READINGS

Luke 3:15-16 - The Messiah’s Herald, Luke 3:21-22 - The Baptism of Jesus Isaiah 42:14 - A Song of Praise Genesis 22:2 - The Sacrifice of Isaac Psalm 2:7 - Coronation of the Son

HOMILY

21 When all the people were baptized, Jesus also was baptized.

So here there is a moment in which the real real is showing through into created reality.

As he was praying, heaven opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in a physical appearance like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”

And this real real coming through in the form of the Holy Spirit descending upon him in bodily form like a dove.

That's interesting: in bodily form is proper to Luke, Mark just says like a dove, suggesting this is coming upon him there's something corporeal about the Holy Spirit, which is actually becoming incarnate. It's the beginning of the incarnational process of the Holy Spirit.

Why like a dove?

1. The Holy Spirit is described as hovering over the waters at the beginning of creation.

2. In the story of Noah, the dove is sent out and comes back, because it can't find a place to settle until the waters are receding, and God's wrath is over, so it can settle.

So its arrival here in a dove form suggests that at last the creative spirit is coming which means that creation itself is going to be a peaceful non-wrathful reality, and this is going to be the beginning of it.

There's something very powerful about the sense of what Jesus is doing in occupying the water like everybody else but how this is the recognition of what's really going on.

Then we get a voice that came from heaven.

This is what's known in Hebrew baṯ qōl, the daughter of a voice.

And the voice says: you are my son the beloved, with you I am well pleased.

This appears to be a reference either to Isaiah where the promised One is referred to as his son the beloved; or perhaps to the story of Abraham and his near-sacrifice of Isaac when the Lord refers to Abraham's son Isaac as your son, the beloved, and promises that he will provide for sacrifice.

So this is the one who is providing for sacrifice - my son, the beloved.

Isaiah 42:14

“I have kept silent from ages past; I have been quiet and restrained myself. But now, I will groan like a woman in labor, gasping breathlessly.

Genesis 22:2

2 “Take your son,” he said, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”

My favour rests on you - suggesting that the project that is being initiated is one of pleasure, it's one of delighting it, being complacent in that's what is going to be started.

Now, the oldest texts that we have of Luke's Gospel don't have that phrase. They don't have 'you are my son the beloved, with you I'm well-pleased'. They have: you are my son today I have begotten you, which is a quote from Psalm 2.

Psalm 2:7

I will declare the Lord’s decree. He said to me, “You are my Son;[c] today I have become your Father.

Now this is part of the very very ancient liturgy in which it was understood that in the real reality - that's to say, heaven, outside our ordinary chronology - the begetting of the son happened at a certain time.

But that real reality, the begetting of the son could be instantiated in various chronological moments in a human person's history.

It began at the Annunciation: the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin. It was clearly at work when the Virgin visited Elizabeth and in the shepherds coming to the place where the sign of the Mother of the Lord, the Mother of God being the one who's actually going to give birth in the house of David instead of the Holy place.

So the begetting in the real real had incarnated in different moments. And this is the third, a moment of the begetting, incarnating.

Experts suspect that the Mark text was preferred because people, as they forgot the ancient understanding of the real real being constantly present, being able to incarnate itself at different moments, they thought that it's presence here of the verse saying 'you are my son, this day I have begotten you' meant that Jesus wasn't the Son of God until then.

However, that's not what the text means at all. It means: this is the definitive manifestation.

Here is the One on earth who has been begotten this day, which, of course, is always eternal in the ancient understanding.

So this is the definitive statement of the fullness of the human life of the one now as an adult that, from his conception, his begottenness this day had been being lived out.

The divine son who had been begotten out of all time actually now coming to his adulthood and beginning to live out his ministry, which is as we can see what is going to happen thereafter.

Something very striking about the mystery of today's feast it's one of the key moments, the beginning of something: the Holy Spirit has now come upon him in a particular form, the dove which some took to be a sign of an animal that would give itself in sacrifice following the promise of the begetting.

And the spirit will leave him when he dies on the cross: he will breathe the spirit out.

That which was hovering over the waters has come upon him.

When he breathes out on the cross, the spirit goes back to God (creation having been completed).

This is Luke's vision.

Luke is the one who gives us a most account of the Holy Spirit in historical operation (he also gives Acts).

So here we have the fullness of the begetting come amongst us as the One, who is the creator.

He begins to live out the mission of setting in motion the new creation into which we are to be involved.

This is why people refer to him being baptized as in a sense the beginning of him making it possible for us to be baptized.

That's right, it's turning something round.

These are to be the waters, which now is going to be formed into a creation which is including us, and is also benevolent, it's not something that's frightening against us.

It's not part of a wrath or a fear, it's going to be worked through from within and given to us by the One who is then going to show us how to live in it ourselves, to be born again, to be begotten of the Spirit to be begotten from above.

We're going to be watching Jesus living this reality now through Luke's eyes as we enter Ordinary Time.