Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 49:3, 5-6
The Lord said to me: You are my servant,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.
Now the Lord has spoken
who formed me as his servant from the womb,
that Jacob may be brought back to him
and Israel gathered to him;
and I am made glorious in the sight of the Lord,
and my God is now my strength!
It is too little, the Lord says, for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
R/ Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.
I have waited, waited for the Lord,
and he stooped toward me and heard my cry.
And he put a new song into my mouth,
a hymn to our God.
Sacrifice or offering you wished not,
but ears open to obedience you gave me.
Holocausts or sin-offerings you sought not;
then said I, “Behold I come.”
“In the written scroll it is prescribed for me,
to do your will, O my God, is my delight,
and your law is within my heart!”
I announced your justice in the vast assembly;
I did not restrain my lips, as you, O Lord, know.
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
and Sosthenes our brother,
to the church of God that is in Corinth,
to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy,
with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ.
John the Baptist Denies Being the Messiah
Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders c in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.
They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ ”
Now the Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
“I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
John Testifies About Jesus
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’" I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”
In today's gospel we have John's testimony:
‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”
*****
What is the difference between baptising "with water" and baptising "with the Holy Spirit"? It was an important question for the writer of the fourth gospel. In the very first chapter much space is given to John's testimony that he is not the Messiah nor the Prophet but a mere herald announcing the coming of the Anointed One. He insists that the one who is to come will offer a baptism "with the Spirit", superior to his cleansing with water.
This was evidently a hot topic generally when this gospel was written (see Acts 18:23-28). I have taken the liberty to set out above the whole passage of which today's selection is the final part. It shows John under close questioning explaining that his role is no more than to identify "the one who is among you".
I believe we can say that John represents the end of an era and Jeshua the start of a new one with a new way of understanding the life God would have us live.
The old way laid heavy emphasis on religious conformity and practice, from keeping the sabbath to washing hands before meals. Jeshua's main complaint against the pious leaders of the day, the Pharisees, was that they made much of washing and cleansing but ignored inner integrity and the needs of people. John's baptism with water was a typical old-fashioned ritual "for the forgiveness of sin" (Mark 1:4).
Jeshua went to be baptised by John, not to confirm this form of renewal but to take his place among sinful humankind. It may have been a surprise for both of them to see the Holy Spirit come down and take up residence in him.
Compared to John's practice, baptism with the Holy Spirit represents an about turn. Turning our back on sin we now see only the gift of life. From the time we commit ourselves by receiving this sacrament we are going to have an entirely positive attitude in working with God for the transformation of our life, a revolution in thought, practice and custom.
Early Christans saw the ritual as casting off your old clothes, going down into the water to drown the old self with its negative thinking, then rising out of death dressed in the seamless white robe of Christ, powered now by the Spirit.
It is clear enough that the early communities were not all happy with this new mode of living a spiritual life in the kingdom. The book of Acts has many instances of people reluctant to leave the old ways behind, and even some tension and disagreement within the leadership. It seems that generally the security and certainty of a slave routine is preferred to the freedom that puts the emphasis on our personal responsibility. Already by the second century authorities were insisting on obedience, amid attempts to bring divergent ways of thought and practice under control.
The problem remains. Vatican II was an attempt to make a great leap forward, reviewing both theory and practice, and it met with resistance, from the highest levels of the Vatican buraucracy to the back pews of the local church whose occupants felt at a loss. Old familiar sights and sounds replaced with many words spoken in the common tongue, and the people up there looking down the length of the church at them made the uneasy. I wonder whether one could suggest today that Vatican II is so far out of date as to require an entirely new approach for Vatican III. Even the central feature, liturgy reform, was confined to forms and language within a mentality that comes nowhere close to the spirit of freedom and inspiration that flows from an experience of baptism in the Spirit.
Ecclesia semper reformanda is as relevant today as ever it was in the 1950s. We are in a constant process of metanoia. Dropping anchor in a safe harbour will be a totally different experience to our present struggling through weather sometimes good but mostly rough, very rough.
The baptism of Jeshua calls upon us to leave behind our reliance on performing rituals within constraining rules, and to express our love in our willingness to live fully the life offered us every day. "Love knows no rules", wrote the Roman poet Virgil. Not that it is unruly, but that it has gone so far beyond the need for rules that it simply never thinks of them. Love chooses the good out of an inner energy, a wanting that brings joy and peace, and when the good of our neighbour requires sacrifice on our part, we give without a second thought. We give to share our joy in God's love. And if we've got to grit our teeth at times, that's okay too.
I can't help thinking that before everything else, the role of our little forum is to share the joy of our baptism in the power of the Spirit with anyone who happens to be reading. That does not mean we can't raise distressing issues; on the contrary, but in whatever we suggest, our confidence that God in his love will bring it all to a good end and our trust in the power of the Spirit to heal will shine through - as it already does in fact.