Baptism of the Lord

See Commentary on (Mark 1:7-11) in Mark 1:4-8, Mark 1:9 & Mark 1:10-11

Homily 1 - 2009

In today’s first Reading Isaiah was dealing with a demoralised people – a people who had been humiliated, enslaved and herded off into exile fifty years before.  They had just been informed by the Persian King, Cyrus (who had conquered their captors, the Babylonians), that they were free to return to their homeland – should they choose to do so.

But what would await them there? Their land had been occupied in the meantime by people who would not necessarily welcome them back.  Their king and his direct descendants had been killed, earlier on, by the Babylonians.  Their temple, back there in Jerusalem, was in ruins.  What priests there were among them had no personal experience of doing the things that the priests before them used to do in the temple.  Who would lead them politically and religiously?  Who would organise them?  They felt confused, and largely devoid of ideas and initiative.

Isaiah’s response was to assure them that God had not changed.  God loved them.  God had forgiven the apostasy of the generations before them.  God’s earlier dreams for his people had not changed.  God’s earlier dreams for the world’s salvation had not changed.  Their future would not all depend on them.  God would be with them – as generous and bountiful and powerful as ever.  Come to the water all you who are thirsty, though you have no money, come!  Buy corn without money, and eat, and, at no cost, wine and milk.

But things certainly had changed, and it wouldn’t simply be “business as usual”.  They would need to sit lightly with the radically changed scene and their own confusion in face of it.  They would need to learn to think outside the square, to let go of much that was familiar – the tried and the true, and be open to the new and the different: My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways..  Yes, the heavens are as high above the earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts.

What were they to do?  The answer was clear: Listen, listen to me, and you will have good things to eat and rich food to enjoy.  Pay attention, come to me, listen, and your soul will live…. Seek Yahweh while he is still to be found, call to him while he is still near.  What they had previously looked to their kings to do for them, God would enable them to do for themselves: With you I will make an everlasting covenant out of the favours promised to David.  See, I have made you a witness to the peoples.

I think that this reading from Isaiah is a great reading for us today.  Over the past forty years, things have changed in our world and in our Church.  A lot of people, at least among the older ones, feel  bewildered.  How might Isaiah’s sense of God speak to us?...  I’ll tell you how it speaks to me.

1.  The first thing:  God is near; so our primary task is to learn to recognise him.  Seek Yahweh while he is still to be found, call to him while he is still near.  Or, as God said through Isaiah: Listen, listen to me, and you will have good things to eat and rich food to enjoy.  Pay attention, come to me, listen, and your soul will live….

2.  Listening for him will mean sitting lightly with much of what we have been used to, and to accept that a changed situation calls for a changed response.  We need to be open to surprises, to let God surprise us: My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways.. Yes, the heavens are as high above the earth as my ways are above your ways, my thoughts above your thoughts.

3.  We don’t have just to try harder and harder and harder, as though everything depends on us.  Certainly, our alert cooperation is essential, but it is God who is the source of blessing: Come to the water all you who are thirsty, though you have no money, come! Buy corn without money, and eat, and, at no cost, wine and milk.  Why spend money on what is not bread, your wages on what fails to satisfy?

4.  And just as Isaiah saw the people being able to carry on without the structured kingship as they had previously known it, so, too, in today’s world, the things that priests usually did may change, but the Church’s mission will continue through a responsive and empowered laity – as had always been Jesus’ intention.

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.

Homily 3 - 2021 

John the Baptist, the strange eccentric living out in the Judean wilderness, stirred up Israel with his insistent call to repentance. Something was about to happen — it was time to change. But he knew that he didn’t quite know what shape things should take.

John articulated the feelings and disquiet of many of his Jewish contemporaries. He felt — they felt — that they had somehow “missed the point”. They were good people, men and women, but they were going nowhere. John named their experience “sin”, not sin as most of us were taught to approach it, a sort of mysterious blot on the soul, but something they were caught up in together. They felt lost, restless. Life seemed aimless. As Jews they had their Law, their way of life — but something was missing.

They wanted to do something distinctive to state their discontent and their desire for change. John suggested they get baptised close by in the Jordan River -- and wait. John was convinced that there was someone else, poised in the wings, stronger than he, who would initiate the change they all looked for; and he was satisfied that he would recognise him when he eventually turned up.

Among those resonating with John was Jesus, who heard about John while he was still working in Galilee. He came down to check out the movement and be baptised along with the others like himself. And then — it happened!

Let us turn to today’s Gospel passage from the Gospel of Mark. Mark went lyrical! Drawing from the poetic language and imagery of the Hebrew Scriptures, he described Jesus undergoing a profound spiritual experience — though no one else seemed to know that anything was going on.

Using a phrase from Isaiah, Mark wrote that “the heavens were torn apart” — there was no longer anything preventing Jesus from access to God. He wrote that the Spirit of God, the Spirit that had been mentioned in the beautiful story of the original creation as “hovering over the waters”, now descended from the torn-open heavens and hovered over Jesus. Mark understood Jesus’ baptism as beginning a new creation. But what did that mean? Mark went on. From the torn open heavens a quiet “voice” came to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you”.

It was a momentous declaration that would underpin the new insight, the new spirit, of a new intervention of God about to begin within the world — what Jesus would refer to as “the Reign of God”.

What God said to the human Jesus, Jesus understood to be true also of everyone. Everyone is a child of God, drawing existence, life, consciousness, intelligence and freedom from God. Everyone is beloved by God, whose own love is unconditional, infinite, unchanging and constant. Everyone is personally favoured by God. And since all are children of God, created and sustained every moment by God, all are brothers and sisters of each other.

When this is understood, and only when this is understood, can God’s reign take practical shape — when people recognise, value and practically appreciate their personal human dignity …, when people recognise, unconditionally value and appreciate the equal dignity and value of everyone else …, when people see themselves as sisters and brothers.

Then, we no longer miss the point, we no longer sin. But conviction of the insight will require nothing less of us than that we constantly rethink everything, that we repent. That is the Good News that gives life.