Baptism of the Lord

The Baptism of the Lord is one of those historical nuggets NT scholars are always searching for, and it is also theological. It is historical because the early Church, was still in some tension with those who had followed John the Baptist, and those who followed Jesus  would not have made up a story where Jesus is baptized by John.  And it is clear in Scripture that John was the fore runner, who preached and baptized and was already at work in the Jordan valley when Jesus began his mission. 

 The baptism was certainly important to Jesus who surly shared his inner experience with the disciples.  They were so moved by its significance they passed it on through the varied oral traditions eventually finding the baptism event in all four Gospels and even the non-canonical Gospels of Hebrews and Thomas. The Baptism was remember for a reason.

 The Baptism of The Lord is theological because the earliest Church saw in it a Trinitarian event, where the mystery of God’s inner life of mutual self-giving, was made manifest and revealed as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in our time and history.

But let’s start at the beginning. At the Nativity we heard that the poorest of the poor, the shepherds in the fields, were visited by the angel of The Lord who said to the terrorized men

“Do not be afraid, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. A savior has been born for you who is the Christ”

And the world was light up by this revelation and by a multitude of the heavenly host praising God saying

“Glory to God in the highest”

After this outpouring of God’s Glory on earth, the world rested, dreaming its dreams, sleeping in its darkness. The moment God entered the world was forgotten, except in the hearts and the story, told and retold by the shepherds, who were there that day and the wise men who surely carried their experience back to their people in the East. The next thirty years were silent. These were the hidden years of the child born and glorified that night.

This were ordinary years learning what all boys learn from their fathers. In time Joseph taught Jesus the carpenter’s trade. Joseph taught Jesus the prayers of the synagogue and encouraged him to study the Torah.

Jesus learned what real strength was, what gentleness and patience were from Mary his mother.

It is clear that a good family was important to Jesus, as it is for all children. Jesus, growing up in Nazareth, learned the ways of a children's world from friends and extended family. They played children's games and perhaps were even a little naughty.

These were also years that Jesus grew in awareness of God, in his life and in the world around him. We know Jesus from an early age felt at home in the synagogue which he told his mother was his father's house.  We read that he amazed the rabbis by his understanding of Scripture. He was curious and astute.

 This growing awareness of a real shared life with God, would continue until his came to recognize his Sonship and God the Creator, became God the Father – Abba.

 

In time Jesus’ interior life blossomed into complete openness to His Father love and an absolute obedience to the Father's will, and an understanding of what the kingdom of his father would look like.

 We don't know any pre baptism details, but it makes sense Jesus knew John, both as cousin, and as a holy man. Jesus would of heard John preach.  Jesus would of talked to him about the coming the Messiah, about repentance and conversion. This stuff was in the air.  It is also likely that John came to "really" know Jesus. And it would be John himself who would say of Jesus

" Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."

 So after some thirty good and ordinary years Jesus comes to understand who he is and what he must do.

For Jesus the time is now, and he comes to a decision that changes everything and the dreaming world stirs from its slumber. God is on the move and draws near.

Jesus comes to the Jordan. John tries to stop him because his baptism is only with water as a sign of repentance and Jesus is without sin. John is disturbed,

"I need to be baptized by you and yet you are coming to me" John says.

Jesus with a new power and authority simply looks John in the eyes and says quietly

"allow it . . . . for it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. "

There is no argument. Jesus tells John to do this as a sign (not of repentance) but of righteousness, and as a sign that inaugurates Jesus’ mission, and brings the Kingdom of God into the world.

From the moment Jesus came up from the water (a first resurrection of sorts) the heavens were open to him. The line of communication between Father & Son, through the Spirit (descending that day like a Dove) was up and running. God self-gift was now made concrete and visible, not as a child, worshiped by shepherds and glorified by the angels, but as Jesus, Lord. If I can be fanciful, the Father smiled that day and in a love that could not be contained revealed to the world

"This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased"

We know from the first reading what kind of Son Jesus was

"A servant upon whom God's own spirit dwells who brings forth Justice to the nations”

Jesus is salvation, an all-inclusiveness righteousness that saves all of humanity. And the Son came not to be served but to serve and Isaiah tells us how – He will be compassion and mercy, a love that will not "cry out" or "shout". He will heal the bruised reed, he will feed the smoldering wick, he will love, and he will, if we let him, transform us by that love.

The baptism of the Lord is a sign that breaks open the lock on humanity and offers up an invitation (in Jesus himself) to become new, and to know God's love and share his life. Through Jesus, the chosen and beloved Son God, the Father reaches out to us. Isaiah describes this in beautiful and simple words

“I grasped you by the hand and formed you"

God is active, he loves first, He grasps, He forms us as sons and daughters, co-heirs with Jesus, but he does not grasp and form to make us some special elect, some secret society. He grasps us to be like his son - a beloved servant,  doing the Father’s will the best we can doing whatever work that needs to be done to bring about His reign, here and now. To be in our own humble way

"A light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to free prisoners, and to free all those who live in darkness"

To be good and faithful servants walking like Jesus walked.  Doing what he did. In the words of  Peter

“He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him"

The Baptism of Jesus’ set all of this in motion and the world has never been the same.

We should never undervalue our own baptism. We too live with the Spirit (the gift of our own baptism).  We too grow in faith (the fruit of baptism). We too (in Christ) are beloved sons and daughters of God and can experience more and more what communion with the Father feels like in our lives.

We know the story of what came after Jesus' baptism. Our story is still being written.

But when it is finished let it echo the words of Isaiah

“Would that you might fine us doing right, that we were mindful of you, in all our ways”

Come, Lord Jesus, Come !

Advent is the season of Christian imagination; God given, enriching, a positive human faculty to think creatively - to imagine a mystery.

I want you to imagine this - a promise so full of potential, it is like a late fall pomegranate

splitting open revealing its sweetness.

Imagine a promise so potent, so generous and self-giving - that even as the promise is being given it is already pouring out what is promised.

Imagine a promise that even as we wait for its fulfillment it gives us the abundant means, the grace, to wait in Hope and Joy. 

And I want to imagine being able to look backwards and forwards simultaneously

because this what the Church does and along with the whole Church I want us to imagine the fullness of the inexpressible mystery Advent.

 At Advent we look backward and call to mind that all of scripture is the revelation of God’s promise; from creation when God declared all to be good, through Abraham the father of faith, through Moses and his complete trust in God, through the prophets with their visions of God. 

But, most of all, in Advent, we remember God’s promise fulfilled in Jesus, his son, our Lord.

 We remember that God himself, through the incarnation, the Word made flesh, came to be with us as Emmanuel, God is with us.

He came because he simply loves us, he came to bring us home, he came as truth, life, and salvation.

In this season of Advent we celebrate the incarnation, the first coming of Christ as an infant in the manger, and we look forward to the second coming of Christ, the Parousia, when he comes as Lord over all.

As we celebrate we live in hope and we patiently wait for that day and when it comes to pass and God’s promise is fulfilled, the Church will pass away.

 There will be no need of scripture. No need of bishops, priests or deacons and the people of God will include everyone.

The work will be done, the waiting will be over. Only God’s beatific vision will remain.

Advent, Latin for “to come” is the longing for that momentous day.

A day Isaiah repeatedly points to as “on that day” and what St Paul has described as 

"The plan to be carried out in Christ, in the fullness of time, to bring all things into one in him in the heavens and on earth"

In the first reading Isaiah paints us an imaginative view of God’s promise as the new heaven and the new earth.

On that day ... a shoot shall sprout....a bud will blossom… the Spirit will judge in truth and justice.

The wolf will love the lamb and the lion will yield to the child, the baby is safe with the cobra - for the world will be filled overflowing and abundant with God.

On that day, I might add

The poor and the rich will share the same table, because they are equal, judged for who they are not for what they have.

Nations will rejoice in God; Israelis will love Palestinian, Sunni the Shite.

Moslem and Christian will remember that there is only One God and we are all brothers and sisters, children, each one of us, of that One God.

On that day all of creation, like the prodigal son, will return to right relationship with God, the Father and he will welcome us and all of creation, and he will rejoice.

But, our Advent longing for that day cannot be passive wishful thinking, but must be active and life affirming, it must enliven our hearts to trust God completely, to him love more deeply and to have a faith that lasts for as long as it takes. 

John the Baptist longed for that day and pointed to it when he preached repentance in the desert and when he baptized in the Jordan as a sign of that repentance and as a first step in preparation for the coming Lord. 

John was fired up and there was urgency in the air "for the Kingdom of God was at hand"

John called for a new honesty of character, a true conversion and an openness to what was/is coming.  John, the voice of one crying out in the desert, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths calls the Pharisees and Sadducees, who are lurking around his baptisms,  a brood of vipers, trouble makers, because they stubbornly look backwards to Abraham as their hope.  Abraham was a holy man loved by God, but he could not save, only he who was coming could save.

 the Pharisees and Sadducees were roadblocks to the people because they denied the potent truth of Isaiah’s vision.

John, who I imagine, would be losing his temper says look!

"I am baptizing you with water, but it is only a sign of repentance.

 I tell you, the one who is coming after me - is mightier than I.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" 

The one who comes will change everything and every tree that does not bear good fruit

will be cut down and he will consume all of us one way or the other.

John who was not the light, but pointed to the light seems to be saying –

we can argue till the cows come home, but "on that day" it will not matter.

Only Truth will matter and all will be subject to an unquenchable fire.

A divine fire that will devour, but it will also purify, and those purified will be foraged together, in Christ, one body one spirit and “on that day” all things will be brought together into one and handed back to the Father.

This is a good thing and the Church especially at Advent celebrates and rejoices in hope & joy for its coming.

 Let us then celebrate by looking back to God’s first coming; in all its tenderness and joy; the nativity, the Holy Family and the child Jesus and we look forward, beyond the horizon, to His second coming in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.

"on that day" our hope and our joy will spill out like that over ripe pomegranate.

 and we will rejoice in the presence of the Lord.  Come, Lord Jesus. Come!

"On that day” the earth shall be filled with Spirit of The Lord and his dwelling shall be glorious"

“On that day” our Advent longing will be over.

32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

Why do we do what we do? What drives us?

Why do we choose what we choose? What do we base those decisions on?

Often our choices are one step this side of the un-intentional, more of a habit, the easiest and safest  choice.

We make countless choices, without a second thought, as if they do not matter at all. 

Life sometimes forces us to make more deliberate decision. When we need to take a moment to figure out the next step.  Still this usually starts and ends with - what’s best for me.

Here the Church reminds us that we should make the effort to look beyond ourselves, and make our decisions and choices out the freedom that only comes from our Faith - the freedom to choose the better good; a more selfless choice for the good of the spouse or family or for the common good for neighbor and community and even for the good of the world.

But, sometimes there are choices that must be made from the deepest part of our being.

They go beyond the better and the common good.

These choices can only be made out of absolute living faith and a confident hope that is more real and tangible than what confronts us, whatever that may be.

We must (and there is no other option) base our decisions on the absolute reality that the Kingdom of God, His love and mercy, is more real than the kingdom of man and what it offers us and that Jesus (not ourself) is the only way,  truth and  life.

Sometimes, we must step up to the plate.

 The rein of King Antiochus Epiphanies, some 150 years before Jesus, was heavy handed and oppressive.

His regime used every means to stamp out Jewish religion and culture.  He had the Temple desecrated and holy scrolls burned.

 He attempted to crush all sacred and cultural intuitions that were the life blood of the Jewish people.

The authorities struggled to stamp out anyone or anything that tried to return Israel back to God. 

Under this oppression many were arrested as were the mother and her seven sons in today’s 1^st reading.

All were imprisoned, cruelly tortured and in the end killed for holding fast to their faith.

 They were given options, of course.  “Just renounce your faith and you can go home.” They might have said.

We know this scenario.  It continues to be played out, in one form or another, around the world; everywhere the light of faith confronts the darkness of oppression and sometimes it’s only a lone voice in a wilderness.

We read that each brother was forced to make a decision that no human being should have to make, but which all human beings must be ready and able to make.

Confronted by hatred and fear each person (in their weakness and vulnerability) had to look their captor in the eyes and choose.

 “We are ready to die”   one says. “It is my choice to die at the hands of men” says another.

Why this courage? another son explains.

 “You are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up again – forever.” 

 Each had to dig deep into their very being because there was no faking it.  There was no pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

 Only truth would do; a faith that had already been lived day in and day out.  In fact they had already made their choice countless times before.  Each had already decided long before that day that

We are not afraid “God will raise us up again”

This was not, nor can it ever be, empty bravado - it was conviction, a deeply lived realty.

And what a reality it is.

The second reading describes this Christian reality.

“May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and has given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.”

This is the Truth and the Faith we must build our lives on.  

It is what we must base our choices on.   It is how we measure our lives.

 God loves us and has given us everlasting encouragement (which is faith) and through the gift faith the grace of hope is born.

St Paul knows gift of faith, which is received through baptism, is not the same as living faith that transforms lives and turns us, by what we say and do, from believers into disciples.

 “May God encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.” Paul prays

The gift of Faith must be nourished and exercised, claimed as our rightful inheritance, held tight and most importantly used as our guiding light for our daily, ordinary lives.

 Faith and Hope must the foundation of every choice and decision we make.

If we do not live our lives in the light Faith and Hope, if we do not choose Jesus and the Kingdom of God over the Kingdom of deception, selfishness, pride and prejudice, then we can never hope to choose eternal life over this transitory life when push comes to shove.

Unless we strengthen our faith by making daily choices that reflect God’s love and compassion, we will always fall short and choose the cheap over the costly.  Love of this world over the love of God.

This is what Jesus is telling the Sadducees.

You love yourselves rather than loving God.

You trust your rules and laws that only tangle and entrap.

 You love this life without regards for eternal life to come. And you dent the resurrection.

Sure we need to be engaged in this transitory world because we have responsibilities;  as spouses and parents, friends and workers, and as helpful strangers  but always acting out of love of God, and always acting to restore His Kingdom that is already growing here.

The salvation of the world goes on - one choice, one decision at a time. Thousands upon thousands small choices,  each one bringing us closer to God and adding to the building up the Kingdom or taking us further from God and hindering that growth.

The choice is always ours. God had given us that freedom.

But before we choose (in little or great matters) we must recall to mind Jesus’ promise

  “I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live”

“If you believe you will see the glory of God”

This - we can always bet are lives on.

28th Sunday

Counter to what we normally think or what would normally catch our attention – it’s not the healing that counts; it’s the response to the healing that matters. The healing is just an outward sign of the dramatic, but unseen making new. Sometimes, as we see in today’s Gospel, the unseen making new goes unnoticed or even ignored.

Any gift requires some sort of thanks, but God’s Gift demands our gratitude and not just lip service, but life changing and life affirming loving action that is the fruit of God's gift of new and eternal life.

We see it in Naaman, a prideful and powerful general, who goes to Israel, because he has heard form a servant girl that he can be cured of his leprosy. As one of such prestige and honor would, he presents himself to the King of Israel, who dismiss him - what can I do. But, Elisha says to him I will show you that there is a prophet (a man of God) in Israel. I will show you God at work. So Naamen goes with all his men and horses in great splendor.He scoffs at the paltry means of his potential healing (simply washing in the puny Jordan) and he turns away. But in a moment of Grace, (Naaman's healing had already begun)  he decides to try anyway and he is overwhelmed by the experience “his flesh became again like the flesh of a little child”.

Part of the gift of healing was Naaman’s new knowledge (an experience of Grace) that his healing was more than skin deep. The physical healing was great and not to be dismissed but this healing was of the spirit and of his very humanity, and it compels this prideful man to real humility and gratitude. “Now I know (I have experienced) there is no God in all the earth, except the God of Israel”

We see it in the 10 lepers who Jesus heals in an even less dramatic fashion, by simply telling them to go show themselves (as proof of their healing) to the authorities, who are the only official voice that can announce them, clean. As they all hurry off, one remembers something long forgotten, or perhaps something within him stirs him to do the unexpected. The newly healed leper returns, to thank Jesus, for he knows it was more than his skin that was cleansed. He knows he was not just cured, but healed, and that his healing was complete transformation of body, mind and spirit; from death to life. And like Naaman, the leper - returned (in gratitude) to glorify God in a loud voice.

It is important, but not crucial (at least to this homily) that we reflect that both Naamen and the leper were outsiders, beyond the law and so beyond God’s saving grace. It is also worth noting that Naaman had power & prestige and the leper had none, but both became equal in their belief and in their new belief they were both set free.

For us what is unique and sanctifying, is that their gratitude went beyond being merely thankful. 

Beyond what we the American Catholic writer Flannery O’Conner lamented –

“My thanksgiving is never in the form of self-sacrifice, it is rather a few memorized prayers babbled once over lightly”  And this describes most of us most of the time. But, active all-embracing gratitude is true Christian gratitude.  It is deep, it is motivating, it is sanctifying and it compels us, not to move our lips, but to conform ourselves more and more, closer and closer to Jesus. This is what Paul describes in himself – a fearless gratitude in the Gospel.

 “Remember, Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, this is my gospel “ He says. We know the joy and confidence in which Paul proclaimed the Gospel, but he reminds us that real transformative gratitude is a grace that is both deep and broad and includes everything and rejects nothing -“this is my gospel (that is, it is Jesus Christ), for which I am suffering”.

Sacrifice and suffering are the hard side of gratitude, beyond the babbled prayers. It is never the easy choice.

Sacrifice and suffering are not inherent in the Gospel - it is the Good News, but it can be the consequences of living the good news in a self-serving self-serving world where escaping sacrifice and turning its back to suffering is preferred to facing it head on. Paul tells us that we may suffer and even be bound up in chains - both literal and metaphoric,but God gives meaning and hidden value to our sacrifice and suffering and we are free from the oppression of despair. 

How deep is Paul’s gratitude?  Well, he boldly proclaims “I bear everything”. This is the difference between lip service and all-embracing gratitude, between cheap and costly grace, the Protestant martyr Bonhoeffer would say. Paul doesn’t pick and choose what to bear. He doesn’t shy away from the heavy load. And this is sanctifying gratitude and it is the proper response to God’s gift of new and eternal life.

Gift and selfless / surrendering gratitude – Naaman saw the connection. Gift and self-less gratitude, the Samaritan leper saw the connection.  St Paul’s saw it and points out that it begins for us in baptism -

“If we have died with him we shall also live with him.” Resurrection with Christ through baptism sets in motion a new life of selfless gratitude both sanctifying and sacrificial.  But this is not a one off, but a starting point. Paul reminds us that this is a journey.“If we preserve (in gratitude on this journey of faith) we shall also reign with him”

But, this kind of gratitude must be cultivated, nourished and strengthened. We must continue to choose and respond to God in whatever form comes our way - joyful or sacrificial. Because Paul is clear -  “If we deny him he will deny us.” This is true. God has given us the great human gift of choice and so is we choose to deny God, he must sadly respect the choice and so by default denies us.“But, if we are unfaithful (the unfortunate attribute of our human condition) God remains faithful”

For no matter how many times we fall down, stumble, get lost, or break down Jesus is there, reminding us of the Father’s faithfulness, love and mercy. He is always there to heal us with a touch or a word and to command us in love “Stand up and go, your faith has saved you”