HOMILY for The Baptism of the Lord (A)
Isaiah 42:1-4. 6f; Ps 29; Acts 10:34-38; Matt 3:13-17
The next time St Matthew tells of a voice from heaven, it declares: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (17:5). We hear the exact same declaration today, but there is an interesting difference. Today, we’re not explicitly being told to listen to Christ. Rather, we’re presented today with Christ, our God, who comes to listen to us.
For at Christmas, we celebrated the Incarnation of Christ; God’s eternal Word taking flesh, being born as a baby. And as such, the Word is helpless, needy, and wordless if not silent. Thus, God humbled himself to share in our humanity; he comes to listen to us. And today, on the last day of Christmas, we see the depths to which Christ shares in our humanity. By descending into the waters, a symbol of death, we see a prefiguration of the death that Jesus will choose to undergo in order to ‘listen’ to what it is to be mortal. And also, in humbling himself even to accepting John’s baptism of repentance, Christ shows that he chooses to identify himself with sinful humanity. So, our God chooses to humble himself to become Man, and not just to stand apart from us as a perfect human being, but to stand alongside us sinners; standing with sinful humanity in the Jordan, joining us in the waters of repentance.
Hence St Paul says: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21). For our sake. So, it seems that Christ is “made to be sin”, descending into the waters of baptism with sinners, so that he can listen to us as sinners; to understand our weakness, see our struggles, and to experience the strong allure of sin. So, Christ identifies with sinners for our sake, in order to do justice to our common human experience. But he also does this in order to save us from sin. For as St Gregory Nazianzen says: “What has not been assumed has not been healed”.
However, we note that Jesus also says to John, more specifically, that he comes to be baptised in order to “fulfil all righteousness” (Mt 3:15). So, it is for God’s sake, for the sake of his justice, in other words, that he comes to the Jordan. For the just Judge wishes to know just what it is we undergo as human beings who struggle with sin and who are victims of sin. Thus, right after his baptism, Jesus is led into the wilderness to be tempted, and throughout his ministry he associates with notorious sinners, and at last he suffers the effects and reality of sin by dying on the Cross, crucified by sinful Man. Thus God listens so attentively to sinful humanity, to all that afflicts us, and in doing so Jesus reveals the depths of God’s saving love. For by being born and dying for our sake, Jesus also does justice to who God is. He bears witness to the fact that God is love – a love that is “patient and kind”, that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” as St Paul put it (1 Cor 13:4-7).
Hence we hear in Isaiah that God’s faithful servant comes to fulfill God’s righteousness; to “bring forth justice to the nations” (Isa 42:1). So when Christ comes to the Jordan he does this, not by sitting in judgement, but by lowering himself into the river and listening to us, to our experience.
For, as Isaiah says, the reed has been bruised by sin, the wick burns dimly. And so Christ doesn’t come to break us or extinguish the light. On the contrary, God’s justice and holiness is served when he comes to heal the wounds of sin and to fan our love into a flame. And this, too, is why Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptised.
For Jesus comes, like the doctor, to listen to us and to observe our symptoms. But he also comes to cure our disease; to heal and vivify. And what he prescribes is baptism. Or, to be more, precise, Christ himself is the cure. Today, Christ descends into the waters and dies alongside sinners. But he also rises out of the waters, and we, too, with him to a new life; the sinner becomes a beloved son or daughter of God. Hence when Jesus goes up from the water, St Matthew says that “the heavens were opened”, the Spirit descends, and a divine voice is heard (Mt 3:16f). So, too, in the sacrament of baptism we die with Christ and rise to new life in him; we are healed of sin and filled with the Spirit of God’s love; heaven is opened to us, and we hear this declaration said about each of us individually: “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased”. Therefore, when Jesus comes to the Jordan and says “thus it is fitting to for us to fulfil all righteousness” (Mt 3:18), he is speaking of the righteousness he will bring about in us, in all peoples, through baptism and the other sacraments of his Church.
So, although we’re not told explicitly to listen to Christ, in fact, if we’re attentive, there is something we’re being called to listen to today: Christ’s example. Because Christ’s baptism is a model for all peoples to follow. So vital and precious is baptism for the good of every person that Jesus, even though he was sinless, was baptised so that we, who are not sinless, might follow his example, and receive what we most need – God’s saving grace. Hence, in St John’s Gospel, Jesus says: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:5). For baptism is the ordinary means by which Mankind is healed of the wound of original sin, and raised to the new life of grace with Christ; baptism opens up the heavens to all men and women.
Thus today, the heavens are opened; today, sinners become children of God; today, Christ floods human souls with the light of his grace. So we who, in baptism, have been “called in righteousness” and “taken by the hand” by Christ (cf Isa 42:6) are now to become “a light to the nations”, Isaiah says. For we are called today, as fellow sons and daughters of God with Christ, “to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon [and] darkness” (Isa 42:6f). Which is why at the end of St Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus gives each of us, his disciples, this command. “Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19).
For he has come to listen to us and heard our cries; he knows humanity’s deepest need. So, therefore, let us listen to him.
lawrenceop posted this