NewCreation

Homily for Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the second Sunday in ordinary time. Each year on the Sunday after the Baptism of our Lord, rather than continuing straight on with the Gospel that is the Gospel for the year, we get elements of the first chapter of St. John's Gospel — a little buffer from St. John, before we then carry on with the Gospel of the year, in our case St. Matthew, which we will return to next week. But the second Sunday is always one of the three chunks of St. John that come immediately after John the Baptist describing the baptism, or John the Baptist describing the one who is going to come. And this year, being year A, we get the first of these. And 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 with other people, pointing towards Jesus sometime after the baptism. And the suggestion that I've read from my friend Margaret Barker is that it presupposes something which is explained in the Synoptic Gospels, which is that after the baptism, Jesus immediately went off to the desert for 40 days. And after that, he came back and is close to 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 wedding at Cana in Galilee, is more like John's reflection on what John the Baptist understood was going on in the baptism of Jesus. So that's why it's a useful addition to whatever the synoptical version is that we get on the Feast of the Baptism — different evangelists each year. So here we have: the next day John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him. At this stage, of course, he knows what's happened, and declares: "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." In this chunk there are two major claims that he's pointing to. The first is: "This is the Lamb of God," and the one at the end is: "I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God." So: Lamb of God, Son of God, and then in the middle the testimony: "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and it remained on him." This is the typical chiastic structure. You have A, B, A1, B1, and in the middle C — the key point which is being brought out. So 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. So let's look at this little phrase: "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Please notice one thing which seems to be very important and which time and time again people misquote. People say: "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." No, it says "the sin of the world." It seems to be referring not so much to a collection of bad things as to the whole sphere of failed creation, or a failing creation — that 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. He's talking not about someone who's come here to pay a price, to tick things off, but someone who's come to actually create what I would call an anthropological revolution: the possibility of the new creation, in which everything is able to flow back upwards towards God rather than being ground down into pointlessness, 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. Anyhow, so extremely rich phrase: "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." And it does seem to be referring to the atonement lamb, because the Passover lamb was not sin-related. The Passover lamb was to redeem the son, the firstborn of Israel. That's what the Passover lamb was sacrificed for. The firstborn of the Egyptians would be killed, but the firstborn of the Israelites would be spared because of the Passover lamb. In John's Gospel, the atonement lamb and the Passover lamb are brought together, but here it's very much not the Passover lamb but the atonement lamb that's being mentioned. So he points to Jesus and says: "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." First, witness. And then he says: "This is he of whom I said, after me comes one who ranks ahead of me, comes before me, was begotten before me." The phrases are very strange, but it takes us back to what John had said in the previous section, when he was talking, when he was prophesying at the baptism, when he said he wasn't worthy to take his sandal off — meaning he wasn't worthy to fulfill the levirate act of standing aside so that this person could be the husband. So this is a way of indicating the bridegroom, the one who is to be the bridegroom of Israel. So: Lamb of God, bridegroom of Israel by reference. And that's what he's seeing fulfilled. And he said, "I myself did not know him" — it's interesting — "but I came baptizing with water for this reason." The commentators suggest, and I think it's a very rich suggestion, that in this he's linking himself to Samuel. Because remember, Samuel came to the house of Jesse to anoint the king, and he didn't know which of the sons of Jesse was to be anointed king. So he had Jesse line up all his sons, and they're very splendid, thoroughly macho, butch young men, of whom any one no doubt would have been perfectly splendid… royal material. And he went down looking to see which was the one who he was going to anoint. And God didn't tell him to anoint any of them. And so he said to Jesse, "Don't you have any more?" And Jesse said, sort of slightly shamefully, "Oh yeah, there's one more, but he's off with the sheep, you know." And his brothers obviously thought of him — and this is what the Hebrew says — refers to him as a pretty boy. In other words, he was someone who was not really up to the macho business of being a king, slightly too good looking for his own good. And that was the one, the somewhat slightly despised one, on whom, when he saw him, Samuel knew that he had to anoint him. So John is saying — 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, if you like, the overture. It was the preparation, the winding up, so that the water imagery might be understood more fully. "And John testified: I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him." So again we get the reference to the fluttering of the bird, and this time the remaining. And here we have the double sense of the remaining: 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. So using the Noah imagery and the Genesis imagery, and remaining on him — which is both the image from Noah, when the dove finally went and settled somewhere, but also a reference to King David, the anointing of King David. There were various other people upon whom the Holy Spirit came, including Saul, but it was always in fits and starts. But with David, the Spirit came and it remained on him. In other words, there was something very solid and completely established about David's anointing. He was the king. And this is 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. "So, I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me: he on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit." So that sounds — and 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, draining it of its power to kill, to do harm, occupying, if you like, 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 it. death and baptize people. That's what John was leading up to, making himself available for that. And then he ends, "And I myself have seen and testified that this is the Son of God." 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 was going to perform the sacrifice not only with the water but the water and the blood. That's a phrase which we'll get later in John's Gospel. In other words, 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 was going to be able to renew creation from within – only he was to be able to do that: the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit.