READINGS

John 1:29-34

HOMILY

Each year in the Sunday after the baptism of Our Lord, rather than continuing straight on with the gospel for the year, we get elements of the first chapter of Saint John's gospel.

The second Sunday is always one of the three chunks of Saint John that come immediately after John the Baptist describes the one who is going to come.

In the first of these, rather than it being a description of John baptizing Jesus, it seems as though it's a conversation, which John is having to other people pointing towards Jesus sometime after the baptism.

The suggestion is that it presupposes something which is explained in the synoptic gospels, which is that, after his baptism, Jesus immediately went off to the desert for 40 days.

After that, he came back to John the Baptist, who was after all his cousin, and it was there that he began to find some of his disciples.

So this version of John, which is set up so as to culminate in the first great sign, which is the um the wedding at Cana in Galilee, is more like John's reflection on what John the Baptist understood what was going on in the baptism of Jesus.

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

Here there are two major claims that he's pointing to:

First: this is the Lamb of God;
At the end: I myself have seen and have testified that this is the son of God (so Lamb of God, son of God);
In the middle: I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and it remained on him.

This is the typical chiastic structure you have: A1, B1 and, in the middle, C.

So it's John is indicating his role as witness.

He's saying that everything he did was to bear witness to what is now going to happen.

Notice that, in the phrase 'the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world', people usually say 'the sins of the world' in plural; however, it really says sin, singular.

It seems to be referring not so much to a collection of bad things, but to the whole sphere of failed creation or a failing creation, which other parts of the Hebrew scriptures refer to as vanity, the sense of everything grinding down.

And indeed, the whole purpose of the great Atonement Feast was to bring creation back to its fullness again precisely taking away the vanity, the failedness, the pointing towards nothing of things.

John is talking not about someone who's come here to pay a price - the things to tick off -, but someone who's come to actually create an anthropological Revolution.

This is the possibility of the New Creation, in which everything is able to flow back upwards towards God rather than being ground down into pointless senselessness, going nowhereness, not being, creation somehow not having lived up to the value of the glory of God, which is what it was made to reflect.

And this passage also refers to the atonement Lamb:

The Passover Lamb was not sin related, but used to redeem the firstborns of Israel during the flight of Egypt.

So John points to Jesus and says:

This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’

The phrases are very strange, but it takes us back to what John had said in the previous section when he was prophesying in the baptism.

When he said he wasn't worthy to take his sandals off (meaning he wasn't worthy to fulfill the Levirate Act of standing aside so that this person could be the husband), this is a way of indicating the husband, the one who is to be the bridegroom of Israel.

I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.

In this, John is linking himself to Samuel. Remember that Samuel came to the house of Jesse to anoint the King.

Samuel had Jesse line up all his sons and a very splendid, thoroughly 'Macho Butch' young men, who any one of whom would have been perfectly splending raw material for a King to be.

And he went down them, looking to see which was the one who he was going to anoint and God didn't told him to anoint any of them, and so he said: 'don't you have any more?''

And Jesse said, sort of slightly ashamed: 'oh yeah, there's one more, but he's off with the sheep'.

His brothers obviously thought of him (and this is what the Hebrew says refers to him as) a pretty boy. He was someone who was not really up to the 'Macho' business of being a King.

Who knows... slightly too good looking for his own good, you know.

And that was the one, the somewhat slightly despised one, whom when Samuel saw him, he knew that he had to anoint him.

So John the Baptist is saying: it's a bit like Samuel: I didn't recognize him, but I came baptizing with water for this reason that he might be revealed to Israel.

In other words, what I've been doing was merely the overture, it was the preparation, the winding up so that the water imagery might be understood more fully.

Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him.

Again, we get the reference to the fluttering of the bird at this time.

Here we have the double sense of the remaining of the Spirit coming from Heaven like a dove.

This means the beginning of the new creation, the definitive overcoming of the waters of chaos of death and of wrath.

There's the image from Noah, when the dove finally went and settled somewhere.

Also, there's a reference to the anointing of King David with whom the Spirit came and it remained on him (there were various other people upon whom the Holy Spirit came including Saul, but it was always in fits and starts).

So there was something very solid and completely established about David's anointment: he was the King and this was therefore the Davidic Messiah King who's going to fulfill all the prophecies and inaugurate the new creation, the fulfillment of the Kingdom of Israel, the whole package.

And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’

This is odd since we don't really give it too much thought too often as though the whole business of coming to baptize with the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential to what Jesus is about.

Otherwise occupying the space of the water entering into its fullness, dredging it of its power, draining it of its power to kill and do harm, occupying everything unformed and chaotic prior to order being established in the old Genesis account.

This is one who's going to occupy all that and overcome death and baptize people.

That's what John was leading up to making himself available.

I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

John's witness was what John was all about preparing and being able to say this is the one, this is God's son, the son, the one who is going to perform the sacrifice not only with the water, but with the water and the blood.

That's a phrase which we'll get later in John's gospel.

Here was the one who was going to do the two things: fulfill Exodus and the Atonement; the water and the blood; the baptism and the sacrifice.

Only the Son the Davidic heir, the great High Priest, the one who is going to be able to renew creation from within, only he was to be able to do that.