Because “righteousness” is really just another word for justice in the Gospel stories. The righteousness of God is about God’s justness. So the story of Jesus’ baptism is not about Jesus undertaking something that he had to do for no apparent reason. And the fact that the story is included in 3 gospels and alluded to in the fourth means that the early Christian communities and the gospel editors didn’t think that it was that kind of story either: a story about nothing, if you like.
No, the story is included in the early church’s memories of Jesus because it had significance for the early church. The fact that Jesus was baptised had significance for them: so much significance that baptism becomes a very important ritual in the early Christian community—the rite of initiation into the community itself.
But baptism was around long before Christianity. Water is such an important symbol for human beings. It lends itself so well to symbolic gestures. It is an ambiguous sign. Water has the power for life and the power for death. The power to cleanse and the power to sweep entirely away. Long before Christianity, baptism, the act of going under and coming up from the waters was used as a sign for conversion or new directions in religious faith. The word “baptism” comes from a Greek word meaning “to dip” or “to plunge”. The new convert is dipped or plunged into water to signify a cleansing, renewing, rebirthing into a new faith direction.
That’s why one of the suggestions for the reason why the story of Jesus’ baptism has been so significant has been to argue that Jesus’ baptism is the point at which he receives his call to ministry. This story is said to recall the moment when Jesus’ destiny was fully revealed. It’s a good suggestion, but not my personal choice.
The story itself, particularly in Matthew, doesn’t seem to see things that way. It’s a pretty definite Jesus that says “it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness”. And according to the preceding piece about John the Baptist, Jesus stands out from the crowd long before the act of baptism. No, the story of Jesus’ baptism is the Gospel of Matthew is not presented as the moment of the truth, the moment of his call.
No, for me, it’s the water to which I return in the story of Jesus’ baptism, and in Matthew’s Gospel, the Jewish-Christian Gospel, I think that it’s the water that’s quite significant: the going down and the coming up.
You have to remember that, at the time that the gospels are being put together, the early Christian communities are still in the process of becoming separated from their Jewish beginnings. The Jewish faith story still runs through their attempts to understand who Jesus was and why he was significant. And the defining story for the people of the Jewish faith is the story of the Exodus: the rescue of the oppressed people of Israel from the tyrannical Egyptian pharoah—the story of the Prince of Egypt as DreamWorks would like to tell us.
This story of going down and coming up, of descent and ascent, has already appeared as an echo in the Gospel of Matthew in the tale of the escape of Jesus’ family to Egypt after the warning from the wise visitors. And we are still meant to hear its echoes in the story of Jesus’ baptism. Because this story is yet another story about establishing Jesus credentials.
In chapter 1 we hear about his genealogy in the line of Abraham and David. We hear of his birth in fulfilment of the prophets. In chapter 2 we hear of his recognition by nations beyond Israel, and his appearance in fulfilment of the wisdom from the East. We also hear of the journey to and from Egypt, just like the ancestors of the Jewish people. And in the baptismal story we are meant to keep hearing these echoes of faith and tradition, placing Jesus in the line of the faithful and prophetic people of God.
To be a person of the Jewish faith means being able to recount the ancestral story as your story:
“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor who went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” (Deut 26:5b-9)
This is the tradition to which Jesus is linked because this is a tradition of depth. In this tradition, there is a sense in which faith in God is discovered in the trials of life, in the moments of despair when even God seems far away—in the goings down before the comings out which only God can do. “To fulfil all righteousness.” To bring about all justice.
We don’t really know anything much about the life of Jesus. We don’t really know what his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood was like. We don’t know what prompted his ministry. We have only the records of the gospel writers, memories and re-tellings of a very short period in Jesus’ life. But they all include or allude to the baptism of Jesus, and for Matthew in particular, the image is attached to the powerful stories of the Jewish faith.
Jesus is the one who went down to Egypt and who came up again not to be saved, but to save. Jesus is the one who went down in the waters, not to be saved but to save. Jesus is the one who endured the pain of degradation and humiliation to continue his message of justice and peace. Jesus is the archetypal child of God—the one who discovers relationship in God in the depths of life, and who emerges from those depths to point others towards God’s love, to bring others into the realm of God’s love.
This is God’s righteousness. This is God’s justice. Jesus participates in the tradition, identifies with the tradition of the righteousness and justice of God “to fulfil all righteousness”, to fulfil all justice, to expand the community of the people of God.
And now we are the baptised people of God. Jesus’ story is our story. For we have participated symbolically and in reality as human beings in the goings down and the comings up of the human story. Our God is the God we have discovered in the depths, who is the one who brings us up out of the water into the light. Our God is the God who demands the fulfilment of all righteousness, not because there is no apparent reason for doing it, but because it is the will and the justice of God.
And as God’s baptised people we are called to bring others into the community of God: to help others stand in the tradition where God never leaves the people even in their deepest despair; to proclaim that the work of God happens in the goings down and comings up of a people of faith as they seek to fulfil all righteousness; to bring about God’s community of justice and peace; to allow ourselves to be baptised in the tradition, the continuing life of the people of God, and the continuing life of humanity as it cries out for justice and peace; to be prepared for our own goings down and comings up in our own journeys of life and faith towards the justice of God.
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