Homily for the Baptism of the Lord Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. Gospel of St. Luke 3:15-22. Theme: Getting On With the Rest of the Story
Today’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord brings our Christmas Season officially to an end. It’s time now for us to move on from Bethlehem, like the shepherds who didn’t linger at the stable. They had seen and heard the angels praising God and announcing the Messiah’s birth. They had gone in haste to see and adore the prophesied Child, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger. Full of hope for the future and with joy in their hearts they returned to their ordinary lives in the fields.
Like them we, too, have had the Birth of Christ the Lord announced to us. And like them we, too, have come to see him in the manger, and to adore him truly present at our Christmas Eucharist. And like those shepherds, we are hopefully leaving our experience of Bethelehm, that is, our Christmas-time festivities, as people who have been touched and changed. We are hopefully not the exact same people who first came before the manger of Christ just a short time ago.
And so today’s liturgy ushers us out of Bethlehem, and moves us forward in time to the banks of the Jordan River. Jesus now comes to us as an adult, being about 30 years old. He has spent most of his life as a resident of the obscure village of Nazareth where he grew up like everyone else and who looked like everyone else. He earned his living working as a laborer, a craftsman, until the day when he knew his public mission was to begin. We encounter him at that point of his life in today’s story as we see him approaching his cousin, St. John the Baptist, whom many thought might be the Messiah. The Gospel informs us that these people were “full of expectation”. In other words, they could sense that there was a feeling of change in the air, a sense that God was about to do something wonderful in their lives. And they were not mistaken. They just picked the wrong man for the job. They thought it might be John the Baptist. But they were about to meet the Real Deal in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
To understand what’s really going on at the Jordan River, it’s important to remember that Jesus was not baptized because he had any sins to be washed away. Even though he shared fully in our fallen human nature he remained ever-faithful to God and had nothing for which to repent. Jesus insisted on being baptized in order to show us by example that baptism, that is the turning away from our sins and living life with God, is our first step to receiving his gift of salvation. The Baptism of Jesus, then, is both a sign and a promise that what happened to Jesus at his baptism is also what happened to each one of us at ours. It shows us that Baptism opens up Heaven to us, it fills us with the Holy Spirit, and makes us beloved children of God.
The first thing we hear about after Jesus comes up out of the water is that heaven was opened. And this is precisely what Baptism does for us. It re-opens the way to Heaven which was closed to us by the original sin of Adam and Eve. Recall that the first humans were given the choice of living in obedience to their Creator or of going it on their own terms. They freely chose to turn their backs on their Creator and this rupture in the relationship was passed on to all their descendants, that is, to all of us humans. But Jesus came to undo what they had done. He came to reunite, to reconcile us with God. He gives each one of us a chance to choose God and Heaven for ourselves. And the first step in making this choice is baptism.
The next marvelous thing we see at the Jordan River is the Holy Spirit coming down upon Jesus under the appearance of a dove. Now, we might wonder why God chose to appear in the form of a dove? Well, because the dove is a biblical symbol of peace and innocence. By the waters of this sacrament, we are made innocent through the forgiveness of sin and we make our peace, so to speak, with God. The justification we receive from Baptism puts us in a right relationship with God as our Father, our Savior and our Sanctifier. This innocence and peace remain within us as long as we choose to live the promises of our baptism, that is, to reject sin and Satan, to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and to live what He teaches us through the Bible and his Church.
Finally, the gospel tells us that God the Father’s voice was audibly heard declaring Jesus to be His Beloved Son in whom He was well pleased. And this is exactly what God the Father says about each one of us, about you and about me! We have become spiritually one with Jesus in Baptism and so through him, with him and in him, we become God’s beloved children in whom He finds delight! The Scriptures assure us that God delights over you, delights over me, delights over each one of us personally. And, you see, it’s our conscious awareness of this total love that God has for each one of us that moves us from the inside out. It inspires us to want to live in a way that delights Him in return.
So often, too often, we get it backwards and think we have to earn God’s love. We go by the experiences of our human relationships and so we think that we have to be good, we have to prove our worthiness for God to love us. But it’s not that way with God at all. He loves us freely, totally and unconditionally simply because we are his. From all eternity he foresaw each one of us - knowing full well the good and the not so good within us - and he so fell in love with what he saw that he called each one of us into existence at the proper time. And as if that wasn’t already enough, he then sent his very own beloved Son into the world as our Savior so that we could be freed from sin, have flesh and blood proof of his love, and choose to live with him forever.
If we compare the life of Christ to a book, I t think we could say that staying at Christmas would be like never getting past the first chapter of that book. Never getting caught up in its dramatic plot of interesting characters, miraculous cures, and powerful teachings. Never reaching the exciting apex of its conclusion with the stunning events of Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday. So you see, the Baptism of Jesus follows upon the heels of Christmas and Epiphany because it sets us up for the rest of the story. Through the liturgy where the Gospel is read, we will learn week by week more and more about the marvelous and awesome things that God has done and still does for us through the Christmas Gift that is Jesus Christ.
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