Thinking Outside of the Box: Reflecting on Jesus's Baptism

 “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” Matthew 3:17.

All three synoptic gospels record what Jesus experienced at his baptism. He had a vision and he heard of a voice. Both confirmed his thinking and his self-understanding.

We are not told what prompted his thinking in the direction it took or how he arrived at his conclusions. Some believe he knew all along, but Luke tells us Jesus grew like any normal human being (Luke 2:52). Luke’s statement means Jesus came to his conclusions the same way any of us do – learning, thinking, reflecting, studying, meditating, listening, questioning, even doubting.

While we don’t know how Jesus came to his conclusion, we do know what that thinking was. It is reflected in his experience at his baptism. Jesus came to be baptized with this thinking in the back of his mind . . . or maybe in the forefront. His experience at his baptism reveals his thinking. In addition, his experience of the vision and the voice confirmed for him the validity of his thinking.

Jesus’s thinking was what we today call “outside of the box” thinking. It was not in line with the common understandings or teachings of his religious heritage. It was unique and unusual even though it was rooted in the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was so outside of the box that people thought it ludicrous and outright rejected it. In spite of the reactions of others, Jesus’s thinking captured the heart of God . . . which is why we are wise to pay attention to it.

Jesus’s thinking was about his sense of identity, i.e., who he was. His self-understanding, reflected in the vision and the voice, was that he was the long-awaited messiah. To think of himself as the messiah would have been outside the box thinking. His understanding of what that meant – reflected in what the voice said – was even more outside the box.

His self-understanding was confirmed in the vision. The vision was of the Spirit descending from heaven and landing on him in the form of a dove. Thus, the vision proclaimed he was being anointed with the Spirit just as other individuals in Hebrew history had been: prophets, priests, kings. The Spirit was given to these individuals, empowering them to do the work God called them to do. The vision affirmed for Jesus that he was being called of God to do God’s work. He was anointed with the Spirit – and thus empowered by the Spirit – for this work. He was “the anointed one,” i.e., the messiah (which means “the anointed one.”) The vision confirmed Jesus’s self-understanding. He was the long-awaited messiah.

Jesus’s self-understanding was also confirmed in the voice he heard.

What the voice said came from the Hebrew Scriptures. The first phrase came from Psalm 2, the coronation psalm that was sung when a new king was crowned – “This is my Son, the Beloved.” The psalm proclaimed the unique relationship the king had with God as the adopted son of God. This phrase affirmed for Jesus that he was the promised messianic king. Coupled with this phrase from Psalm 2 was a line from the first servant song of Isaiah, Isaiah 42:1-9. (Scholars have identified four poems in Isaiah 40-55 that they refer to as servant songs. These poems speak of one who is called the servant of the LORD. In the fourth and final servant song, this servant suffers and dies. Thus, he is called the suffering servant of the LORD.) This second line from Isaiah 42:1 identifies Jesus as the suffering servant.

These two lines indicate that Jesus had come to understand that the messiah was also the suffering servant. No one in their history had ever put these two figures together. It was outside of the box thinking. The Hebrew people thought of the messiah as one like David, a warrior king who would defeat their enemies and reestablish the dominance of their nation. No one thought of the messiah as one who would suffer and die on behalf of the nation. Jesus’s disciples, believing he was the messiah, followed him to Jerusalem expecting him to defeat the hated Romans, restoring the Hebrew kingdom. They could not embrace Jesus’s outside of the box thinking until after his death and resurrection.

Putting these two figures together indicated that Jesus understood the heart of God.

The defining characteristic of the heart of God is steadfast, faithful love (Exodus 34:6-7). God never gives up on or abandons God’s people. This faithful love leads God to suffer with God’s people and for them. Identifying God as the creator proclaims that God uses power in life-giving, life-enhancing ways. God does not use power the way we humans commonly do – over, down against others, for our own benefit, at their expense (Mark 10:41-45). God does not use power to destroy. (The story of the flood in Genesis 6-9 equates the violent use of power against others as evil.)

Jesus’s experience at his baptism calls us once again to remember the nature of God. It calls us to recognize the self-giving, self-sacrificing servant love that is the essence of who God is. It calls us, as God’s beloved children and the followers of Jesus today, to think outside of the box of our default human thinking, embracing once again the grace-based ways of God’s self-giving, servant love. To embrace the ways of God that Jesus taught and lived is to reject the default thinking of power over, down against others, for our own personal benefit, at their expense. It is to think outside of the box.