1 Epiphany c January 10, 2016
Isaiah 43:1-7 Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17 Luke 3:15-17,21-22
Lectionary Link
Today the Gospel reading invites us to ask ourselves about the meaning of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. In his own time Jesus was not known as the person who became known as Son of God, Son of Man, Messiah and many other titles. The Gospels were written after Jesus had already become known as the Risen Christ and the followers of the Risen Christ were trying to re-tell the story of Jesus with the knowledge of their own experience. How does one re-tell the story of Jesus after he has become known in a much different way than how he was known in his actual time on earth? The re-told story has to become a blend of the past with lots of interspersed clues which indicate that the greatness of Jesus was there from the beginning and it was there even when people did not fully know about it or understand it.
One of things which we know is that many of the disciples of Jesus had formerly been disciples of John the Baptist. But we know that all of the followers of John the Baptist did not immediately begin to follow Jesus after John the Baptist had gone.
Of all of the Jewish sects, the members of the followers of John the Baptist were most likely to be ready to follow Jesus. The Gospels were written largely with the followers of John the Baptist in mind. So there had to be an event to show that John the Baptist was handing on the baton of leadership to his successor. And this had to be shown while showing the highest respect for John the Baptist.
If Jesus is shown to be a disciple of John the Baptist, then no greater respect could be shown by followers of Jesus than to show John as perhaps a mentor in the life of Jesus. And so the community of John the Baptist was shown to be the proto-church, the fellowship of people which would later help to form churches both in Palestine and in the cities throughout the Roman Empire.
John the Baptist, baptized using a water rite and a ritual initiation into the lifestyle which he was preaching. What the Gospel writers were showing to the community of John the Baptist was that John was so wonderful that many people thought that he could be the messiah. But John did not believe that he was the messiah; he did however come into the insights of his life together with a bit younger colleague, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was not ashamed of his relationship with John the Baptist; Jesus expressed his complete solidarity with John the Baptist and John's community by requesting that John baptize him in the Jordan River.
John and Jesus had great mutual respect for each other. The Gospel writers highlighted this mutual respect as a way to make the case that the community of John of the Baptist could become the community of Jesus Christ without compromising their original allegiance to John the Baptist.
The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist is a celebration of the relationship between John and Jesus and a celebration of the members of the community of John who were becoming members of the community of Jesus Christ.
If we impose upon Jesus in his own time, the later meanings and confessions of Jesus Christ then might tend to see Jesus as only the Son of God and not as a person who was fully in solidarity with humanity.
The later church confessed about Christ that God emptied the divine life into a very human being and gave up equality of God. This principle expresses that the life of God which is greater than human life cannot be known by human being unless it becomes completely translated and reduced into human experience and human language so that men and women could know that the life of God was knowable by human beings.
When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, the church understood this to be an expression of God becoming completely converted to humanity. When Jesus was baptized by John, it was saying that God had completely passed over into human experience. God was completely humble in being willing to be known in human experience.
And why did this conversion of God to humanity happen? And why was this "reverse" baptism of Jesus into humanity proclaimed in the Gospel?
In the very old theology of the orthodox churches there is a theological principle stated as "theosis" or divinization. It is stated in this way: God became completely human in Jesus Christ, so that men and women might attain their divinization. God became completely baptized into solidarity with humanity so that men and women might realize their baptism into divinity as baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is still being baptized today. God is still being converted completely into the human situations of your life and mine, even in this world with its diversity of blissful delights and terrible messes. This conversion of God, this baptism of Christ into earthly experience is part of the divine seduction to get you and me to accept a baptism into the life of God which has been planted within us. It was planted within us as the image of God upon us since creation but that image is so easily lost and forgotten and covered up by being raised in such imperfect environments. When John the Baptist said that Jesus would baptize us with the Holy Spirit, he was confessing what the early church believed about the discovery of the birth of Christ within their lives.
So today, let us rejoice in this intersection of baptisms. Jesus became baptized symbolizing God in solidarity with human experience, so that men and women could become baptized into the waters of divinity.
God crossed the waters to arrive completely on the human side of the river in Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ in turned has baptized us to take us to the other side of the river, the side of the heavenly divine.
Let us rejoice in this incredible Christian confession in the baptism of Jesus. God became completed converted to humanity so that humanity might become more and more completely converted to what the life of the divine means for you and me.
As we remember our baptism today, let us remember that we are on the journey to become more godly while being fully honest about our full humanity. And let us invite others to be on this journey with us today. Let us invite others to be baptized and ford the rivers toward the side the heavenly divine. Amen.
Today the Gospel reading invites us to ask ourselves about the meaning of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. In his own time Jesus was not known as the person who became known as Son of God, Son of Man, Messiah and many other titles. The Gospels were written after Jesus had already become known as the Risen Christ and the followers of the Risen Christ were trying to re-tell the story of Jesus with the knowledge of their own experience. How does one re-tell the story of Jesus after he has become known in a much different way than how he was known in his actual time on earth? The re-told story has to become a blend of the past with lots of interspersed clues which indicate that the greatness of Jesus was there from the beginning and it was there even when people did not fully know about it or understand it.
One of things which we know is that many of the disciples of Jesus had formerly been disciples of John the Baptist. But we know that all of the followers of John the Baptist did not immediately begin to follow Jesus after John the Baptist had gone.
Of all of the Jewish sects, the members of the followers of John the Baptist were most likely to be ready to follow Jesus. The Gospels were written largely with the followers of John the Baptist in mind. So there had to be an event to show that John the Baptist was handing on the baton of leadership to his successor. And this had to be shown while showing the highest respect for John the Baptist.
If Jesus is shown to be a disciple of John the Baptist, then no greater respect could be shown by followers of Jesus than to show John as perhaps a mentor in the life of Jesus. And so the community of John the Baptist was shown to be the proto-church, the fellowship of people which would later help to form churches both in Palestine and in the cities throughout the Roman Empire.
John the Baptist, baptized using a water rite and a ritual initiation into the lifestyle which he was preaching. What the Gospel writers were showing to the community of John the Baptist was that John was so wonderful that many people thought that he could be the messiah. But John did not believe that he was the messiah; he did however come into the insights of his life together with a bit younger colleague, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was not ashamed of his relationship with John the Baptist; Jesus expressed his complete solidarity with John the Baptist and John's community by requesting that John baptize him in the Jordan River.
John and Jesus had great mutual respect for each other. The Gospel writers highlighted this mutual respect as a way to make the case that the community of John of the Baptist could become the community of Jesus Christ without compromising their original allegiance to John the Baptist.
The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist is a celebration of the relationship between John and Jesus and a celebration of the members of the community of John who were becoming members of the community of Jesus Christ.
If we impose upon Jesus in his own time, the later meanings and confessions of Jesus Christ then might tend to see Jesus as only the Son of God and not as a person who was fully in solidarity with humanity.
The later church confessed about Christ that God emptied the divine life into a very human being and gave up equality of God. This principle expresses that the life of God which is greater than human life cannot be known by human being unless it becomes completely translated and reduced into human experience and human language so that men and women could know that the life of God was knowable by human beings.
When Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, the church understood this to be an expression of God becoming completely converted to humanity. When Jesus was baptized by John, it was saying that God had completely passed over into human experience. God was completely humble in being willing to be known in human experience.
And why did this conversion of God to humanity happen? And why was this "reverse" baptism of Jesus into humanity proclaimed in the Gospel?
In the very old theology of the orthodox churches there is a theological principle stated as "theosis" or divinization. It is stated in this way: God became completely human in Jesus Christ, so that men and women might attain their divinization. God became completely baptized into solidarity with humanity so that men and women might realize their baptism into divinity as baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is still being baptized today. God is still being converted completely into the human situations of your life and mine, even in this world with its diversity of blissful delights and terrible messes. This conversion of God, this baptism of Christ into earthly experience is part of the divine seduction to get you and me to accept a baptism into the life of God which has been planted within us. It was planted within us as the image of God upon us since creation but that image is so easily lost and forgotten and covered up by being raised in such imperfect environments. When John the Baptist said that Jesus would baptize us with the Holy Spirit, he was confessing what the early church believed about the discovery of the birth of Christ within their lives.
So today, let us rejoice in this intersection of baptisms. Jesus became baptized symbolizing God in solidarity with human experience, so that men and women could become baptized into the waters of divinity.
God crossed the waters to arrive completely on the human side of the river in Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ in turned has baptized us to take us to the other side of the river, the side of the heavenly divine.
Let us rejoice in this incredible Christian confession in the baptism of Jesus. God became completed converted to humanity so that humanity might become more and more completely converted to what the life of the divine means for you and me.
As we remember our baptism today, let us remember that we are on the journey to become more godly while being fully honest about our full humanity. And let us invite others to be on this journey with us today. Let us invite others to be baptized and ford the rivers toward the side the heavenly divine. Amen.
Today is the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ and obviously an occasion to speak about baptism. And one can think about the question asked by the young child regarding the baptism of Jesus. Did Jesus become a Christian at his baptism? There was of course, no Christianity at the time of the baptism of Jesus. A more relevant question would have to do with the community of John the Baptist. Did the baptism of Jesus signal a connection between Jesus and the community of John the Baptist? What was the meaning of the baptism of John the Baptist for all who were baptized by him and what is the meaning of the baptism of Jesus? What is the meaning of baptism? In Judaism, there was the practice of proselyte baptism when someone converted to Judaism. It would be true to say that baptism has accrued meanings and a variety of practices in its history in the religions of the world.
Baptism involves the use of water, a truly universal substance. We cannot help but be “water” people, even if we live in the desert. Our bodies are 50 to 65 percent water, so getting external water converted into body water is important for our survival. But our use of water externally is very important too. For bathing; water is necessary for keeping ourselves clean. But then there is also irrigation for farming and there are large bodies of water for transportation, not to mention our use of water in our play.
We also can know water as a threat and it can kill; the flood, the storm and water as a barrier to cross are prominent themes in the Scriptures. Water can symbolize the Void, the Abyss and the chaotic.
Living by and with and for water is perhaps a major feature of human life. It is not surprising that water would be the substance used for our orientation into the community that helps to form our identity. As humans, we are not technically amphibians; we are voluntary amphibians in that we selective choose how we want to live with and in the water.
If amphibians are water and land beings, what kind of beings are human beings? The sweeping biblical cosmology proclaims human beings as land and spirit beings. Being made of dust and deity sums up the human spiritual psychology. From dust we have our bodies; from the breath of God’s Spirit we have our interior life of the Word, the life that we call our soul-life. We live in a physical world and we live in and from an interior world of Word.
To become fully human means that we discover ourselves to be more than our physical existence; we discover ourselves to be more than our instinctual existence; we discover ourselves to be made to live with the sublime, the uncanny, the wonderful and the awesome.
In the Christian baptismal rite, we celebrate our birth, our very existence in the two realms of life. And baptism is always a baptism of repentance; a baptism of education. In baptism we proclaim that we are not perfect but perfectible; we can always become better. Perfection always has a future for us. In baptism we proclaim that we are ready to live towards our spiritual identity with God even while we do not deny our bodies; we bring them along too as the houses to be dwelling places for God on this earth.
In the baptismal rite we proclaim what our cosmology is; what we believe about God and what we believe about our destiny. We proclaim that being perfectible is enhanced by the practice of forgiveness. We proclaim that we can imagine a glorious future of endless possibilities even as we accept daily the limitation of what becomes actual in our lives towards the realization of hope. In baptism we practice the dynamic interaction of person within community. As a person who is not isolated we ask the community to teach, inculcate, educate, mark, impress, us with its very best values. In baptism, each of us says to the community, “move over and make room for me and the gifts that I have to offer.” In baptism, the community says to us, “Check your ego at the door and let others into your life and join with them to prove that more than be done together than can be done in isolation.” Baptism is a recognition of this person in community dynamic that defines our entire life. So baptism is not a cute little sprinkling of water on a baby’s head as a photo op for the baby book. It is a proclamation and a launching of a person into the basic dynamic of life, namely, person within community.
So how indeed is the baptism of Jesus different than ours? If Jesus did not become a Christian at his baptism, what did he become, or what do we believe is expressed in the baptism of Jesus?
The Orthodox Church has an expression: In Christ God become human so that humans might become divinized. The baptism of Jesus is part of the narrative of solidarity of God with humanity. Our belief in the incarnation; our belief that Christ is God is the narrative expression of the acceptance of human experience as a valid way for us to come to know the extra-human life of God through God’s Spirit. In the narrative of Jesus Christ we proclaim that there is a way to live human life like amphibians or as those who live in two realms. In the narrative of Jesus Christ, we accept the parallel existence of an inner Spirit-Word realm which can flood our physical lives with a quality of living that can only be expressed with words loaded with extreme meaning, words such as love, joy, hope, peace and faith. And though such experiences that bring us the sublime occasions to use such words can never be fully spiritual, we know that our physical world can be flooded with the Spirit so that we can know an elevation towards hope, love, joy and peace.
Our lives are fulfilled in the discovery of our being in this world as Spirit and Body. And this discovery has a community narrative in the event of the baptism of Jesus. The celebration of this event and the practice of baptism provide the occasions for us to remember always our spiritual destiny in life.
It is not enough to just regard baptism as a church requirement; we need to see the profound meaning that surfaces in the event of the baptism of Jesus and in the practice of the rite of Christian baptism.
May God grant us grace as we live as persons within community. May we bless our communities with our gifts. May we join our gifts with the gifts of other to multiply the possible good outcomes. May we have the humility to check our egos at the door; and may the community not force upon our lives cookie cutter limited stereo-types of what people should be. And may God bless us as we endeavor to make creative advances in love and justice in our world. This is the life of baptism as given to us by Jesus who himself was baptized. Amen.
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