EPIPHANIES

I am not much of a Bible scholar, and if you are like me, you may have been wondering how it is that last week Jesus was a mere infant being visited by the three Magi, while this week he is already about 30 years old and being baptized by John in the Jordan river.  So I looked it up, and it turns out that the Gospels do not provide much information on Jesus' childhood and early adulthood.

Matthew tells us that soon after the Magi returned home, Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt to hide from King Herod, who ordered the slaughter of every child in and around Bethlehem who was two years old and younger.  After Herod's death, the family returned to Nazareth.

While the Bible does not say much about Jesus' childhood, from other writings that did not make it into the Bible, we learn that Jesus was somewhat of a prankster as a child.  We were taught some of these stories in Sunday school, like when Jesus gave his folks the slip in Jerusalem and hung out at the Temple for three days.  Other stories tell about how Jesus' playful tricks scared away his playmates.  In this way, Jesus was apparently much like the young Harry Potter.

One day Jesus went looking for the other children at one of their homes.  The children were hiding from him in the basement, and when the child's mom answered the door, she said there were no children at home.  But then Jesus heard some noise from the basement, and asked her what that was.  She said it was just the goats, so Jesus asked her to let them out.  When she opened the door, goats came out.  The mother was justifiably horrified, and ran complaining to Mary about her son.  Jesus turned the goats back into children, but you can imagine that these antics of Jesus' caused his parents a great deal of worry.  If these stories are true, it could be that the Gospel writers decided to skip over Jesus' early life because it detracted from the message.

So today, in this liturgical season of Epiphany, we encounter Jesus as an adult, about to make a radical change in his life.  In the church world, "epiphany" means a manifestation of God in man.  We saw this last week when the Magi recognized Jesus as the Christ child.  This week we see it in the baptism of Jesus.  However, this episode begins with another kind of epiphany:  Jesus' sudden realization that he must go to Judea to be baptized by John.  Somehow Jesus knew that this strange, locust- and wild honey-eating man was the key to finding his purpose in life.

As Jesus emerges from the waters of the Jordan, the Holy Spirit descends upon him, and God declares that Jesus is His son, with whom He is "well pleased."  This declaration of God's seems somewhat odd since up until now, although Jesus was without sin, he had done nothing for God to be especially pleased about.  However, this epiphany in the baptism of Jesus was just another step in God's plan for Jesus.  From then on, Jesus would baptize people, not just with water, but also with the Holy Spirit.  God is preparing Jesus for his new life of ministry.  Soon after his baptism, which is then followed by his temptation by the devil in the wilderness, Jesus moved to Capernaum and began gathering his disciples to fulfill his baptismal covenant with God.