Homily for the Baptism of the Lord, Year C

Homily for the Baptism of the Lord, Year C Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this the homily for the Baptism of the Lord. And we've made a big jump from only three days ago when we were celebrating the Epiphany. Jesus is now an adult, and he appears suddenly, for the first time in Luke's Gospel, since he was age 12 here at this scene. Nothing at all in between his being age 12 and age, we guess, around 30, when he comes to the bank of the Jordan to be baptized by John. The interesting thing about Luke is that here he just appears normally. There's no reference of him coming and turning up in some particular way. Mark says he came from Galilee. It says here: "Now when all the people were baptized" — so John had been baptizing lots of people, they had been expectant about what this all meant. John had told them no, that the one who was coming after him was stronger than he; he was the strong one, referring to the strong one who is God, who would baptize with Holy Spirit and with fire. So "when all the people were baptized," suggesting that there's a time of calm. "And when Jesus also had been baptized." So he had appeared — we don't know, it doesn't say whether John had recognized him or knew who he was; he was his cousin, but none of that we're told. And here's — this is a point particular to Luke — he says "and was praying." So after his baptism Jesus is praying. It doesn't say what he was praying about, it doesn't say whether he was praying certain psalms, though several of them would have been very suitable for these circumstances. But it then says "the heaven was opened." In Mark's Gospel, he has a vision of the heavens opened, but here the heavens opened, suggesting that the true protagonism of what's going on is being revealed. In other words, for the Jewish understanding, the real real, if you like, is what's in heaven. The secondary reality is what's created. So here, there is a moment in which the real real is showing through into created reality. And this real coming through comes in the form of the Holy Spirit descending upon him in bodily form like a dove. That's interesting — the "in bodily form" is proper to Luke. Mark just says "like a dove," suggesting this 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. Like a dove? Well, why a dove? Maybe because the Holy Spirit is being described as hovering over the waters at the beginning of creation. Like a dove also because in the later living out of that story with Noah, the dove is sent out and comes back because it can't find a place to settle, and then it goes out and doesn't come back because finally it has found a place to settle. In other words, the waters are receding and the wrath is over, so it can settle. So its arrival here in 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 that this is going to be the beginning of it. There's something very, 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 came from heaven. So this is what's known in Hebrew as a bat kol (בַּת קוֹל), the daughter of a voice. And the voice says: "You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased." Well, that's what it says in Mark's Gospel, and most of our current versions of Luke's Gospel give that. 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" — "with you I am well pleased," so "my favor rests on you" — suggesting that the project that is being initiated is one of pleasure, it's one of delighting in, being complacent in. That's what is going to be started. Now, the oldest texts that we have of St. Luke's Gospel don't have that phrase. They don't have "you are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased." They have "you are my Son, today I have begotten you," which is a quote from Psalm 2. Let me just read that for you. "I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said to me: 'You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession." Okay, 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 — the begetting of the Son happened at a certain time in the real reality, which of course is heaven and therefore outside our ordinary chronology. But that real reality, the begetting of the Son — "you are my Son, this day I have begotten you" — could of course therefore be instantiated in various chronological moments in a human person's history. And of course it began with 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 your 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, if you like, incarnated in different moments. And this is the third, if you like, moment of the begetting incarnating. I suspect, and other experts suspect, that it was probably the text — the Markan 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 the presence here of that verse saying "you are my Son, this day I have begotten you" meant that Jesus wasn't the Son of God until then. But that's not what the text means at all. It means this is the, if you like, 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, if you like, 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. But that's what we have in today's feast — 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. So 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 — a 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, and when he breathes out on the cross, that's when the Spirit, if you like, goes back to God. Creation having been completed — that's going to be Luke's vision. So here we have Luke is the one who gives us most account of the Holy Spirit in historical operation, because of course Luke gives us the Acts of the Apostles as well. So here we have the fullness of the begetting come amongst us, as the one who is the Creator 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 possible for us to be baptized. That's right, it's turning something around. These are to be the waters, if you like, that are now going to be formed into a creation which, including us, 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, how ourselves to be born again, to be begotten of the Spirit, to be begotten from above. And we're going to be watching Jesus living this reality now through Luke's eyes as we enter ordinary time. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.