A strange thing happens. John the Baptist is out in the desert baptising people who have come to repent. And as they go down into the waters of the River Jordan, and come back up again, they are making a public statement - of two things: firstly, that they are ashamed of things they have done and secondly, that they want to set out on a new path and live in a different and better way.

And then lining up with all of these sad, shamed and repentant people, is Jesus, the man that we believe to be the son of God, the man that we believe to be completely free from sin, in other words the very last person on the face of the earth you would ever expect to come for baptism. He is not only lining up with people who know they have done shameful things, but is undergoing the humiliation of baptism out of a complete solidarity with them.

So what does this tell us? I think it's saying this: this man who is sinless himself is most at home in the company not of those who think they are good or worthy or deserving or pious, but in the company of those who know that they have done some pretty bad stuff.

And so it is that at that moment, as Jesus bows his head with the rest of sinful humanity, that all of a sudden the heavens open, the spotlights shine, and a voice from heaven tells us exactly who this Jesus is: here, in the lowest human experience, in the moment of repentance, God's beloved son is present.

Picture above: part of The Baptism of Christ, by David Zelenka, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons