Epiphany 1, Year C | Luke 3:
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
January 12, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” – Luke 3:22[1]
It may be hard for us to understand the thrill, but the Gospel of Jesus was literally world-changing in the 1st Century. The more I study and learn, the more I keep realizing just how genuinely revolutionary it was—and still ought to be. Modern Western society may consider itself largely post-Christendom, but that underlying structure and history makes us largely blind to just how radical this message would have been socially, religiously, and politically.
For an example, look to this morning’s Gospel reading. Luke’s version of Jesus baptism tends to be familiar to anyone who’s spent much time in church. John the Baptist is yelling at the crowds. Jesus comes along and submits to the ritual, and then a lovely little vision transpires with rays of light and fluttering birds and a supportive parental voice echoing out its love for this individual. It’s sort of a tidy tableau that confirms Jesus’ divinity and then allows us to move on to more important things. For a 1st Century listener, however, this scene is raw sedition. This is the public proclamation of an empire counter to Rome. We’re watching the establishment of a completely new imperial line!
To really understand this, we’re going to have to dig into some history and wrap our minds around social structures in the ancient world.
When we as modern Americans hear the word “family” the first thing that comes to mind is not what the Bible’s first readers would have understood. The Roman world doesn’t appear to have had a word to refer to what we think of as the basic family unit: parents and their immediate children. It wasn’t even necessarily what we would think of as an extended family, with cousins and uncles and aunts. It was the entire collection of all living male relatives and their direct descendants—including people we might think of as twice or third removed, like the nephew of your great-grandfather’s uncle’s third wife—someone most of us probably aren’t even sure exists.
While the family consisted of all related fathers and their children (wives technically remained the property of their own family of origin throughout their lives), at the head of this structure was what we might consider the capital-F “Father.” Amongst the entire web and extent of the family, only the Father had legal and civil rights. Everyone else—no matter how old—fell into the categorical equivalent of a minor. So depending on the choices of previous generations, you might end up with a 90-year-old “child” to a genetically unrelated 18-year-old Father. Roman law gave the Father absolute rule within his family, to the point of executing members without public repercussion. Along with this authority, however, came a vast amount of responsibility. The Father wasn’t simply the ruler of the family. He was also the family’s principal provider, the family’s voice in society, and the keeper of family history. The Father basically was the family itself—both those presently alive and those who came before. As such, he was expected to maintain and pass on each and every family tradition exactly as he had received them—religious practices, social alignments, even the previous Fathers’ political interests and leanings.
One of the Father’s greatest responsibilities was to choose a capital-S Son. This Son was someone who would continue to guide the family in the way of generations before. If all went as hoped, the Father’s eldest biological son would naturally inherit the role. However, if the Father lacked male progeny or felt that his eldest male descendant wasn’t up to the task, he would turn to adoption.
Roman adoption almost never involved children. Instead, it was a binding legal agreement between two adult men, the Father of a family and someone that Father believed would best represent and lead the family in the future. That second party may have been a relative within the existing family, but it could just as easily have been a servant or a friend from down the street. Occasionally, people would go through an extended and far more complicated process wherein they could name one of their slaves as their official Son! The primary responsibility of whoever this new Son happened to be was to learn how to become a worthy heir, growing to embody the traits, characteristics, and thinking of his new Father, to prepare to maintain the familial continuity like all the family’s Fathers before him. And until 79 CE, well after the death of Jesus and Paul and the completion of the Gospel of Mark, this was the process by which all Roman emperors had been crowned.
Placed back into that context, what we see taking place at Jesus’ baptism[2] appears to reflect an imperial adoption ceremony, wherein the Father of All Creation is publicly proclaiming his new heir, the Son. With a god as the Father, that would have raised eyebrows in the government—the emperor was also held the title “Son of God”—but it wouldn’t necessarily have constituted a threat. The simple presence of a puff of breath is what makes the sedition clear.
The Emperor’s family represented itself throughout the Ancient World with the symbol of a war eagle—something proud and powerful, a mighty creature able to swoop in at impossible speeds to rend its enemies while just as quickly returning to untouchable heights. The presence of the Holy Spirit, or Sacred Breath, that coalesced above Jesus as a dove would have spoken volumes to those who first heard the tale: a new kind of imperial house has arrived. This Jesus is a valid and competing emperor, and his reign will be utterly unlike the governmental structures and practices that dominated his contemporary’s lives. A dove is weak. A dove is common. For those of a Hebrew background, a dove—something that cost nothing but the effort taken to capture it—was the sacrifice that the poorest of the poor, like Joseph and Mary, offered in the Temple.[3] The Father of the universe stood in stark contrast to the self-proclaimed Father of all Fathers who violently demanded they recognize his name as one above “every family in heaven and on earth.”[4] But the Celestial House—a family that subsumes even the Emperor’s—does not function like any earthly Imperial household. It does not seize power and demand obedience. It does not threaten, nor does it wield Death as a weapon to ensure compliance with its will. God’s Kingdom—the true Empire—is built upon peace and trust and incarnate acts of love.
So this morning I ask you, who is your family? Who is your Father? Where does your allegiance lie when you step outside these doors? And please don’t simply jump to the conclusion you want to think is right; observe the truth that your daily life reveals. Whose household code do you actually follow? Do you abide by the ways of earth’s Empires—imposing your will on those around you, treating those different from you with contempt, and smearing distain on those with whom you disagree? Consider whether or not you may have deluded yourself with a false Father who menaces with a sword and relishes in his ability to impose pain. Do you align yourself with the eagle, with its power, fury, and pride? It’s perfectly natural if you do. It’s how our present Empire has raised us to think and behave. Yet no matter what our world may teach or what it might say, how it moves to threaten and intimidate, maintaining that alliance is the true path of sedition. That’s because each one of us is part of a broader family with a far deeper history. An immensely greater Father provides for us all. And we have an option—a right and responsibility, actually—to choose which is worthy of our respect.
We can walk under the banner of the Dove. We can travel the path of mercy, compassion, and self-sacrifice. We can follow the appointed Son and learn to embrace practices and traditions reflecting the reality of the Celestial Father’s reign. We can reject earth’s Empire. We can say no to fear, hatred, and intimidation. We can live, right now, in the reality of God’s magnificent reign and listen in awe as the Father proclaims, even to us,
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Technically some time after in Luke’s account
[3] Luke 2:24
[4] Ephesians 3:15