When do we celebrate the
baptism of Jesus? Well, that depends what “of” means. If we mean the baptism of
Jesus in the sense of the event of Jesus being baptized, Jesus’ baptism in that
sense, we celebrated it last week. This week, our gospel gives us another
possibility for ‘of,’ though. This week, we celebrate the baptism of Jesus in
this sense: the event of Jesus baptizing. In our gospel we hear John the Baptist
report that he heard a message from God that this Jesus, whom he baptized,
would one day baptize with the Holy Spirit. And he has. The promise has been fulfilled. Brothers and sisters, Christ has baptized
us. That’s what makes us sisters and
brothers! There’s something amazing because each of us were baptized by someone
else. Someone else poured the water and said the words, but it’s still true
that Christ baptized us.
I think I
only realized the awesomeness of this after I’d first baptized. It was a few weeks after my ordination as a
deacon, and I’d been building this baptism up in my head. I’d already started
work at my parish a few months before my ordination as a deacon, and I was the
one who scheduled baptisms at that parish. When I put hers in the calendar, and
realized it was the first one I was scheduling for after my ordination, it was
really exciting for to me put my name down as celebrant, write the word “Baptize!”
in my calendar (complete with exclamation mark) and I prayed for the baby girl
as my diaconal ordination approached. But, when it came, I was so concerned to
get every detail right, not dropping anything or anyone, that I almost didn’t
pay attention to what was really going on, to what God was doing. It was when I
was praying in my room after the baptism that an awe came over me, awe over the
impossibility of neatly dividing up agency: I had genuinely poured real,
physical water over a flesh and blood human being, I had said the words, said “I
baptize you,” and God had done something.
In Christ, God had baptized Alyssa.
I hadn’t cleansed her from original sin, adopted her as my daughter,
brought her into the fold of my disciples or started her on the pilgrimage of
ongoing growth in holiness in likeness of me.
God had done that. But those were
my hands, and my lips, words my breath made mine, though I can never claim them
as anything other than gift, gift from Christ, who baptizes us.
And it’s
not just with water, though that would be enough. Water, live-giving and cleansing, richly
evocative, calling out to us of healing from sin, leveling the path to virtue
that sin makes mountainously arduous.
Baptism with water would be beautiful enough. But he goes further. Christ baptizes us with the Spirit that first
rejoiced to cling to him. We are immersed
in God’s own relationship of love. God’s
life-giving creative breath, that inspired prophets, that hovered over the waters
of creation, covers us, clings to us, inhabits us more deeply than we dare to
probe ourselves. Yes, the Spirit of God
is upon us, between us, among us, and the Spirit’s doing wonderful things.
And that’s
why, in a very real sense, each of our baptisms were more important even than
Jesus’. Because in our baptisms,
something new happened. We who were
estranged were brought near, we who were outside the fold were made sons and daughter, claimed,
embraced. Jesus was always the Light of
the World, but in baptism we are enlivened with that light too. That’s what we ritualize in the baptismal
candle, lit from the Paschal candle that was first lit last year at the Easter
Vigil. That Easter light makes us lights to the world too, gives us a message
of resurrection and hope to bring to the darkness that can never extinguish it.
Tomorrow, we celebrate the
birthday of Martin Luther King, someone who I think powerfully shows us what
being a “light to the nations” looks like. There are many parts of Martin
Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech that people can quote, but not so many
people know the first line? He begins by saying “I am happy.” “I am
happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest
demonstration for freedom in the history of this nation.” “I am
happy.” Even while standing smarting from imprisonment and the bad check
he was handed marked insufficient funds, he begins his speech “I am
happy.” He will decry with passion the sin of racism, but he will not
refuse to confess and proclaim his happiness, in his words, he will not “wallow
in the valley of despair.” The light he shined was a true Christian light,
one that doesn’t shrink from prophetically denouncing sin and injustice, from rejecting
evil as we will do as we renew our baptismal promises, but one that refuses to
give up the joy of the closeness of the Spirit, one that disclosed the fiery
furnace of God’s love from which his candle had been lit.
The beacon of resurrection light
is not at full glare yet. But let us still dare to rejoice in the
closeness of God’s Spirit, and the light we’re given to shine.
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