The Baptism of Our Lord (B)
(Isaiah
42: 1-4. 6-7; Acts 10: 34-38; St. Mark 1:7-11)
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“Behold,
I tell you a mystery” are words of St. Paul in his first letter to his converts
at Corinth that are most applicable to our considerations on today’s feast of
the Baptism of Our Lord.
Let
us first of all look at John the Baptist and his work of baptising or immersing. For preference I will use the word
“immersing” because John was not baptising in the way we understand ‘baptism’
since Jesus came. Jesus’ baptism forgives sin, John’s immersing was simply a token
of sincere repentance calling for God’s mercy and guidance; John’s immersing foreshadowed
Jesus’ baptism just as John’s preaching presaged Jesus’ Gospel.
John
had been sent to warn the people of God that a great judgement was imminent,
and that they would have to mend their ways if they wanted to survive that
judgement. He had a special message for
those who -- having fallen away from Temple and synagogue worship and daily
obedience to the Law -- now wanted to return to faithful Jewish practice. In keeping with the seriousness and the
urgency of the situation John proclaimed to such people, coming in crowds to
hear him preaching by the banks of the river Jordan, that merely ritual
immersions or lustrations were not enough.
He called on those who were seriously repentant to bring forth fruit
worthy of repentance, to actually start doing what was right and just. They must, John said, first of all bring
forth visible, tangible, proof of repentance, for no merely ritual immersion
in water could purify a wicked soul; and he insisted, God would not be
satisfied with anything less than true righteousness. Those aware of, and sorry for, their previous
sins and failings had to make it clear to the Lord, to themselves, and to John,
that they were actually turning away from past evil and were truly and
sincerely desirous of making up for past misdeeds as best they could. God alone could cleanse those guilty of sinful
lives, but, John proclaimed, He would cleanse the hearts of those who,
in this way, showed sincere repentance by taking upon themselves the practice
of righteousness.
Once
the heart had, indeed, been cleansed by God, then the immersion they were
seeking from John would also serve to purify the body, for bodily purity was of
the utmost importance for all those Jewish believers who wished to be acceptable
to God through obedience to His Law. The
whole person, inside and outside, had to be prepared to do the whole of God’s
will, which demanded right moral behaviour together with true and acceptable
worship.
Let
us now turn our thoughts to Jesus.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all the evangelists that is, tell us about
John’s baptism of Jesus; or better, about the immersion of Jesus, by John, in
the Jordan. On the other hand, only two
of them, Matthew and Luke, tell us about the birth of Jesus. Mark and John do
not mention the manner of His birth because, for them, everything about Jesus
our Saviour really began with the wondrous happenings on the occasion of His
immersion by John in the Jordan, when the Father’s voice was heard from heaven
and the Holy Spirit visibly descended upon Jesus to guide and strengthen Him in
His obedience to and work for the Father.
How
are we to understand these differences in approach?
We
should note, first of all, that although Matthew and Luke tell us of the
conception of
Jesus
by the Holy Spirit and of His birth from the Virgin Mary, they make no mention
whatsoever of the Child Jesus doing any marvels in the power of the Spirit: all
such mighty deeds only come after His immersion by John; in that respect all
four evangelists are in full agreement.
So,
we can see that though Jesus was indeed born of the Virgin Mary by the working
of the Holy Spirit, and although He was born holy and the Son of God, as Luke
tells us:
The
angel said to Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of
the Most High will overshadow you. So,
the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God”; (1:35)
or,
to quote St. Matthew (1:23):
"The
virgin will be with Child and will give birth to a Son, and they will call Him
Immanuel"-- which means, "God with us",
nevertheless, for both Matthew and Luke, the Child -- though Son of God – was, indeed, also a most truly human Child, and this had to be shown by detailing the fact that, Jesus had, first of all, to begin slowly by a most beautiful experience (with Mary and Joseph!) of an ordinary human childhood, before then, developing through youth and early manhood as a fellow-worker with Joseph, as a worshipper at the local synagogue, and as a noticeable village member, He could finally -- as a mature man -- enter upon the fullness of His saving work as our Lord and Saviour.
As
Luke explicitly tells us:
Jesus
grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men. (2:52)
Jesus
grew not only in tune with God but also as a Man with men, becoming ever more
and more aware of the powers and weakness, the potentialities and frailties, of
the humanity He had assumed: a humanity which, though pure and holy in His case,
was nevertheless, a humanity which simply could not enable Him to do all that
He longed to do for His Father and among His fellow-villagers at Nazareth. Unknown
to those around Him – unknown even to Mary His mother -- He was living in tune
with God at an increasingly divine level and was, consequently, being filled with
an awareness, on the one hand, ever deeper and more Personally painful, and
yet, on the other hand, ever more compassionate and understanding, of human
need and insufficiency.
And
then, He heard what His distant relative John the Baptist – who had been in the
desert for years -- was now doing in the name of God for the crowds of people coming
to him from Jerusalem and all its surroundings to hear his proclamation of the coming
Messiah and to be immersed by him in the waters of the river Jordan!!
Now
we are prepared to understand the meeting of John the Baptist and Jesus on the
banks of the Jordan. Jesus came to John,
along with all those who were dissatisfied with their past response to and present
relationship with the God of Israel, because this was the one place in all
Israel where God could be seen to be manifestly at work, and Jesus
Himself -- about 30 years old and in the full maturity of His manhood -- was wanting above all to put Himself
into the closest proximity with God-His-Father publicly at work among His
people, in order to give the very fullest expression to His own total longing
to be active -- physically as well as spiritually -- at work with and for His father, that God’s
will be done in Israel. And this most
urgent longing was no mere psychological experience of Jesus’, it was His heavenly
Father ‘provoking’ Him, calling Him.
Jesus
stepped forward before John the Baptist, not to manifest any Personal
sinfulness, but simply His, by now most frustrating, human inability to do all
that He wanted to do for His Father’s glory and His people’s salvation. He wanted above all to be one with His
Father, no longer as a child ‘in His Father’s House’, but as a full-grown
man to be ‘about His Father’s business’ and for that He chose to join
all who were seeking to draw closer to God, as the supreme Seeker needing His
Father’s blessing and His Spirit to do His work. And this need of Jesus’ was precisely His
Father’s, lovingly provoking, CALL.
In
that sense Jesus was the first fruits of all those who were then, are now, and
ever will be, truly repentant; because Jesus was totally, shatteringly, aware
of what none of us are ever sufficiently aware: that God alone is good and that
we, mere human beings, can do nothing good or holy of ourselves. That failure to appreciate our natural
nothingness leads ordinary sons and daughters of Adam into sins of all sorts;
with Jesus it simply made Him long, with excruciating desire, for that ability
to do the work of God which only the gift of the Spirit can impart (Mark
1:9-11):
At
that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the
Jordan. As Jesus was coming up out of
the water, He saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on Him like
a dove. And a voice came from heaven:
"You are My Son, Whom I love; with You I am well pleased."
The
Father was indeed well pleased with His Son.
He had sent originally His Son for the purpose of saving His People from
their sins. The holiness of this Child
had not separated, cut Him off, from men; for His growth in holiness had meant
an ever-greater longing for God and an ever-deeper understanding of and sympathy
with mankind. The Child had now become
the Man His Father had planned, and so He called Him in
the perfect fullness of His humanity to begin His public ministry by publicly
taking over from John the Baptist. It was
not John who would conduct this true baptism: John would indeed immerse Jesus,
but it was the Father in heaven Who embraced His Son rising from the waters of
the river Jordan, and Who would truly baptise Him by bestowing on Him the Gift
of the most Holy Spirit to prepare and empower Him for the task immediately
before Him: His imminent conquest of the devil in the desert and His subsequent
Messianic proclamation and ushering-in of God’s salvation.
And
so, Jesus stepped forward as the sinless leader of all those who are aware of
their human needs and inadequacies, and in this He was and is at one with repentant
sinners of all times: past, as well as present and future; for although He did
not, indeed, could not, share their personal sins, sin being totally alien to
Him, nevertheless, their human needs and their personal, godly, longings were
to be found in Him, fully and sublimely transfigured. Coming up out of the waters where John had
immersed Him, He was embraced by His heavenly Father and endowed with the
Spirit, as the Messiah and Saviour of God’s People, or, as the Psalmist (19:5)
puts it:
As a strong man rejoicing, and ready
to run his course.
John
had prepared the Chosen People for Him Who was to come, he had indeed prepared
the way before the Lord; and here, at Jordan’s edge, the Father renewed His
original gift of His Son by His messianic call and bestowal of the
Spirit, so that Jesus could take up the baton for the final stage in God’s
saving plan, as the prophet Micah (5:4) had foretold:
He will arise and shepherd His
flock in the strength of the LORD, In the majesty
of the name of the LORD His God.
People
of God, Jesus the supreme and heavenly Shepherd still leads His flock into a full
awareness and understanding of their earthly human weakness, don’t refuse to
learn His teaching about that! But, as the
only-begotten Son and Saviour, He also teaches His Church heavenly things with
divine authority, and empowers her to walk with Him along His way, by granting her
faithful children a share in His own most Holy Spirit. Thus, He gradually brings them to their
glorious fulfilment in Him and with Him, as Children of God and
co-heirs to eternal life, and today He invites us too to become ever more truly
members of that glorious company!
Therefore,
dear friends in Christ, let us truly rejoice in Jesus this day as He answers His
Father’s call to step forward and take over from John, and bring to fulfilment
the divine purpose of saving us from our sins. (2021)
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