Baptism of the Lord - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2008

Matthew had made clear earlier that John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance.  Jesus accepted that.  Without claiming that he had sinned himself, he certainly accepted that he belonged to a sinful humanity – and he longed for a better world.  He had seen enough of what people in society do to each other and to themselves.

If “the cry of anger is the cry of pain”, then those who adopt the ways of coercion and violence are victims of unrecognised pain within themselves: among other things, of deep insecurity, emptiness, frustration and absence of intimacy.  Why do people drop bombs, shoot people, or engage in intertribal and ethnic savagery? Ultimately because they fear – fear that others will do the same to them, fear that they will miss out on, what others have or might have – fears that arise spontaneously or fears that have been cunningly implanted by others in power.

Jesus knew that kind of world.  His was a world where people were heartlessly impoverished by conquerors and collaborators, and where some retaliated with violence or fought among themselves.  That was his world of Galilee – a world conquered and subdued by Rome’s military might, a world where some collaborated to squeeze from the poor whatever they could tax to fill the coffers of the conquerors and to line their own pockets in the process – a world where some spoke of revolution, and some were determined to maintain the status quo.

John the Baptist called for change, but he did not raise the banner of revolution.  He called for repentance, conversion, for a whole fresh look at how people interacted.  He wanted people to wake up, to see reality as it was.  He called for personal change and for social change.  Herod, the puppet king of the Roman conquerors, saw John as dangerous, imprisoned him and eventually executed him.  Jesus saw John as sent by God.  He joined the steady stream of people coming out to John in the wilderness, away from the cities, to be baptised.

It was a life-changing moment for Jesus.  It is one of the few events that figures in all four Gospels.  Jesus quickly came tor realise that he himself was to take up John’s call to conversion.  But he also saw, with an insight that John found hard to understand, that the only way to genuine change would be to draw on the power of love, on respect for people – on respect even for enemies.  He came to see that the only real source of irrepressible love lay in the heart and will of God.  He came to see that the option to love, to respect, even to forgive, would be resisted; and that those who opted for it, like himself, would be misunderstood, laughed at, opposed and possibly killed.  In accepting John’s baptism of repentance – commitment to change – Jesus embarked on a journey that not only led to death for John but led to death also for himself.  

The source and support of his relentless commitment to do all that righteousness demands was insight into the heart of his God, and his recognition that, since God is love, the only truly constructive, creative and healing energy in personal relations and in social life can be love – and the practical shape that love takes in structures of justice and work for peace.