Homily for Feast of Baptism of the Lord

Homily for the Feast
of the Baptism of the Lord

Jan. 12, 2020

Is 42: 1-4, 6-7
St. Pius X, Scarsdale, N.Y.

“Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased, upon whom I have put my spirit” (Is 42: 1).

The Baptism of Jesus (Lambert Sustris)

The prophecies of Isaiah include 4 passages on the Spirit-filled servant of the Lord.  This servant does an abundance of good but also, thru his suffering, atones for sins.

At his baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, Jesus is revealed as the Spirit-filled servant of the Lord, a servant who very much pleases God the Father.

In fact, as yet Jesus has done nothing publicly that would mark him as a special servant of God.  After his baptism, which affirms his commitment as a man, as a faithful Jew, to God’s ways, the Spirit will lead him into the wilderness of Judea for a period of testing or trial—“to be tempted by the devil,” St. Matthew says (4:1).  Only then will he undertake his public ministry.

Jesus’ baptism wasn’t a sacramental Baptism.  It didn’t bestow God’s sanctifying grace upon him, for he already enjoyed complete communion with his Father and the Holy Spirit.  It didn’t establish him as a child of God, as sacramental Baptism does us; he was already God’s only-begotten Son.  But it was a vocational baptism.  Somehow, in conjunction with his 40-day retreat in the desert, his vocation was revealed to him, that vocation spelled out in Isaiah’s prophecies.

The vocation of Jesus of Nazareth, the Father’s beloved Son (Matt 3:17), overshadowed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, is to “bring forth justice to the nations” (Is 42:1).  Justice here doesn’t mean legal justice, such as one might hope for when nations have disputes with each other, or when citizens demand their human rights, or when an accused person is put on trial.  Justice, often translated as “righteousness” (as it is in today’s gospel [Matt 3:15]), means a right relationship with God.  The vocation, or the mission, if you like, of Jesus is to put the nations, all the earth (Is 42:4), into a right relationship, a holy relationship, with God.  Toward that end, Isaiah says, he’ll be a light for the nations, carry out works of mercy and healing and earthly justice, and be in person a covenant between God and humanity.  St. Peter preaches to the household of a Roman centurion, members of one of those foreign nations that Isaiah speaks of:  “Jesus of Nazareth … went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38).

When you and I were baptized, it was a sacramental act, as you know.  The pouring of water upon us as the trinitarian words of consecration were spoken was an outward sign of what God was doing secretly and mysteriously within us:  pouring upon us his sanctifying grace, embracing us with love, making us his daughters and sons, like Christ.  The rite is also called christening, for by it we are made christs, anointed like Jesus with the Holy Spirit, for christ means “anointed,” and the sacred oil called chrism is smeared upon our heads immediately after our ritual washing and cleansing.

But our Baptism, like Jesus’, also has a vocational component.  Like Jesus, we are commissioned as God’s beloved children, filled with his Holy Spirit, and missioned to do good and oppose the devil.  We enter a covenant relationship with God, a bonding of our loyalty and God’s protection.  We are to be “a light for the nations” (Is 42:6), to be agents of God’s healing by our actions and words, to practice the works of mercy and justice, “to bring the good news to the poor” (Preface).  In due course our heavenly Father will bring us home to the kingdom of light where Christ his Son awaits us.

“The coastlands will wait for his teaching,” says Isaiah (42:4).  Today we are the bearers of Christ’s teaching:  that God loves every human being, that God calls every human being to eternal life thru the cross and resurrection of his Son Jesus, that all who adhere to Jesus must strive to live like him.  Isaiah addresses the Lord’s servant, “I, the Lord, have called you for the victory of justice, I have grasped you by the hand” (42:6).  We are designated now as the servants of the Lord, washed in Baptism and anointed by sacred chrism, grasped by Christ’s hand, to live in justice, to live holy lives, exemplary lives, committed lives that will reveal God’s holiness to our neighbors, our fellow parishioners, our own relatives—so many of whom are skeptical, no?, about the followers of Jesus.  They’ll know the good deeds of Jesus, his holiness, his conquest of the devil insofar as we reveal it to them.

In today’s Collect we prayed that we, God’s “children by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit,” will “always be well pleasing” to him, like Jesus.  By God’s grace, may it be so.