Readings: Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Titus 2:11-14; 3:4-7; Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
Today’s celebration
of the Baptism of Jesus as a young man,
just a much as last week’s celebration
of the visit of the Magi to the baby Jesus,
is the celebration of an “epiphany,”
a “manifestation,”
an event that shows forth and reveals
the identity of Jesus as God’s anointed,
the beloved Son with whom God is well-pleased.
Indeed, the Baptism of Jesus is a manifestation
not only of the identity of Jesus as God’s beloved,
but also of the mystery of the Trinity:
Jesus the eternal Son, born now in time,
upon who the Father sends the Holy Spirit
as he begins his time of public ministry.
The infinite, timeless dance of love that is God
shows itself in this particular historical moment,
and from this moment flows forth all that would follow:
Jesus’ proclamation of God’s reign,
the saving sacrifice of his passion and death,
the new dawn of his life-giving resurrection and ascension.
In our own baptisms,
we become sharers in this epiphany.
The sacrament of baptism is an epiphany of grace;
it shows the reality of God’s love
in a way that makes that love present
in this historical moment,
making us a new creation in Christ.
We become by grace what Jesus is by nature:
to everyone who rises from the waters of baptism God says,
“This is my beloved son.”
“This is my beloved daughter.”
Through baptism we share in the identity of Jesus
and become a part of that infinite, timeless love that is God.
But what does this really mean?
What does it actually look like
to become by grace what Jesus is by nature,
to live as a son or daughter of God?
I would suggest that to be baptized into Christ
is to be invited to live out the drama of our lives
against the backdrop of an infinite horizon.
We humans can be tempted to constrain our lives
within the comfortable confines of the knowable,
to find meaning in what we at least think we have in our control:
a career or a family,
an ethnic identity or a political ideology,
accumulated honors or achievements.
But to be baptized into Christ is to be called
beyond a life that we can control
into the wild adventure of the reign of God,
into the dizzying world-turned-upside-down
that bursts into our ordinary lives through faith in Jesus.
To be baptized into Christ is
to live within the mystery of God,
the infinite, timeless dance of love
that is the source of all life.
To put it another way,
we who have been baptized into Christ have become,
as St. Paul puts it in our second reading,
“heirs in hope to eternal life.”
If we Christians fail as Christians,
it is in hoping for too little.
We might think of the baptism of Jesus
not just as the epiphany of his divine identity
but as the epiphany of hope,
for through it we are invited to an infinite hope,
a hope for nothing less than everything.
As St. Paul wrote to the Christians of Corinth,
“everything belongs to you… the world or life or death,
or the present or the future: all belong to you,
and you to Christ, and Christ to God” (1 Cor. 3:21-23).
This hope for everything
is planted in the hearts of all who surrender
the controllable hopes that they have for lesser things.
It is not a hope only for the strong or the wise,
for the rich or the powerful,
but for each and every life newborn in Christ,
no matter how young or how old,
how famous or how obscure,
how blessed with joys or how afflicted with sorrow.
Each is a life of infinite value,
the life of a son or daughter of God,
a life that counts in the eyes of God.
To we who have been baptized God says,
hope for everything.
Hope for the reign of God to be made real in you
and live a life that risks radical love;
hope to know the saving passion of Jesus in your own life
and grow in compassion for all who suffer;
hope to know the new creation that triumphs in Christ’s resurrection
and live fearlessly in the face of opposition and misunderstanding;
hope that the you may one day join your voice
to the hymn of all creation,
and praise without ceasing the eternal love
in which we live and move and have our being.
For everything is yours,
and you are Christ’s,
and Christ is God’s.
