What did Jesus find when he went down
into the waters of the Jordan
river,
to baptized at the hands of
John?
What awaited him as he plunged
into the bath of repentance
to which John had called his
fellow Israelites
in preparation for the coming
day of judgment?
Certainly not the washing away
of his own sins;
Luke has already informed us
in the beginning of his Gospel
that the child born of Mary is
holy, the Son of God.
There was no need for Jesus to
repent,
to turn his life around.
What, then, took place that
day in the river Jordan?
What happened to him in those
waters?
Today’s celebration of the
Baptism of the Lord
concludes the Christmas
season,
and reminds us that for the
past few weeks
we have been doing something
more
than simply celebrating Jesus’
birthday.
The Baptism of Jesus continues
the “epiphany” or
“manifestation” of Jesus to the world
that we celebrated last
Sunday:
the Father’s voice from heaven
and the descent of the Holy
Spirit in the form of a dove
show to those present that Jesus
is God’s beloved Son –
he truly is “Emmanuel,”
God-with-us.
But there is an even deeper
connection
between the Baptism of Jesus
and the mystery of Christmas.
For the incarnation is not
simply about God the eternal Son
taking on a human nature –
as stupendous as that event is
–
but it is also about we humans
becoming, through Christ,
partakers in God’s own nature.
The early Christian theologian
Athanasius of Alexandria
wrote that Christ “was made human
that we might be made
God" (De incarnatione no. 54).
This theme has echoed
throughout the Christian tradition.
When the priest or deacon mixes
water into the wine
at the preparation of the
gifts at Mass
he prays, “may we come to
share in the divinity of Christ
who humbled himself to share
in our humanity.”
The poet Gerard Manly Hopkins put
it this way:
In
a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I
am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am.
This theme is sometimes called
the admirabile commercium or “wondrous exchange”:
God takes on human nature in
all its frailty
so that we may take on the
immortality of God’s own nature.
This is the event of our
salvation that we celebrate at Christmas,
and it is also what we
celebrate in the Baptism of Christ.
What did Jesus find when he
went down into the water?
He found the waters of death
that we had created.
And in those waters he found
us:
drowned in the waters of
chaos,
submerged in our alienation
from God,
suffocated by our own unlovely
sinful acts,
the dead bloated with the corpsegas
of pride and greed and envy.
of pride and greed and envy.
And stripping himself of his
immortality,
Jesus transformed those waters of
death into waters of life,
exchanging his divine immortality
for our human death,
so that we who were drowned in
sin
might be raised with him to immortal
life.
Through our baptism,
which St. Paul calls “the bath
of rebirth,”
we become partners in that wondrous
exchange.
In baptism the Holy Spirit poured
out on Christ
is “richly poured out on us”;
in baptism God declares that
we, like Christ,
are God’s beloved, on whom
God’s favor rest;
in baptism, like Christ, heaven
opened to us.
What did we find when we went
down
into the waters of baptism?
What awaited us in the bath of
repentance?
We did not find death
but the robe of immortality
that Christ left for us there,
the glorious garment of which
he stripped himself
so that we might be clothed in
everlasting life.
Wrapped by Christ in that robe
of light
we pray that we may be worthy
of such a garment,
that we might live lives that
reflect
the divine glory that has been
given to us.
It was for this that God
became a human being:
that God’s life and light
might be reflected in us
who have become through grace
what Christ is by nature:
beloved sons and daughters of God.
