove comes from God to show that the promise of God is real and that something new and wonderful is about to be revealed!