NewCreation

Homily for the Baptism of the Lord, Year B

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this homily for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. And here we are back to St Mark's Gospel, that incredibly parsimonious, word-by-word, detailed account of what's going on, with the hints given to us so we can understand something much, much bigger than what appears on the page. Remember, we saw the first half of this Gospel in Advent, when we looked at John the Baptist and what he was preaching and announcing. So here he is. He proclaims: "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." Now here's the interesting thing. John sees some sort of continuity between what he himself is announcing and what he himself is, and the one who is to fulfill that. So he uses this term: the one who is more powerful than I. There's a slight ironic use here by Mark, because in fact the one who is coming is not merely more powerful than he — it is the Powerful One, the Mighty One. That is the irony that's at work here. John seems to be thinking that it's something that is in some way in continuity with what he's doing, and it is, but so much out of the league, if you like, of what he was about. It's something so much vaster than what he could imagine that is going to happen. So he says: "I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." Again, it's not at all clear what he meant. But what we then get in the Baptism of Jesus is the stunning arrival, completely beyond expectation, of the Holy One of God, the Mighty One, the one whom John was pointing to, even if stuttering towards a reality that was vastly greater than he could imagine. So let's see then how Mark brilliantly brings this out. "In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee." So please notice: he comes out of left field. The people who have been coming to John the Baptist are from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem. Jesus is turning up from Nazareth in Galilee. This is the very beginning of the mention of Jesus. Remember that at his Resurrection his disciples will be told: "Go back to Galilee, to the beginning." So here Galilee — the place where no one was particularly expecting him to come — and yet he comes, no retinue, by himself. Unannounced, he comes from Nazareth of Galilee, and he said and was baptized by John in the Jordan. It doesn't say in the Greek, "And John baptized him in the Jordan." He said he was baptized. It's passive — probably a divine passive. The one baptizing was John, and the word for "by" can mean "by" or "under." So it might be, "And he underwent baptism at the hands of John," but the one doing the real baptizing of course was God. And it was in the Jordan — so that was the first water symbol that we're here to remember: the crossing. This was what John had been announcing, that he was making available the crossing, the symbolic crossing over into the promised land. And it's here at the Jordan that this happens. I mentioned the first mention of water. And just as he was coming up out of the water — this verb "coming up," it's the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew "go up" — and it's a technical term. The priests, in order to be ordained, came up out of the water. That was part of their ordination, right before they were anointed. The coming up and the anointing were the ordination. Right here we have the great high priest, the Holy One of God, coming up out of the water. In other words, the real thing is enacting the meaning of priesthood, or priests were understood thereafter to have been resurrected. In fact, our word "resurrection" comes from the Greek anastasis, which was the sharing in the opening up of heaven that comes after you have come up out of the water. That was what being a priest was. That's why all priests — or all Christians, by baptism — are priests. We share in the open heaven that is possible for the great high priest, because we share in the identity of the great high priest. So that's what's going on, just in the coming up out of the water. So this is him being baptized, entering into the water. And then he says, "And he saw the heavens torn apart, ripped open." And this word is very important. It's schizō in Greek — it's where we get "schizophrenic" or "schizoid": ripped apart, torn, split. And it's a very, very key word, because it appears in Mark here and at the moment Jesus dies on the cross, when he breathes out his breath and the veil of the Temple — which was the symbolization of the beginning of materiality — was ripped open. In other words, we are starting here outside creation, and what Jesus is doing is coming into creation, fulfilling it, so that finally creation will be definitively fulfilled in his death on the cross, when he breathes out his Spirit — in other words, when he gives the Holy Spirit. There is being set up here, if you like, the entire pattern of what he is about to do. "You saw the heavens torn apart." The word "torn apart" comes in two absolutely key passages in the Hebrew Scriptures. One, which will have been called to mind instantly by its use here, was when the Israelites were escaping from Egypt. Moses had held out his hand over the sea, a wind from God blew over it, and God split the sea. He schizoed the sea, so the waters were split. The splitting of the waters was what enabled the people to pass over. And it was perfectly clear that the mixture, the relationship of the wind to the water — the wind or breath, the Spirit — to the water and the splitting, harken back to Genesis, where, if you remember, the Spirit floated over, hovered over in a windy-like way, the waters. So this is creation language, and the fulfillment of creation language. "So you saw the Spirit descending like a dove on him." But what is the Spirit descending like a dove doing? Well, it brings to mind the hovering. It also brings to mind the waters of Noah. The hovering of the Spirit before creation also brings to mind Noah, where the waters were finally pacified, the terrors of the deep were pacified after the flood, and the dove was able to settle. So here is the sign, in fact, that the fulfillment of creation is about to be inaugurated — that it will be safe, that the waters will have no more power. The waters of death and destruction, because that's what they signify, the waters of chaos, they will have no more power. The one that was hovering over in the beginning is now coming into creation as the Holy One of God. Jesus will be born, if you like, of the Holy Spirit, which is one of the ways that people refer to him in some of the patristic texts. But the point is that who he is as the incarnate Son — as we'll see in just a second — who he is is the Holy One of God, who is going to make available the Holy Spirit for all of us. He is going to turn that which was hovering over creation — it has now come into creation — so that the whole principle of creation is going to be able to live out in human form and be able to be given to us, so that we are no longer run by death, despair, sin, violence, and those things. This is the beginning of that. Here is the Spirit coming in. It's coming in like a dove that was fluttering, that has now found peace. And the fullness and the peacefulness of creation is about to be opened up. "And a voice came from heaven" — the daughter of a voice, in the… that's the Hebrew way of referring to it, the… A voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased." So "you are" – this is God speaking to his Son, the one who was begotten in all eternity. And this is not simply a Christian understanding. That was the understanding from the Psalm, where it says "you are my Son, this day I have begotten you." It was understood that the Lord, Yahweh, was the Son, and that the Son would eventually come into the world, and here he is coming into the world. And that's when he becomes created as opposed to begotten, if you like – incarnated rather than begotten. "You are my Son." And it's "I am" speaking "you are," so that this one is able to be brought into being. In other words, at last the fullness of Adam is being fulfilled. It's no longer God talking to a "they" – it's God finally allowing another "I am" to be brought into being by saying "you are." That's the creative sense of "you are my Son" – the one who was begotten outside of all time – and here it is being announced that that's what his ministry is. And the next word: the beloved, agapetos. This is the same word as God says to Abraham when it comes to the sacrifice of his son: "your only son" in the Hebrew, but in Greek it's "your agapetos son," your beloved son. And the link is not accidental, because – guess what – Abraham had done before he took Isaac up to the hill to sacrifice him: he schized some wood. It's one of the very few other places where the word comes in. In other words, he prepared the wood for the sacrifice, and prophesied, "God will provide for the sacrifice." So here is the beloved Son who is being prophesied, who will perform the definitive sacrifice, which he will perform on the split wood. And it's on the split wood that he will give up the Spirit. So the schizo of Abraham is fulfilled in the schizo of the Temple veil as well. Mark knew exactly what he was doing. And then he says, "With you I am well pleased." Interesting — it doesn't say, "This day I have begotten you," which in some versions of St. Luke's version it says, because that refers to the heavenly begetting. But here, "With you I am well pleased" — my pleasure rests on you. I look at you and go… This is creation language. This is God who created everything and then looked at it. Then when he created humans he looked at it and he was very pleased — he saw it was very good. So this is a hint that here we have, finally, at last, the definitive Adam — not the confused Adam which we know and are, but the firstborn of all creation, the Son, come into our midst. What we're seeing in Mark's Gospel in this tiny, incredibly compact passage is the Holy One of God come into our midst in order to live out and make possible the giving to us of the Holy Spirit, so that we can be opened out into becoming the new creation. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.