Then Jesus
came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have
prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’
But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way
to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented. And when Jesus had been
baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened
to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on
him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am
well pleased.’
In the last few reflections we have
been looking beyond the ‘Christmas card’ presentation of the whole Christmas
story to see starkness of a kind that is often forgotten in the midst of
Christmas celebrations. The mystical events of the Nativity, the Epiphany, the
Holy Family fleeing to Egypt and now Jesus at his adult baptism could in no way
be construed at the time as magical. Nothing was clean, sparkly or pretty. It
all took place in the muck of harsh reality and those involved in these
mysteries had to pay deep attention in order to discover and have faith in the
stirrings of the Spirit in it all.
As I noted in the Epiphany reflection, the
Christmas story is, in fact, the story of our lives where the journey is often
hard, dry and rocky, where life is rarely simple and clean. We have moments of
enunciation and magnification where we experience beautiful grace to say yes to
God’s desires and where our hearts overflow with praise for his abundant life.
And then we have times where the will of God leads us into journeys of hardship
and spiritual poverty. We are confronted by circumstances that utterly confound
us. We may experience joyful rebirth and a sense of having arrived and then just
as suddenly we may feel like we have no home and grieve for what’s been left
behind and for what we feel we never had.
I am emphasizing once again that it is
within the very fabric of our uneven, static, difficult and chaotic lives that
Mystery appears and grows. We cannot wait until things are ‘picture
perfect’ before we begin to watch for the manifestation of God. He comes in the
midst of the mess but he often comes 'small'. Often his coming can create what
seem to be complications but are really complex and intricate patterns of
beauty being woven into our fabric of our own stories. In retrospect we can see
those patterns of light in the Christmas story but it certainly wasn’t easy to
see them at the time.
The baptism of Jesus is yet another
lovely vignette in our storehouse of perfect theological images. It seems so
far removed from the Christmas story because now our little Savior is all grown
up but it’s definitely all tied together. Subtle mystery upon subtle mystery.
Jesus participated in a ritual cleansing he didn’t need and he did so because as
a mewling infant lying in a pile of straw, crying and pooping like any other
baby, he was not just immaculately inserted into this crazy world but was
immersed in the mucky depths of it in order to redeem life as it really is, not
to present us with an unattainable ideal. Our mangers, the roads we travel in terror,
our senses of being homeless and foreign to this world and our ever present
grief that something has been lost but we don’t know what, have all been transformed
by Jesus into rich soil for the growth of his presence and mystery in our
lives. He blessed the mess by becoming completely one with it all. He is one
with our births and rebirths, our rising stars, our struggles to grow, mature
and understand, our plunges into the waters of rebirth and, finally, our
deaths. Mystery flourishes in the midst of mess. Yes, in the midst of your
mess. Your mess is holy ground and it is there you will find him. It is
there that you are plunged again and again into the waters of rebirth.
We have our sacramental Baptism and then throughout our
lives we ‘re-member’ or relive that baptism every time we make a turn around in
our lives and recommit ourselves to be who God has called each of us to be. Every
time we intentionally bless ourselves with holy water and every time we
intentionally repeat our Baptismal promises we are reminding ourselves of our
true identity. In his baptism, one of the things that Jesus showed us about our
own daily baptisms is what to listen for after rising out of those waters of ‘re-membering’
and regeneration. As he rose up, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw
the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from
heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’
When you come
to God for inner cleansing, to tell him you are his and that your desire is to
be open to the fulfillment of his will in your life, what you should be
listening for are the same words that Jesus heard. “This is my son. This is my
daughter, the Beloved in whom I am well pleased.” You must listen for those
words because in Baptism you are clothed in Christ. It is he that you have put
on. God looks at you and sees the glory and beauty of his Beloved son.
Can you believe
that God looks upon you with such joy? Can you believe that God eternally
treasures you? The understanding that you fall and fail brings you back to your
waters of baptism, to repentance and regeneration but it’s not this repentance that
causes God to speak words of love over you. It is repentance that gives your eyes
the ability to look up and your ears the capacity to hear the words he is
always speaking over you. If you don’t give yourself permission to listen, your
eyes will remain focused on your limited false self rather than being opened to
the awesome mystery of how Jesus pushed aside the walls of all our limitations
and opened the way for us to assume our rightful places as priests, prophets,
sovereign rulers and dignified daughters and sons of the living God.
This
reflection continues next week but until then, why don’t you enter into a
long-term Lectio Divina. Take the following words from this week’s first
reading to your daily prayer time and listen to them, meditate upon them and
contemplate them as words being spoken about you:
Thus says the
Lord:
Here is my
servant whom I uphold,
My chosen, in
whom my soul delights;
I have put my
spirit upon him (her).
(Isaiah 42:1)
May the Word
of the Lord lead you to amazement and profound joy.
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