Baptism of the Lord - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2005 

Jesus’ baptism apparently was seen to be significant by all the gospel writers.  They all mention it.  With all of them it also seems to have been connected to a significant experience of Jesus: the insight into his own relationship with God; the sense of being not just creature cared for and sustained by the creator, but of being deeply and passionately loved, This is my Son, the beloved; my favour rests on him; as well as a sense of a new spirit stirring within him, energising and confirming him. He saw the Spirit of God ... coming down on him.

What did his baptism mean for Jesus? In an earlier paragraph, Matthew had identified the baptising activity of John as a baptism of repentance, of profound change, for the forgiveness of sin.  How could Jesus be involved in that? The way we all are.  Just by living in a family, in a village, in a nation he was caught up in the destructive ways that we as societies relate to each other. Jesus’ world was little different from ours – the details were unique but the dynamics and interactions basically the same.

Our world is a world of violence, injustice, poverty, and hunger dispossession – an enormous gulf between rich and poor, powerful and powerless – not inevitably, but because that is the way societies have always organised themselves.  You can’t help but be part of it.  We all take it largely for granted.

Of recent days there has been a tremendous spontaneous outpouring of grief for the victims of the recent tsunami, and a wonderful response of compassion for those affected.  But there are millions of others as badly off as these or even worse, right around our world.  They have been that way for decades and many will remain that way.  As a society, nation, community of nations, we take it for granted, and do nothing – or nothing significant that would essentially affect the outcome – certainly not at the price of our own standards of living.  We can’t just blame our political leaders.  They read very accurately the mood of public opinion.

Against this background Jesus fronted up for baptism.  For him it meant a commitment to engage with, and to meet head on, the sin of the world – As Isaiah sensed in the first reading: I have endowed him with my spirit  that he may bring true justice to the nations.  Jesus’ sense of his own dignity (He knew he was loved passionately by God), the sense of his own capacity and desire to bring about change (He sensed himself filled by the Spirit - the power - of God), led him to embark on an adventure whose details he could hardly imagine, but whose outcome may have already been clear enough – (given the precedents of prophets who had preached justice before him).

Five centuries before him Isaiah had dreamed: Faithfully he will bring true justice; he will neither waver nor be crushed until true justice is established on earth...  He would explore, denounce, resist the violence of the world, meeting it instead with a profound respect for the dignity, rights and responsibilities of every person – particularly of the marginalised, the discriminated against, the excluded, those on the edges.  

Again, as Isaiah had said:  I have appointed him ... to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and those who live in darkness from the dungeon.  His strength would lie in his integrity only, and a readiness to meet the uncaring, violent world, not with superior violence but with forgiveness.  Isaiah again: He does not break the crushed reed, nor quench the wavering flame. 

Has it worked? Not yet! We his followers, who in our turn have been baptised into his project, are still to be convinced of his message, and his methods (at least in practice), and to be numerous and committed enough to make the difference.  But there is no other way.  If history teaches us anything with certainty, it teaches us that violence has never put a decisive end to violence.

And yet I believe that the message has to be learnt by every successive generation.  Sin is endemic.  The process of conversion - of repentance - will always be necessary, and its price will always be the same: nothing less than a death to our own self-interest and a deliberate, painful, adoption of the ways of non-violent love.