January 11, 2009 Cycle B
Isaiah 42:1-4,6-7 Acts 10:34-38 Mark 1:7-11
As we gather to celebrate the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I came across some prayers children are supposed to have prayed as reported by their parents and teachers. I give you just four of them:
Dear God, I bet it’s very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it. Nate
Dear God, I wish you would not make it so easy for people to come apart. I had to have three stitches and a shot. Dean
Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I asked for was a puppy. I never asked for anything before. You can look it up. Joyce
Dear God, please put another holiday between Christmas and Easter. There is nothing good in there now. Jenny
This feast certainly serves more than an act of closure of Christmas. It also serves as a springboard into Jesus’ fulfillment of His vocation. Our Gospel today begins with the person of John the Baptist of which we heard about in the early weeks of Advent. We do not know much about him, but we have heard from the Gospel of Luke about his birth and something about his death. For many in his time he was considered a bit weird, but he was after all the relative of Jesus, a cousin of sorts, the child of Mary’s relative, Elizabeth.
John’s presence in the story of Jesus’ Baptism is yet a reminder about our own family connections and relatives. Some of us have had contact with them during the holidays. We talk about some of our relatives as people who march to the beat of a different drummer, who follow their own path, or are “special.” They are people who differ from us in any number of ways --- whether it is political or religious views, lifestyle or values, even something as simple as the way they dress, their hairstyle, or how many body piercing or tattoos they might have. They might be a cousin, an aunt, or an uncle, but because they are family we love them, even if we are always a little unsure of what they will say, or what they will do, or how they might influence our grandchildren or children. But they are family, and they are our family!!
Today as we celebrate the feast of Jesus’ Baptism, we are reminded of our own belonging to His family. Our entrance into that family is through the Sacrament of Baptism. For here we are called to remember our own invitation and our vocation to follow Christ the Light of the Nations.
On this weekend the Church in our country invites us to pray for vocations as people renew their baptismal commitments. The call is to follow Christ, whether as married or single, as a religious sister or brother, a monk or a nun, as a deacon or as a priest. Our prayer today is that people will live their lives as God calls them and that we ask God to open the hearts of many men and women so they might hear the happiness to which they are called.
As I said, this all begins as water was poured and the priest or deacon anointed us as priests, prophets and royal persons.
One of the most frequently asked questions in Baptism preparation with parents and godparents is this: “If Jesus is the Son of God, why did He have to be Baptized?” I think the real answer is that he did not. Jesus did not need to be Baptized to be the Son of God, or to engage in His earthly ministry, or to die and rise again. But, Jesus chose to be baptized as was the custom for faithful Jews at that time. Jesus did not become a Christian at His Baptism. He was born and lived and died as a faithful Jew. He did not get Baptized for the reasons we do, but He did it because He understood the need for realigning and recommitting lives; our own, and those around us, even in the midst of living them.
When I prepare infants and their families for Baptism, I try to be clear that this is a significant milestone in their lives and in this community of faith. You see the Church baptizes because Jesus told us to, and because He Himself was by John the Baptist. In other words we do what Jesus said and did. We follow Christ’s lead. We do not baptize because it is the socially appropriate thing to do, or because it could make God love any child or adult anymore. Each one of us, by virtue of our creation and birth, are children of God.
Baptism marks us as Christ’s own and forever and grafts us to the life of the Christian community even though at times that family seems to be messy, or even a bit weird or wacky. That Baptism also comes with responsibilities and challenges, but also obviously deep and profound joys. So it does mean that we spend our lives living out that Christian call, in the messy family, we know and love, called our Church. We too break the Bread and drink the Cup for the very same reasons. Jesus both did it and commanded us to do the same in remembrance of Him.
We have begun a new year and we cannot make light of the dangers and disasters that afflict us today: the unemployment, the economic strife, the clouds or terrorism never going away. Our country’s leaders truly face daunting tasks of reconciliation and protection. But we must not let all of that defeat us either. We must not give into despair.
For the Feast of the Baptism of Christ reminds us that God in Jesus Christ is at work in our lives. If we look closely we will see the God who loves us, each and every one of us. He loves us so that the Savior who came among us, and was Baptized with the Holy Spirit, makes us never again the same. Thus we might follow Christ more faithfully in our lives. This God who loves us, not from a distance, but in our very midst as one of us.
Amen. Amen. Msgr. Tom, Pastor Christ the King