Weheia, the word used for “open” in the Hawaiian text of Luke, has an interesting range of meanings: open, untie, undo, loosen, unlock, take off (as clothes). So we can consider in myriad ways the heavens’ opening for the Holy Spirit to descend. Maybe we get the sense that “the sky let loose” or “heaven became naked or exposed.” In the Celtic sense, that time at the Jordan becomes a “thin place,” where the vast distance between heaven and earth collapses and our experience of God becomes more immediate.

But God’s immediacy may be at once reassuring and terrifying in Luke’s narrative arc. Jesus may find the voice confirming his identity as Son of God much needed in the assault of temptation that follows. (See Luke 4.) Luke’s genealogical interlude (3:23-37) interrupts the story, but his “story board” moves directly from the thin place at the Jordan to the wilderness thick with temptation. The gentle descent of the Holy Spirit gains ferocity in driving Jesus forward to confront the question, “If you are the son of God . . . ?” Baptism’s conferral of identity leads to testing his resolve to reside in that identity in his life of ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit.

This juxtaposition should not be missed by those of us who again and again reaffirm our baptism. We who heed the invitation, “Remember that you are baptized,” should brace ourselves for what may come. In the liturgy, baptism and reaffirmation always conclude with a dismissal to minister in the world, where the liturgical rubber hits the ethical and spiritual road. The water and the wilderness are never far from each other. Christian discipline reckons with the nearness of one and the other and relies on the strong animating breath present in both.