The Baptism of Our Lord (B)
(Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts of the Apostles 10:34-38; Mark
1:7-11)
Behold, I tell
you a mystery are words of St. Paul
in his first letter to his converts at Corinth (15:51), and they are most
applicable to our consideration of today’s celebration of the Baptism of Our
Lord. Let us first of all look at John
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 the word as disciples of Jesus. 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 were to be able 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 those now coming in crowds to hear
him preaching by the banks of the river Jordan that merely ritual immersions or
lustrations were not enough: those who were truly repentant needed to bring
forth fruit worthy of such repentance by actually starting to do what was right
and just; they must, he said, first of all bring forth visible, tangible, proof
of sincere repentance, for God would be satisfied with nothing less than true
righteousness, personal as well as ritual.
Those aware of, and sorry for, their personal failings had to make it
clear to the Lord and, initially, to John also, that they were sincerely turning
away from evil: being resolutely intent on both amending their future ways and
making a measure of present atonement for past misdeeds. God alone could cleanse a sinful heart, John
proclaimed, and, He would indeed cleanse the heart of those who, in accordance
with John’s exhortation, showed their repentance by sincerely taking upon
themselves the practice of righteousness.
Once the heart had been cleansed by God, then the immersion they were
seeking from John could profitably purify the body; for bodily purity was of the
utmost importance to all Jewish believers who wished to be acceptable to God
through obedience to His Law. The whole
person, inside and out, had to be prepared to do the whole of God’s will, which
demanded right human behaviour together with true and acceptable divine
worship.
We now turn our thoughts to
Jesus. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all
tell us about the immersion of Jesus by John in the Jordan. Only two of them, however -- Matthew and Luke
-- tell us about the birth of Jesus; Mark and John do not mention the manner of
His birth, presumably because for them, Jesus’ public significance only began
with this wondrous event of His immersion in the Jordan. How are we to understand these differences in
approach? We should note that although
Matthew and Luke tell us of the conception and birth of Jesus, they make no
mention whatsoever of the growing Child doing any marvels in the power of the
Spirit: all such mighty deeds only come after His immersion or baptism; in that
respect they are at one with Mark and John.
So we can see that although Jesus
was indeed conceived of the Virgin Mary by the working of the Holy Spirit, and
given the name Immanuel, ‘God with us’, as Matthew and Luke tell us:
The angel said
to Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High
will overshadow you. Therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be
called the Son of God;” (Luke
1:35)
“Behold, the
virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name
Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us”; (Matthew 1:23)
nevertheless, for both Matthew and
Luke, the Child had -- like every other child -- to grow slowly, through
childhood to youth and through youth to manhood, before He could finally attain
the maturity required for His role as Saviour.
This St. Luke (2:52) explicitly tells us:
Jesus
increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.
As He grew thus, Jesus became filled
ever more and more with the desire to know, love, and serve His heavenly Father,
as we recognize from the occasion when -- still physically and psychologically
only a youth -- He was lost to Mary and Joseph in Jerusalem. There, He was
totally entranced listening to and talking with the doctors and scribes in the
Temple about the God of Israel Whom He recognized as His own true Father. He had forgotten all about returning to
Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, and wholeheartedly desired and was prepared --
even then and there as, possibly, a fresh ‘bar mitzvah’ youth -- to begin His
public witness to His heavenly Father.
Only after being found in the Temple by
Mary and Joseph and admonished by His mother, was He willing to be led back to
His home in Nazareth – without, in the least, apologizing for such commitment to
His heavenly Father.
He grew not only before God but also
before and with respect to humankind around Him, becoming, in the process, ever
more aware of His own humanity which, though sublimely pure and holy, could not
as yet enable Him to do all that He longed to do for His Father and all that
needed to be done for His People.
Eventually however, having reached
full maturity in His manhood, Jesus left home in Nazareth and sought out John
immersing in the Jordan all those dissatisfied with themselves in their
relationship with the God of Israel,
because that was the one place in all Israel where God was most providentially
present and active, and because He, Jesus, was totally consumed with longing to
actually begin the mission demanded of Him by the very nature of His Being, Son
of God and Son of Man: a mission for the glory of God and His Chosen People, and for the
salvation of mankind. Ultimately
however, He sought out John in response to His Father’s secret inspiration –
Whose loving appreciation of and condescension towards human nature is most
wonderfully to be seen in His ‘dealings’ with Mary the Virgin of Nazareth and
Elizabeth, with John the Baptist here beside the river Jordan, and with Mary the
Mother at Cana -- that He might, on this occasion of John’s immersing of Jesus,
publicly commission His beloved Son for His Messianic ministry and also show His
Fatherly appreciation of John’s lifelong work of preparation for this
manifestation of His Son, before it would be brought to its brutal earthly
conclusion in the dank, dark, solitude of a royal dungeon.
Now we are prepared to understand
the meeting of John the Baptist and Jesus at the banks of the Jordan. Jesus stepped forward, manifesting not only
His longing to glorify His Father but also His personal awareness of His human
nature’s enduring inability to fully support Him in that. He needed His Father’s ‘sending’! In that sense Jesus was the first fruits of
all those who were, are, and ever will be, repentant; because Jesus was totally,
absolutely, aware, of what none of us are ever sufficiently aware, namely, that
God alone is good, and that human nature can do no such good of itself. The 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 crowning
fulfilment which only His Father’s sending of Himself and Gift of the Holy
Spirit would impart.
The Father was indeed well pleased
with His Son. He had sent His Son made
flesh to glorify His Name and save His People from their
sins; and, in pursuance of this aim, the Child’s growth in holiness had not in
any way separated, cut Him off, from men; on the contrary, His gradual human
development had been such that, together with an ever greater awareness of and
longing for His Father, He experienced an ever deeper compassion for His People
and understanding of the trials and sufferings of mankind. The God-given-Child was now on the threshold
of becoming the perfect God-made-Man His Father had planned; and so, in the
sublime fullness and perfection of His humility, He stood before John the
Baptist beside the river Jordan; and although John was allowed the fulfilment --
in God’s condescension -- of immersing Jesus, it was the Father in heaven Who
embraced His Son rising from the waters, and Who bestowed on Him the Gift which
is the Holy Spirit to ultimately prepare and finally empower Him for the task
which lay immediately before Him: His conquest of the devil in his own homeland,
the desert, and His Messianic proclamation of God’s salvation to Israel. And so, as we heard in the Gospel:
It happened in
those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the
Jordan by John. On coming up out of the
water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending
upon Him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are My beloved Son; with You I
am well pleased.”
Thus Jesus was presented to God’s
people as the sinless leader of all those who have become aware of their human
needs and inadequacies, and in that He was and is at one with all repentant
sinners of all times: for although He did not, and indeed, could not, share
their personal sins -- sin being totally alien to His nature and Personal
character -- nevertheless, their human needs and personal, godly, aspirations
are to be found in Him, sublimely transfigured and transcended.
He rose up out of the immersing
waters and His heavenly Father embraced Him, as the Psalmist (19:5) puts it, like
a strong man ready to run his race. John had indeed prepared the Chosen
People for Him Who was to come; and now, here on Jordan’s bank, the Father
confirmed the original gift of His Son, by His messianic bestowal of the Spirit,
thus enabling Jesus -- the messianic Son of Man -- to take up the baton for the
final stage in God’s saving plan as foretold:
He shall stand
and feed His flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of
the Lord His God. (Micah 5:4)
Jesus was, indeed, become the good
Shepherd, Who would lead His flock in full awareness and understanding of their
human weakness, revealing to them heavenly things with divine authority, whilst
empowering them to walk along His way by
granting them a share in His own Spirit.
And thus, ultimately, will He lead all of us who persevere in docility to
His guidance and obedience to His teaching, into our glorious fulfilment as
children of God: in Him, and with Him, become co-heirs to eternal life in the
heavenly Kingdom of His Father and our Father.
