Baptism of the Lord - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2015

We celebrate our Eucharists these days against the sad background of continuing acts of international terrorism. Do we Christians have any special wisdom we can bring to our saddened world? In today’s Gospel, John referred to Jesus as the one more powerful than he, the one who would baptise with the Holy Spirit. The passage provides a good starting point from which to reflect on our baptism, on what it did to us and, what may be more pertinent, what it directs us to.

But firstly let us look more closely at Jesus’ baptism, and particularly at the spectacular tableau that Mark drew to indicate the meaning of Jesus’ baptism. The heavens were torn apart. It is a great image. Heaven and earth are no longer hermetically sealed off from each other. For better or worse, God becomes accessible. And then, with the barrier no longer there, the Holy Spirit comes down on Jesus, that same Spirit with which Jesus, the powerful one, will then baptise the world, the Spirit which is “scripture-talk” for the power of God. 

But totally unlike what John anticipated, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove – no drum roll or resounding trumpets, but like a dove! Does the image of dove carry for you the sense of power? The voice echoing from the torn-apart heavens gives the answer to that. It proclaims, You are my Son, the Beloved. My favour rests on you. The Spirit is the love of God, the delight of God, descending and resting on Jesus.  The powerful Spirit of God resting on Jesus is the energy of divine love. God’s power is love. 

Consistently, the Spirit with which Jesus will then baptise the world is God’s love. The now-accessible God is anything but frightening. So much liturgical language, with its almost obsessive address to God as Almighty God, consolidated during the period when Church and State had become buddies. I am not sure how helpful it has been or whether it served to distract us from the essentially Merciful God.

What does Jesus’ baptism say about our baptism? The oneness it produced between us and Christ is so intense that we refer to its effect as christening us. What else happened? The Spirit of God, the creative life-making power of God, descended and remained on us. We were plunged into and saturated with the love of God. If we would take the time to listen carefully, we can hear God whispering in our ear, You are my child, my beloved child; my favour rests on you – I delight in you! 

What are baptised Christians then? Essentially we are people who know we are loved, loved by none less than God, people continually exploring that love, discovering the truth of our Christlikeness and trying to live out its consequences. How might that differentiate us from the decent-living non-baptised? We have no monopoly on good behaviour, no monopoly on virtue – nor are they our primary focus. Christianity is about relationship – relationship with the God who delights in us. That is so much more fascinating than simply behaving ourselves. 

If, and as, we consciously say our stunned Yes to that delighting God, we can find ourselves being transformed by that love and beginning to live and to love like Christ. We love each other like Christ; we love the world like Christ.  As the powerfully transforming energy of God’s love increasingly saturates us, it turns our attention outwards from any preoccupation with ourselves. With Jesus we recognise our essential solidarity with others. Like Jesus we approach the world with compassion. One with him we consciously relate to the marginalised, [or, in Isaiah’s words] the crushed reeds and the wavering flames, the captives and those kept in dark dungeons by the sometimes decent powerful.

Christian living will hardly provide a short-term answer to international terrorism, but it is God’s answer; and without it there is little hope for long-term peace.