"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). This verse is from the Gospel of Matthew, one of the three synoptic Gospels in the New Testament of the Bible, and is about the ...

Remember the day of your baptism? It's highly unlikely, but your parents and godparents and an assortment of relatives probably do. Perhaps they remember the event itself, or the party, or something ...

One of the things we know for certain about Jesus is that he was baptized by John. We're sure of it because it embarrassed the early church, making Jesus appear as John's disciple, yet it was too well ...

The title “servant of God” (Hebrew, ebed) in Isaiah, which appears in a number of “Servant Songs,” is a complex one. When ebed was translated from Hebrew to Greek in the Septuagint, it was translated ...

The Sunday after Epiphany is always the Baptism of the Lord (unless Epiphany is observed on Jan. 7 or 8 in those countries like the United States where it is transferred to a Sunday, in which case the ...

To many Christians the baptism of Jesus seems almost as much of an enigma as it did to the Baptist. It serves as a precedent for our own baptism. It also forms an introduction to Christ’s ministry.

Our journey begins where Jesus’ own public ministry began. In this episode, we will walk with Jesus from his home in Nazareth to the Jordan River, where he is baptized by John the Baptist. Walk with ...

The Baptism of the Lord closes the Christmas season. The next day begins the First Week of Ordinary Time, Lent following in five weeks on Feb. 17. The Christmas season is full of theophanies, i.e., ...

The baptismal text begins a pattern in Jesus’ ministry that I’m not sure is taken with enough seriousness: Jesus continually empowering the church for service rather than limiting that power to ...

Rather than narrating the back-story of John or a relating a history establishing the lineage of Jesus, the beginning of Mark’s gospel cuts straight to the chase. It is like a gurney waiting in the ...

With the arrival of Lent, many Christians enter a season marked by fasting and renewed spiritual focus. The 40-day observance recalls the period when Jesus of Nazareth withdrew into the wilderness ...