Baptism of Our Lord: A Three Part Drama
This is the sermon I preached two Sundays ago, 1/10/16 at St.Timothy http://www.sttimothybemus.com/Church/Home.html and St. Mark Lutheran Churches . The scripture text is Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 . We celebrated the Baptism of Our Lord. Today we celebrate the baptism of Our Lord Jesus. In Luke's gospel, the actual baptism itself is rather downplayed. Greater emphasis is placed on the events that took place surrounding Jesus' baptism. The purpose of this passage is to introduce and begin to answer the question of Jesus' identity and mission as well as to highlight the work of the Holy Spirit in anointing people for ministry. The passage itself is presented to us as a revelatory drama of Jesus' post baptismal experience. This drama consists of three parts: the heavens are opened, the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus and there is a voice from heaven. In part 1 of our drama-the heavens are opened. Here Luke repeats end time imagery about the coming of the Messia...