Sermon The Baptism of Christ 2014

The Baptism of Christ - Juan Sánchez Cotán

Isaiah 42:1-9

Acts 10:34-43

Matthew 3:13-end

On Friday morning I thinking about today’s sermon while on my way into the parish on the Overground, which has, in places, a wonderful view over London. You can see for miles. The sun was about to rise, the sky was glowing in shades of peach and gold, and there were all the streets and houses, churches, mosques and temples, tower blocks and skyscrapers, stretching off into the distance. London.

And I had an impression of the millions of people who live in our city, beginning a new day. London is called a global city, its population is drawn from every nation and race and culture. But I wondered how much we are really one city, is there really one united community, or are there many communities which exist alongside each other but never meet? Tensions and divisions are often evident, as the reaction to the Mark Duggan inquest shows, or the fact that we run a drop-in for homeless people in a city of such wealth. Our city surely yearns, reaches out, for something better

With those thoughts I glanced down from the view to the book I had been reading, and saw these words: “Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society”. Those are the words of French priest Eugène Masure, quoted in Henri de Lubac’s great book “Catholicism”, a book which had a great influence on the Second Vatican Council, reviving the social dimension of the Gospel in catholic thinking and helping the Church to turn out towards the world once again. “Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society”. 

And indeed that is true. The gospels, just like the law and the prophets in the Old Testament, are about the salvation of a people. Not isolated individuals, but people collectively brought into a community of righteousness, peace and justice, under God’s rule. The gospels call this the “Kingdom of God”. 

So when John the Baptist starts preaching and baptising in the river Jordan, Matthew tells us that the “people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him”. And this coveys the sense of the whole population descending on John, a vast multitude. 

What were they going out to do? They were going out to be baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. And they were a diverse lot, too. This is the scene in the Gospel where John criticises the Pharisees and Sadducees going out to him as a “brood of vipers”!

So we have a picture of a great crowd of individuals, very diverse, each with their own burden of sin, some small, some great, going down to confess their sins. They sense that in this action, somehow, a new beginning will be possible. That forgiveness will open the way to something new, something better, not simply for them as individuals but for them as that great mass of humanity, as a people. 

So all these individuals go down into the water, confessing their sins. But what comes up out of the water is Christ. It is only Jesus who is described as emerging from the water, as if that is what matters for him, whereas for everyone else what matters is to go down into it.

And it is as Jesus emerges from the water that there comes the great revelation, the voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

And Jesus, as the Gospels and St Paul tell us, is the new creation, humanity made new, the “new Adam”. “Adam” meaning, originally, the whole human race, rather than just one individual. And the Spirit is seen over the head of Jesus, just as the Spirit hovered over the waters at the beginning, to bring creation to birth. 

So what goes down into the water is fallen humanity - sinful, divided against itself, isolated individuals struggling against themselves and each other. And what rises up from the water is humanity restored, recreated, united: Christ the new Adam, the Son, the Beloved.

Humanity in the beginning was created for unity, not for division. Human nature, created as Genesis tells us in the image of God, is one nature with many persons, just as God is one Divine nature in three Persons. But because of the fall the essential unity of humanity is not apparent to us. Sin has introduced division, enmity, and the illusion that we are separate and isolated, each a world to ourselves.

But in Christ the sin and division of humanity are overcome. He is the Son of Man, and in him the essential unity of humanity is restored. And he is also the Son of God, the Divine joined with the human in one person. Because Christ is human, all human nature is principle is one with him. And because he is Divine, all human nature, in principle, is deified. 

Humanity has therefore a great and two-fold dignity, founded on Christ. We are created, like everything in the universe, and Christ is the Word through whom all things exist. His descent into the waters of the Jordan is the Word immersing himself in creation and making all things holy. And we are human, we share the nature that the Word took to himself in the incarnation, and raised to the Divine. This is true in principle of the whole of humanity, which is why Christianity has such a profound reverence for the sanctity of human life. 

But this truth needs to awaken and come to life in each human person. The Spirit waits to bring to birth the new humanity, the revelation of Christ, in us. To discover our essential unity in Christ, and to share in his Divine nature, requires faith, an awakening of consciousness and a turning towards the Lord. It requires, in fact, repentance, which means turning around, turning to God and away from sin and division. 

The unity of human society found in the Gospel is not based on social engineering or any human initiative. Attempts to create an artificial unity in human society always fail, and can become demonic, as witness, for example, Nazi Germany or the Cultural Revolution in China. True unity is found in Christ, and is the creation of God’s Spirit. Christ is God’s new humanity, the new Adam, in which we are invited to find our own true humanity. And he is God’s Divinity joined to our nature, in which we are invited to share. 

For Christians the path of repentance to new life and unity in Christ is shown above all in Baptism. Our Christian life begins with the summons to the water of new birth, with the expression of faith and the promise of repentance. Whether we made those promises ourselves or they were made on our behalf, they are the faith and promise of the people of God that we joined at that moment. Baptism makes us one with Christ, and all who are in Christ are together the people of God. Through the waters of the font we die to sin and division and are reborn to unity and newness of life in Christ. 

But the waters of baptism do not cut us off from the rest of the human race. They express the movement to which all human beings are called by their very humanity: the turning of repentance, the descent into the waters which represent all seeking after God, the quest of all humanity to find salvation. Even when that is not expressed through Christian faith in the sacrament of baptism, the inner spiritual reality can still be present. 

The Church has always said that the desire for baptism is sufficient when the sacrament itself is lacking, even if that desire is implicit. This implies a generous view of the world, reflecting the generosity of God. Christ is not confined to Christianity, but Christianity points to Christ as the fulfilment of all human destiny. Whenever anyone turns towards the Lord however he may be experienced, wherever there is a desire for new birth into a redeemed humanity: there too we may see some facet of the great diversity of people going down into the water. So many individuals, from all races and cultures and nations, divided and fallen, confessing their sins, but raised up in Christ to a redeemed united humanity, and in him participating in the Divine nature.

Because the words from heaven are spoken of Christ, and therefore of all humanity as found and redeemed in Christ: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Because the Holy Sprit, in hovering over Christ, broods over the whole of the new humanity being brought to birth in him, creating in us new depths of the Spirit filled with Divine light and reflecting back to God his image, the revelation of his Son, as it is being recreated and restored in us.