There are various popular hypotheses about what Jesus did in these intervening years, such as travelling to India, but in truth these hypotheses are very dodgy and usually based on non existent historical evidence. We simply don’t know.

It seems all we can glean about those years is that Jesus lived a pretty ordinary life, in an ordinary family setting, as the carpenter’s son in Nazareth. If you remember after His Baptism, and the temptations in the wilderness, Jesus began his ministry in Galilee by teaching in the synagogues, and when he went to his own synagogue in Nazareth and stood up and read from Isaiah, ‘Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’, the congregation said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son’. Jesus was recognised for what he had been all those years in Nazareth, the son of Joseph the Carpenter, and no doubt he had followed Joseph into that trade.

90% of Jesus’ life was not spent in the limelight, but in that provincial backwater of Nazareth. As John’s Gospel reminds us, ‘The word became flesh and lived among us. Those 30 missing years are an important reminder to us because they reinforce, if we need it, that Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, does indeed know what it is like to walk in our human shoes. Not just the sense of his ministry in those last 3 years, but in the sense of living the ordinariness of our human daily lives. He knew what it was to be truly human as well as truly divine.

This is what we mean by Incarnation – God with us, really and truly, in the reality of everyday life, with all its trials and tribulations.

But today, we celebrate that moment when Jesus leaves behind those years of ordinary life and is revealed as the Messiah.

And this is clear right from the moment of Baptism, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’. These are not just any old words. Firstly, they are spoken by God, after the heavens are torn apart and the Spirit has descended like a dove on Jesus. ‘You are my Son, the Beloved’ echoes Psalm 2, which clearly spoke for the Jews of the coming Messiah, and ‘with you I am well pleased’, echoing the Servant Song from Isaiah 42, words which point us to the sort of Messiah Jesus was called to be. Not a worldly leader, but a suffering servant.

Many people have wondered why Jesus needed to be baptised at all. Isn’t baptism a sign of washing away of sins following repentance? Isn’t Jesus supposed to be perfect, free from original sin? If so why should Jesus need baptising? When we reflect on the Baptism of Christ in Matthew’s Gospel we see that’s obviously what John the Baptist thought, judging by his reluctance to baptise Jesus.

But Jesus’ baptism is about something else. For Jesus, as for us, it is an initiation. In Jesus’ case a public initiation into his ministry, suffering and death, something that came with that seal of approval from God, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’.

The baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins that John carried out was symbolic, but Jesus’ baptism goes beyond symbolism to the power of God, to the breaking out of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Fire of God. And it is the visible coming of the Holy Spirit descending like a dove onto Jesus which separates him from the rest of us.

It all sounds very benign and lovely, and certainly conjures up for us a blissful scene, Jesus fully immersed in the River Jordan, and as he comes out of the water God speaking to him and the holy Spirit descending tranquilly like a dove onto him.

But hear what Mark tells us, the heavens don’t just open, they are torn apart, a word we will not hear again until Jesus is on the Cross, breathes his last and the temple is torn in two. There is a powerful force at work tearing the heavens apart, a force way beyond human endeavour. And the Holy Spirit is not some light wind blowing around, it can be a fearsome thing, in the Acts of the Apostles, we hear that it is like the rush of a violent wind, filling the entire house where the Apostles and the followers of Jesus were, and divided tongues of fire appeared among them and rested on them.

The Hebrew word for the Holy Spirit is ‘Ruah’ (rue-ah), and our translation of that word into Holy Spirit does not do justice to the Biblical text, let alone the Judeo-Christian tradition. It can mean breath, wind, and spirit. It swept across the untamed and chaotic waters of creation, it is a mighty wind releasing into the world a specific force that is linked to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus, but which is invisible, inexplicable and irresistible.

And this ‘Ruah’, this Holy Spirit is a gift of imaginative freedom given to us by God, through which all members of the community of faith are capable of moving beyond the present circumstances of life we find ourselves in, through Grace, into a new future.

It is the Holy Spirit that finds us out, reveals what we are really like, and can move us from our very comfortable lives, lived with all the benefits of modern life, into a new life serving God through Jesus Christ, which can take us out of our comfort zone, and lead us places we never dreamed possible. Not just ordained ministers, but everyone.

The word of God comes into our lives, with power from the Holy Spirit, and much assurance, if we listen for it. And there is an awakening, an outburst of divine energy which manifests itself in our lives, moved and disturbed by the Greatness of God and the acknowledgment of our own sins. We have to turn to Christ, we have to repent of our sins, we have to renounce evil.

John preached on two great themes. The greatness of Christ, as the Son of God. He pointed to the glory of the expected Messiah. ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me: I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals’. For Jewish people, who were hearing this message, that simple act was the most degrading of tasks one human being could perform for another. It was an act beneath the dignity of a slave. John is making is position with regard to Jesus very clear indeed. He is not worthy to be less than a slave to the one coming after him.

John was a very great man, he was the last of the Old Testament prophets and the bridge to a new religious reformation, yet he made it clear that Jesus was of a different sort of greatness. When Jesus speaks the winds obey, the sick are healed, the hungry are fed, water is turned into wine, and the dead receive new life.

John is the voice of preparation and Jesus the one whose way has to be prepared. The fulfilment of the Old Testament, ‘See I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way’. In pointing to this long expected Mighty One, the Messiah, John tells us that his greatness is so different because Jesus is God incarnate. Seen at his birth, confirmed by the Magi. And this is the key to all that follows in every mighty act He performs and all the ways he fulfils His earthly ministry. Jesus is the Son of God, the Beloved. and Mark makes this clear in every word of his Gospel.

The second great theme John preaches, is the promise that this Jesus, the Son of God, will baptize with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes as a gift, not a challenge. The Holy Spirit comes with all Grace and Love from God our Heavenly Father, bestowed on us by Jesus Christ, not something obtained by negotiation or status or class or creed or ethnicity. The Holy Spirit is always received as a gift, and what a wonderful gift to give us. All we have to do is be open to receive this most wonderful gift into our lives.

So if Jesus’ baptism was the start of His ministry, what was this ministry going to be? In John’s Gospel account of the Baptism of Christ he tells us that as Jesus came towards him at the River Jordan to be baptised, John the Baptist said, Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’. That is exactly what Jesus had come to do. He came in meekness to save us. He came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for all our sins.

How very appropriate that Jesus, at the start of this great transforming mission to the world should stand with everyone else who had come to be baptised, and be plunged into the Jordan. Symbolically standing alongside the people He had come to save, just as He stands alongside us, now.

Each one of us, no matter what we do in our lives, no matter what sin we may commit, great or small, is still a child of God, and God loves us unconditionally and completely. We may turn away from that love and reject it, we may deny the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, but God is always ready to forgive us and receive us back into his fold.

At the start of this New Year, as we remember Christ’s baptism, let us remember our own baptism also, in which God takes hold of us and grafts us into his family, forever. And rather than making some unkeepable resolution to try harder and to do better, let us instead open ourselves afresh to the Holy Spirit. Open ourselves to being revealed for what we are. Open ourselves to hear the words from God, we scarcely dare to believe, ‘You are my beloved son or my beloved daughter’, and allow ourselves to be surprised by God’s Holy Spirit filling our lives with his love, and leading us to where he wants us to be.