
Mass readings for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord:
Isaiah 42.1-4, 6-7 Psalm 29.1-4, 9-10 Acts 10.34-38 Luke 3.15-16, 21-22
I was sick last week. Lost my voice for a couple of days. And like most coping with clogged sinuses, sore throat, being drugged up with cough syrup and other potions and elixirs and so, half-asleep most of the day, I distracted myself with whatever took the least effort. That meant a lot of watching the news, and the accompanying commentary a lot more than I’m accustomed to doing, a lot more than I recommend to people. And boy, what a week it’s been: the political confusion here in Canada; the political chaos in Europe, in Germany and France; in the UK, the dam holding back a proper inquiry into the grooming gang scandal looks close to bursting; the Chinese economy is in a mess, stock market sinking, the bond market underwater; and Los Angeles is on fire, and there was still more.
As I got feeling physically better while nonetheless distressed by the state of the world, I took up some of my serious reading. I have at my bedside a volume on the history of the Christian doctrine of justification. It’s the kind of book I have to read with a Latin dictionary.
When eventually I got back into the office and sat down to prepare my homily, I had all this crowding up at the front of my mind with an urge to make sense of it all, to do so with some theological tour de force, to do it all in a homily of ten minutes or less impossible.
And then I remembered my homiletics instructor from my days at Saint Paul’s in Ottawa. He said, you don’t preach your homework – as fascinating as that book on justification is, we have not gathered to hear a precis of its contents. And one doesn’t preach the newspaper, as he put it back then – as compelling, as exciting as the news may be, as anxious as one may be to share one’s opinion, the congregation can get that sort of thing elsewhere, indeed, anywhere. The gospel is what is to be proclaimed and preached because that is what we need. And by doing that we are all recalled to it being the good news we need to pay attention to, much more than what turns up on the internet, the radio and the tv.
Recalling this, I read the gospel passage, did a bit of that Ignatian process of trying to imagine it, see it, place myself there at the River Jordan. But unlike those who were actually there on the day, I do carry the burden of current events (indeed, of a whole of history that has transpired since that famous baptism), I am weighed down by a theological heritage of two thousand years that impresses upon me the enormous significance of what is happening in that river, with John the Baptist and Our Lord, and how this relates to our ultimate justification before God.
So, standing there at the river’s edge in my imagination, I had the urge to jump in, I just wanted to dive into that cool, living water, and to wash it all away, let the weight of history, of humanity’s current predicament, of my own sense of inadequacy in the face of it all, just float away on the current; to pop to the surface, find my footing on the river bottom, stand waste deep or more in the flow of that sacred river, feel the sun on my face and to look upon the scene unfolding, revealing to me the way and means of salvation.
And that is what we’re looking at today: the spirit descending upon the Saviour, and the opening of the way to our salvation.
I’m sure you’ve heard the question before, or maybe not, why does Jesus, a man without sin, need to be baptized?
In Matthew’s gospel Jesus provides the answer: “to fulfil all righteousness…” That is, he is showing us the way toward our justification, and the command then is to follow where he goes, and the journey begins in the waters of baptism. Jesus, whose name is a variation on that of “Joshua” is, indeed, a new Joshua and he is leading us again through the Jordan. But unlike that first crossing in which the ark of the covenant made a dry road for the people as it had through the Red Sea, we must go through the water, get wet. And that can be intimidating.
Years ago, I was on Prince Edward Island, a beautiful place – lush and green, lovely beaches, lots of golf courses. However, go out to the western end of the island, its not so developed, it’s a little more rugged and rough, wind-blasted with harsher weather. I went up to North Cape, that’s the finger of land that you see on the map pointing up into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Go there, and you have no sense that you’re looking at something as tranquil sounding as a “gulf” – no, it looks like the North Atlantic. And the neat thing about the place is that you can walk out past the lighthouse, get close to the low cliffs, and have the ocean fill your field of vision, have it surround you on three sides. And when I was there, the seas were high, and the rollers were massive, the sky had gone from blue to grey rather quickly, and the winds were rising. On that day, and I remember it for all the strangeness of this moment, though standing quite assuredly on dry land, still some distance from the water, I focussed my vision out into that churning darkness. I shuddered, and I was afraid. It was momentary, but I remember the great mountains of water that were rolling toward me, and for an instant thought that nothing would stop them from sweeping on over the tip of the cape, to engulf me, the lighthouse, the charming restaurant we had dinner in. Now, I snapped myself out of it. It was getting quite cold out there, even for it being the middle of summer, and we headed back to the car ending the visit. But I think back on that and can’t help but comparing it to how I felt when I looked at the pictures from the Los Angeles fires, fires that are raging for lack of water to put them out. I was looking at a failed state, a civilization that could not look after itself for all its sophistication and wealth. Even knowing that fire is a constant hazard, especially at this time of year, aware of what it takes to deal with such a threat, we are hearing of a complete breakdown of what was once considered the most competent and effective firefighting systems in the world. It’s not reassuring news as we all rely on leaders who claim to be competent and seem more and more to be proving not to be.
When Jesus was born, Augustus was the emperor, and everyone hailed that Caesar as “the son of God.” Times were good, exceptionally so. Even Israel existed as a kingdom, though under a king of suspect lineage. In a generation though by the time Jesus wades into the Jordan, things are beginning to become unstuck. Tiberius is emperor, and the madness that would consume the imperial household was in evidence; as we know, Israel was broken up into little principalities, and the world was no longer so peaceful, but rather again experiencing the brutality of empire. In a generation, Nero would fiddle as Rome herself burned.
And God answered that predicament then, as he does our situation now. His grace has appeared, bringing salvation, as Paul tells us today, “training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, to live lives self-controlled, upright and godly…”
We cannot control what’s going on; we can’t command the ocean, but then, God is not asking us to. Nonetheless, we are asked to get wet; but not in the churning chaos of the deeps, rather, in the cool, cleansing waters of the Jordan, to recall our baptism and to remember what we are called to do: to be God’s people, to be Christ in the world, and so, make a way for humanity to save itself from the flames.
Amen.