Richard Bollman, S.J.

SCRIPTURE TODAY–Isaiah 42:1-7; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

The Baptism of Jesus, which we hear about today,

concludes the Christmas season.

So you see how the essence of this time

is not merely the birth of Jesus, but the revelation of his significance.

The story we hear today, the baptism of Jesus,

is older than the stories of his birth,

and it is told by each of the Gospels.

So the baptism declaration from the voice of God

"This is my Son the Beloved," is the "First Noel,"

the first revelation of Jesus as the good news of God.

The childhood stories were preserved later,

and they everywhere presume that the child to be born

would become the adult who stepped into the water of the Jordan

and who was claimed, in that moment, by God

as the Beloved, the chosen one.

And so do all the stories of the adult Christ

continue the revelation of who Jesus is.

The Gospels present Jesus: that is their rationale,

not merely to tell his history.

Then, looking back from the Gospel writings,

Christianity sees the prophecies of the Old Testament

about the perfect Servant of Yahweh

to be a fore-shadowing of Christ who is revealed in Jesus..

You will hear one of these sections of Isaiah this morning.

And to fill out the picture of baptism today,

you’ll be listening to a story of the early Acts of the Apostles

that illustrates the difference between the baptism of John

and the baptism that the Christians preserved as

an initiation in the Holy Spirit.

HOMILY: "We the Baptized" YEAR B, 2009

Some years ago two of the Missionary Baptist pastors I’ve gotten to know

spoke about a pilgrimage they made to the Holy Land.

It was a response to a great desire in both of the church leaders,

and they travelled with some of their congregants too.

What struck me most about their approach to the pilgrimage

was their decision to enter Israel from Jordan rather than Tel Aviv:

to travel, in other words, the route that Moses and Joshua would have taken

up to the Jordan river from the east, crossing it there near Jericho.

And so they encountered the Jordan River right away.

Some of their crowd, including the ministers I think,

were baptized in the river.

"Not the first baptism," they explained, "the one necessary for salvation,

But a renewal baptism."

I often hear such a desire among the congregation here,

people who are sorry they were baptized long ago as infants,

wishing they could step into the big pool we have now,

and get thoroughly soaked, come up gasping a little bit.

Imagine doing that in the river, where the sun and warm air break in on you,

while the water streams down your body.

You get more of the sensation of a new start.

Actual CHANGE. Change going on. The plunge.

WATER AND THE SPIRIT.

Newness for our life. Not the same old same old.

Change, growth, is something we look for often in our adult life.

During the various seasons of growing up, you reach out for it,

get a new start, drop the old ways, no longer cling to what’s dead.

You get a feel for how this has actually happened as you look back.

You can appreciate the changes.

You’re no longer the kid who proved herself by putting other people down

the way you might have done in high school.

As a retired person, you have an new, fresh feel

for how precious life has become, and you take less risks with your health.

These are changes. New ways of being.

Once you searched for the most lucrative job;

later on in life you find yourself searching for meaning, or service,

or the progress and security of your children.

Life changes us, and those changes are, indeed spiritual in nature.

God pulls us in and through the waters many times.

Sometimes you find yourself called to be a change maker for others.

I attended a meeting this weekend about worker co-ops,

knowing little myself, but meeting up with people

who have founded credit unions,

and worker-owned businesses, structured changes

that allow people of less means

to feel a stronger investment in their society and future.

I was listening to people whose main passion was to create jobs for the poor,

to build capital, without the motivation of marketplace greed.

I heard about how a janitorial service

can elevate its workers to standards of mutual respect and job performance

that doesn’t easily happen when you are just a loner looking for hire,

looking for a way up yourself.

Stepping into the water of renewal. Becoming a new person.

A wonderful quality of these human changes

is described in the life of the servant of God

that Isaiah unforgettably tells about:

God puts the spirit upon us: and our behavior changes.

We begin to live more tenderly with people,

not to break their backs or their hearts,

not to quench the spark in people

The servant of Yaweh cares about the whole picture,

the whole family, the whole congregation,

not just crying out in the street for your own particular cause.

Yet the servant is powerful in the spirit:

invested in life, trusting herself, no more fear or shame.

living from a sense of power that is God’s nearness.

Do you see any of that in yourself, learning how your attitude

makes or breaks a situation, how your presence can crush a person,

but instead you choose to build a person up.

That's the spirit at work in you. One of many ways. You're being reborn.

THE BELOVED OF GOD. Son or daughter, next of kin.

Baptism in the river: being soaked.

It takes some time for the soaking to get through,

but we come here on Sundays to keep alert to those signs, those stories.

And though we don't have baptism to undergo again,

we do have THIS ceremony, every week, the Eucharist,

and our Communion in this table, with Christ and with the whole parish.

Think of us always on the brink of a new moment, a new adulthood,

our baptism coming to fruitfulness in the way we think and hope,

in the way we deal with one another, all nourished at this table.

I believe this happens because Christ has a design upon us.

And we say AMEN to this, as we do in communion each week,

and let ourselves be full of hope, and full of gratitude.

Then it is good to give God thanks and praise.

Imagine this:

we can’t go together to the Jordan, but suppose we each did pause,

as many of you do, at the font at our entry way,

put your hand in the water, and recalled:

"how am I changing, what am I passing through,

how is my suffering giving a new shape to my whole existence.

How is my calling touching the lives of us all, the whole planet."

That’s the mystery of God’s revelation in Christ,

Kingdom of the Beloved Ones.

Imagine it happening. Unmistakably the Holy Spirit at work,

the rush of sunlight through the waters.

Each of us clothed in white, carrying the light.