Sunday, January 12, 2020

Baptism of the Lord

Baptism of Jesus by John
Sunday we celebrated the baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan River. We began our liturgy with the rite of the sprinkling of water upon ourselves, a symbolic invitation to renew our own baptismal promises and be ever more enthusiastic missionary disciples of Jesus.

Our baptism began our journey to the eternal dwelling place of God, with Jesus as our guide and teacher. We not only experienced water, as Jesus did, but we became disciples of Jesus. That experience changed our lives. We became new creatures, alive with God's life.

The word of God takes us back in our imaginations to the sixth century before Jesus, to the Hebrew exile in Babylonia (what we know as Iraq). This passage is a poem, a song, about a future “servant” who will be a light to those who live in darkness.

The early Christian community saw in this “servant” Jesus: who proclaimed a transcendent purpose for us: eternal life with God beyond our earthly life. This word may challenge us to ask whether we have our priorities straight: always to be in a right relationship with God and one another.

In the Gospel according to Matthew, John the Baptist invites people to live a God-centered, other-centered life. His focus was clearly to point to Jesus as the Messiah. John then baptizes Jesus. As Jesus arises from the waters, the power of God overwhelms him and fired up by the spirit of God, he begins his public ministry in Galilee.

Baptism is a rite of initiation into a world-wide community of Christian disciples. We baptize children to emphasize that baptism is a gift from God, like human life, not just something we choose to have.

To understand baptism, we recognize who we are in relationship to God. In the beginning, man and woman walked with God; they had friendship with God and with one another. But somehow they lost that friendship. They fell from grace. Genesis describes very powerfully their fall. They hid from God. Ever since, human beings have cried out for God’s friendship again.

That's why God became flesh – one with us -- in Jesus. God, through the dying/rising of Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit, re-establishes that friendship again.

This new relationship makes very straight-forward demands upon us. The so-called Ten Commandments are about freeing ourselves from attitudes and behaviors that undermine our relationship with God and one another. Put simply, God is an awesome creator God who loves us unconditionally; and our response always is gratitude.

As we celebrate Jesus’s baptism, I invite all of us to renew our baptismal promises now, to be missionary disciples of Jesus, gloriously alive especially in word and sacrament.