Jesus comes up to John the Baptist. There is an awkward moment. John recognises the inequality of the relationship and signals his unworthiness to baptise Jesus but Jesus insists. How can we understand the baptism of The Sinless One? The insistence of Jesus can be understood from the perspective of how firstly, Matthew wants to make the connexion between Judaism and Christianity where he understands the latter to be the fulfilment of the former [1] and secondly, of Jesus’ desire and its consequence on those who are baptised.From the perspective of continuity and fulfilment, we have the opening of heaven. Imagine in the Old Testament when heaven remained shut and no rain fell upon the earth? Here at the River Jordan, heaven is opened and God re-establishes His relationship with the world. Of course, the Father’s eagerness is a response to the Messiah, his beloved Son.
Second, the Spirit coming down like a dove is sign of a new creation dawning. In Gen 1, the earth was a formless void and there was darkness over the deep and God’s Spirit hovered over the water. Further on in Gen 8, we read that the dove sent out by Noah brought back an olive branch thus signalling a new beginning. (Gen 8:11). With the Spirit coming down like a dove, Matthew reads the history of Israel anew in Jesus. In the baptism of Jesus, a new beginning has dawned upon us. For Matthew, he is reassuring the early Christians that there is greater continuity rather than discontinuity between Christianity and Judaism. For us, the implication of Jesus’ baptism can only be extraordinary for each one of us because we too have been baptised. Let us explore some of the implications.
In Canon Law, baptism is described as the gateway to all the other sacraments (Can 842 §2). It grants us a host of privileges. For example, without baptism, we cannot receive Holy Communion. Once, an un-baptised person was rather annoyed because he was not allowed to receive Holy Communion. He said, “I am a practising Catholic. I believe in what the Church teaches etc”. The answer is simply this: baptism. Baptism initiates a person into a believing community. We are baptised in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That means through Jesus we gain God for our Father and through Jesus we become brothers and sisters to one another. Communion implies just that “communion”. It means that we not only “communicate” with Jesus but the Eucharist expresses the communion we share as brothers and sisters in Christ.
This initiation which baptism achieves is not just a convention we observe. It is not like a community which you join willy-nilly. One day you are happy with the people, you consider yourself as belonging to the community. One day, you fight with this person, then you exclude yourself from the community. It is somewhat analogous to the family. You are born into a family and no matter what happens you remain a member of that family. The same can be said of baptism. Once you are baptised, you become a member of the Christian family no matter what happens after because at baptism, your entire being is changed and you become configured to Christ. In baptism, there is a marking which after it has taken place, cannot be reversed. The consequence of baptism is once baptised you will always be baptised. This explains why for us Catholics, when an Anglican joins us to become a Catholic, he or she is formally received into the Church. We do not “re-baptise” the person. The same too is said of a Christian who for convenience converts to Islam to marry a person. However you may want to see it, the person remains internally configured to Christ.
This is frightening, is it not? In today’s world of freedom, freedom is often translated into self-determination. If I am defined as who I want to be, such an implication can only be frightening. In that case, why should one be baptised, you may ask? And further into this “why should one be baptised” is a subsidiary question: “Should not we wait for a child to grow into maturity before we baptise the child”? [2]
The answer I would give is that the implication or the consequence of privileges is duties... Earlier I mentioned that baptism is gateway to the other sacraments—granting us a host of privileges. If you like, duty is the other side of the coin of privilege. The problem is when we are gung-ho about our rights and privileges, we may forget about our duties. Thus, we need to reconcile our understanding of freedom and duty. Freedom is not the ability to do just anything but rather the freedom to embrace our destiny or our duty. Why? This is because the human spirit is made for a great destiny. It is when we deny the spirit the drive to rise above itself that we kill the human spirit. The understanding of freedom as doing anything that you want is a denial of the human spirit’s destiny for greatness.
Today, Jesus walked into the water not because he had nothing better to do but because he had come to a point in his life where his destiny opens him to embrace the Father’s will. His baptism is a declaration that He intends to live according to His Father’s will in the way that will please His Father. Now you see how enormous the consequence of Jesus’ baptism is for us for it expresses His openness to God’s will. For us, baptism is God’s invitation and our acceptance is salvation. It is a privilege and also a duty to be embraced.
Many people feel unworthy. But let not the fact that we can sin cloud or limit the vision of our calling/vocation/destiny as sons and daughters of the Father, called to greatness. Do you believe it? The crisis we face today is not sin. Ours is a crisis of belief that God can and still does call us. If you don’t believe this, then know that the Devil has clouded your judgement.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Of course, these days it is politically incorrect to look at Christianity as the fulfilment of Judaism.
[2] Baptism of an infant does not violate the infant’s right. A parent routinely chooses for a child or on behalf of a child. Our skewered sense that freedom is self-determination seems to think that in the matter of “religion” a child should have the right to choose. The point is, when your child is sick, you’d never think twice to bring him or her to the hospital. So, our idea of freedom is challenged by our practice. A parent always wants the best for the child. No one sends a child to the worst school in the area. Baptism is a supreme good; life with God. So, why shouldn’t one choose the best?
