
January 12, 2025 – Feast of the Baptism of the Lord: Fr. John Edmunds, ST (@9:53 in the video)
January 12, 2025
BAPTISM OF THE LORD – C
Isaiah 42:1-4,6-7
Acts 10:34-38
Luke 3:15-16,21-11
The baptism of Jesus was a big deal for the four evangelists. Each of the gospel writers tells the story in their own way. In St. John, the baptism is referred to obliquely as John the Baptist recognized Jesus “when the Spirit descended upon him like a dove.” In St. Matthew’s Gospel it was at the Baptism when John the Baptist and doubtless the crowd around him learned who Jesus was when “a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love.’” St. Luke whose recounting of the baptism was proclaimed today echoes St. Mark in seeing the baptism as the occasion for Jesus himself to become affirmed in his identity. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Notice that this is before Jesus had done anything in his mission. He hadn’t preached any sermons or worked any miracles or gathered any disciples or welcomed any sinners. The heavenly voice told Jesus he was beloved because of who he was, not because of what he did. It was because he knew himself as beloved that he was able to do all those things in his public ministry. Being beloved was what made his work possible, not the work making him beloved.
This is a reversal of the way we ordinarily think. You know the expression, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” To get something you have to deserve it, to earn it. But God’s love is not like that but more like the love of a mother. A mother loves her children just because they are her children. She doesn’t wait to see if the child sleeps the night through, eats their vegetables and is nice to their brothers and sisters before she loves. Rather, she loves first and it is because she loves that the children can grow into living as members of a beloved family. So, as Jesus experienced at his baptism, is our relationship with God. We don’t need to say a prayer or go to Church or keep a commandment to get God to love us. God loves us because that is what God does, not because of what we do. It is because God loves us that we want to do loving things as a response to being loved. Love is the cause for what we do, not the effect.
We are the baptized. At our baptism God made the same claim about us that was made about Jesus at his baptism. God says to each of us, “You are my child whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” So the question, Church: do you feel yourself beloved? My suspicion is … not. I think most of us can relate more to John the Baptist when he said, “I am not worthy to loosen the thongs of his sandals.” We are much more prone to think of ourselves as unworthy than we are to think of ourselves as beloved. After all, don’t we pray at Mass before receiving Holy Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy.” This sense of unworthiness mostly does not flow from a genuine spirit of humility but rather is a product of things we have done or things that were done (or not done) to us. Guilt and shame are almost default positions that we take all too easily to heart. How can God be pleased with the likes of me? It is hard for us to accept our beloved nature because we know that we are flawed, mistake-prone, damaged, imperfect. Can such a person as me be worthy of the love of the God who is all good? The short answer: we aren’t worthy of it but we are given it nonetheless and we are transformed by it. There is a wonderful scene in the play and movie West Side Story after Tony tells Maria that he loves her. She sings, “I feel pretty, oh so pretty and I pity any girl who isn’t me today.” She is the same as she always was but the experience of knowing herself to be loved transformed her sense of self from one of not being good enough to recognizing her true worth, her true beauty. That is what our baptism means for us.
How do we do it? How do we get over our feelings of guilt and shame to accept our nature as beloved? The story of Jesus after his baptism provides the key – we do as he did and love others. Do you catch the irony here – we only accept ourselves as loved when we give love away. In the Sound of Music, a song begins with this refrain. “A bell’s not a bell ’til you ring it – A song’s not a song ’til you sing it – Love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay – Love isn’t love ’til you give it away!”
For all you scouts, there is a campfire song about a “magic penny.” The more you give the magic penny away, the more you have. That is how love works. The more you give love the more you have. That is what lies behind the word you have been hearing in Church lately and will be hearing more of – evangelization. The idea behind that big word is a simple one – we have something wonderful in being people of faith but it is not meant for us alone. It is a magic penny. The more we give it away, the more we will have. As a church if we hoard our faith, keep it confined to life within these four walls, it will dissipate. But if we give it away, if we share what we have, if we love as we have been loved, it will multiply and grow. The idea of evangelizing of being an apostle, of being a missionary disciple can seem daunting to little old me but in the providence of everyday life we have many opportunities to let people know they are loved by God. When we do that, like a magic penny, we’ll end up having more – more faith, more hope, more love.