The Baptism of the Lord

The Gospel of the Baptism of the Lord is one more “Annunciation” scene. As with Gabriel’s announcing to Mary that she would give birth to a son who will be born of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is announced as the “beloved son” by the same Spirit. John has baptized the crowd and Jesus fulfills his ritual tradition. Then, while praying, there is a new form of baptism specifying him as the “beloved servant”. In a sense, it is more of a “confirmation” or even more, an “ordination”. This is not the moment when Jesus takes upon himself a “Divine Nature”, but an announcement of his coming of age in our salvational history. By the overshadowing by the Spirit he became incarnate. By the “over-hovering” of the same Spirit he becomes incorporated, that is embracing himself as “servant-Messiah” of God and for all God’s people. The same Spirit “incarnates” and “Incorporates” that family in Luke’s account of Pentecost in The Acts of the Apostles.

With our being baptized, we enter this same coming of age, this same being part of Jesus’ salvific embrace of God’s mission of returning creation to its proper state of praise and order. The work of the Spirit is bringing about flesh and family. The Spirit overshadowed and conceived a fleshly presence and a family of faith. We are likewise inspirited to take flesh anew and our mission of extending God’s family in Christ.

We have been celebrating these past weeks, the Word becoming flesh. Mary’s flesh was more than it seemed; her body was more than others knew. In time her cousin, the shepherds; the Magi came to reverence that which was different from what it had seemed to be. That Word Made Flesh was transformed too, from being what it seemed to be seen for what he was, the “Beloved Son”.

Our being Baptized and Confirmed dedicates us into the “Listeningness” of Jesus. As he listened to the mysterious God and to the bewildering voices of humanity within and around Him, by these same sacraments we plunge into the waters of “Discernment”. To be guided by the spirit does not mean our being subtracted from the attractive voices which sure can sound “divine”. Our ears were blest at our baptisms to begin this process of learning what God sounds like and what our egos, our flesh, and our worldliness too, sound like. Jesus learned to listen to it all with receptivity and discretion. We will spend these next weeks of the Liturgical Year listening so that we might hear, and hearing, we might live what we come to believe. 

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