First Sunday of Lent, cycle B

Mark 1:12 - 15

I was the oldest child of parents who themselves had been children during the Great Depression.  My parents were hard-hit by having seen their own parents losing homes and property and even jobs.  My mother often told the story of how just before the wheat harvest on her parent’s dryland farm, a hailstorm knocked down all the wheat so that it couldn’t be harvested.  She remembers her father locking himself in his work shed, and her mother telling the children to go gather hailstones so that they could make ice cream.  It takes a lot of perspective to find the good in a situation like that. 

Anyway, against this background I think I became an overachiever.  I never wanted to be second, and if I knew I couldn’t be in first place, I didn’t want anything to do with it.  That went for sports, where I was much less coordinated than the star players.  It went for hunting and fishing, because I knew I’d never surpass my dad and grandfather in those skills, nor did I want to.  But in Boy Scouts, that was another story.  I rose quickly through the ranks, and ultimately became an eagle scout.  There was an organization that was part of scouting called “The Order of the Arrow” which was kind of secretive, and unlike the regular ranks, which you achieved by getting merit badges and fulfilled requirements, the Order required an invitation.  So we sat around the campfire as the members of the order walked around behind us and picked a few of us to be inducted into the secret society.  And I wasn’t picked.  That hurts, even to this day.  And that brings me to three lies we tell ourselves:

I am what I have.  I don’t feel complete until I get something I want, and that doesn’t last long.

I am what I do.  And that’s me.  I define myself by what I become, by what I accomplish.

I am what others think about me.  And I think we all know people like that; and some of us are people like that.  

Just before today’s gospel from Mark, Jesus learns who he really is --  ‘’ God’s beloved Son”.  Jesus, who up to this point has lived a pretty ordinary life, and has really done nothing noteworthy, is made to know his true self.

At the first Eucharist “Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples….”   Henri Nouen, who wrote the book “The Beloved Disciple” about his own experiences as a priest and a counselor,  says that we all are taken (we become sons and daughters of the Father) blessed (we are declared beloved by the father) broken (we are tempted and put through all kinds of testing during our lives) and given (we are called to share in the good news with others that they are beloved sons and daughters).  And we see this happening in this first part of Mark's gospel. 

Jesus is taken - taken out of his ordinary life.  He is blessed -- the Father himself calls him “beloved son”.  He is broken - He is driven into the wilderness where he will be tempted -- but angels will minister to him; there are always angels when we are tempted.  And he is given, because he takes up the mantle of John the Baptist and begins to spread the good news and call for repentance.

And as we know, Jesus meets with failure. In his home town Mark tells us, “he could not work any great deeds because of their lack of faith.”  He meets with misunderstanding -- when Peter and the other apostles never seem to get what Jesus is talking about.  He meets with hostility, from the people in his hometown, from the religious authorities and even the government; and he meets with denial and abandonment when his followers all desert him at the cross.

And what sustains Jesus, what always brings him back to the calmness and acceptance of these things, we might even say, he always returns to a center of joy -- is that he knows his true identity -- it does not lie in what he has, what he accomplishes, what others think about him; it lies in the full and certain knowledge that he is the beloved Son, and that as long as he is carrying out the will of the Father, the Father will sustain him, the Father will never abandon him.  And today on this first Sunday of Lent, you and I should recall that we are each beloved sons, beloved daughters, of the same Father that sustains Jesus, and we should ask ourselves, which of those three lies govern the way we see the world?  And we should ask ourselves, do we really believe we are beloved sons and daughters? And do we see how God shapes us and breaks us and gives us to others to spread the good news that they are beloved as well?  

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 1:40 - 45

We assume that Jesus did a lot of healing during his brief time in ministry. Last week we heard about him healing people on the front porch of Peter’s house. But now he heals a leper, and Mark goes into great detail about this. So why is that?

First of all the word “leprosy” is a poor translation of a Hebrew word, tsara’at, which in turn is translated into Greek as “lepra”. When we think about leprosy we think about something called “Hansen’s disease” which is what Father Damien took care of on the island of Molekai. We have drugs that treat it now, but a century ago if you got this disease there was no cure. It was known to be contagious, but not very. Typically in advanced stages you lost the feeling in your fingers, toes, nose, and ears, and if you cut yourself or got an insect bite, you’d probably lose the extremity because of infection. Leper colonies existed partly to keep healthy people from being infected, but also because it was easier to care for these people in a colony where those who were still healthy could look after the ones who couldn’t do anything for themselves.

But we know that the leprosy described in the Old Testament was any scaly skin disease -- even psoriasis. And the word tsara’at could also be applied to houses where the paint was peeling off, to animals, to trees -- it seemed to mean something like “scaly” but also something like “sick surface”. In the book of Leviticus lepers are enjoined to withdraw from the cities and towns until they no longer had the disease, then they could show themselves to a priest and if he agreed, they could return to society. So the Hebrews and early Christians fully expected that many of those lepers would get healed in the natural course of things.

But for the Jews someone with a skin disease was unclean, and could not participate in the rituals of the temple. And that was devastating. There were so many things you did in the temple; but the most important was that it was there that your sins were forgiven by means of a sacrifice. It was there that you came as close to God as you could during this life. It was there that you renewed your own covenant as part of the people chosen by God.

Our leper today doesn’t go up to Jesus and ask to be healed; he asks to be made clean. He wants the stigma that kept him from his religious exercises removed. And that is probably why Mark put this story here. Because a leper could not become clean by himself; and if the skin problem cleared up, he still had to be declared clean by a priest.

In our reading it says Jesus was moved with pity, but in some other translations Jesus was indignant. In either case, Jesus is reacting not to the disease, whatever it was, but the fact that the man could not by himself repair his relationship with God that was mediated through the temple ritual. And that is why Jesus wills to make him clean.

And in a way, Jesus trades places with the leper; he is now forced to live outside the city because wherever he goes his fame has preceded him.

So in this little story Mark wants us to see that Jesus is capable of repairing the breach between God and man, something man cannot do by himself.

You and I sometimes forget that we are like the leper. We are unclean because we are sinners, and while baptism restores our friendship with God, that friendship is often a one-way street. Because of the left-over effects of original sin, we still have the tendency to wander off, to be distracted by our pleasures, to glory in accumulating stuff, to put ourselves first in all of our relationships, even those with God himself. And when we try to shore up the relationship, if you are like me you get distracted in your prayer and when you resolve to change for the better, that resolution doesn’t last very long. So God is always offering his friendship, we are usually failing to hit the mark in terms of our response.

And that’s when we reach out to Jesus and beg him to touch us. And we say, “If you will it, Lord, you can make me clean”. And the beautiful thing is that our Savior, who has the power to repair our relationship with the Father, who offers himself as divine food that gives us a share in his own life and from which we get the power to share in his divinity, always answers us with those words: I do will it, be made clean”.

Jesus traded places with the leper, so that the leper could be restored to his relationships with God and his fellow men, and Jesus had to stay away from people as a result. Jesus became a human being so that we could become divine.

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 1:29 - 39

One of the ways to read Mark's gospel is to keep in mind that it's all about Jesus gradually revealing what it means to be the Messiah promised by God.  And not only is this revelation for the apostles and by extension, you and I, it's also for Jesus, who is depicted in Mark as someone who learns, someone who can be astonished, someone who feels deeply.  And there are lessons for us as well, those of us who as Christians want to imitate our Savior..

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus has just come from the synagogue where he has demonstrated that he has the power to exorcise evil spirits.  Now, still on the Sabbath, he enters Peter’s house and cures the mother-in-law, showing that he has the power to heal.  But what can we learn from this story?

We can conclude a few things about Peter’s mother-in-law.  She is almost certainly a widow, since she would not be living in Peter’s house if she had a living husband.  She almost certainly has no sons, because they would be the ones to take care of her if her husband had died.  And of course there is no social security nor any sort of welfare system.  Peter’s house, by the way, is one of the few things mentioned in the New Testament that we know a little about.  In the third century they built a church which was said to be on the site of Peter’s house.  Over the centuries the church collapsed and the area was abandoned.  In the nineteenth century some archaeologists discovered that beneath the ruins of the church was the foundation of a typical house.  It was about twenty feet by twenty feet, with a large central area and two small rooms about eight feet by five feet each.  There were no windows; a curtain closed off each room.  And in one of these dark, cramped airless rooms Peter’s mother in law had collapsed with a fever.  She had nothing, she survived on the charity of her daughter and son in law, and now she was deathly ill, because when you had a fever in those days, death was a common outcome.  And the disciples, who have not yet witnessed Jesus’ healing powers, tell him about her, Mark says, immediately.  If you could read Greek, and I can’t, you would be struck by the next line:  Jesus takes her by the hand and resurrects her -- Mark uses that same word in describing Jesus’ resurrection.  

So we learn two things: Jesus is there for us when we are helpless and it looks like all is lost; and it’s a good thing for you and I to bring people like that to Jesus, people we know who have little or no hope, just like the apostles did..  

The cure of the mother-in-law gets the whole village excited, but it’s the Sabbath, so people don’t start bringing the sick and the possessed to Jesus until sundown, when the day officially ends.  And Jesus cures them all, but when there is a break, he goes off to pray.  The disciples, however, decide right then and there that they know what’s best for him.  “Why did you run off,” they say.  “Everyone is looking for you.”  One of the things about Mark’s gospel is how human Jesus is pictured,  And Mark has Jesus amazed by lack of faith, feeling sorry for the crowd in his gut, smearing mud on a blind man’s eyes, spitting on a deaf mute’s tongue -- and learning.  Later on whenever Jesus cures someone he often tells them not to tell anyone.  I wonder if his experience at Peter’s house was the reason.  But I think we can learn something here as well.  How often do we see God as a vending machine?  It’s easy to go through life trying to stay on God’s good side, talking to him when we need something; but essentially completely distorting the relationship;  God is the center, He calls the shots; my role is to be like Mary -- “I am the Lord’s servant, do to me according to your word”.  

Finally Jesus tells his disciples that he must go and preach in other towns and villages, because that is why he came in the first place.  Jesus had a very successful first day of ministry.  They wanted to make him a rock star.  But he always stops to check in with his heavenly father to make sure he’s on the right track.  And after doing so he sees his priorities clearly.  His main job is to get the message out, the call to repentance and the preaching of the kingdom.  Cures and exorcisms take second place.  So again, Mark has Jesus learning something about his ministry.  I know we don’t like to think of Jesus as someone who learns, but learning is part of being human, and Jesus is fully human, in all things but sin.  

And what can we learn from this?  If you are like me, and you probably are, you sometimes have trouble focusing on what you are supposed to be doing because you are distracted by pleasure, or power, or making a living, or getting new stuff.  And you forget that you have a limited number of days in which to do what you were put on earth to do.  And it’s a good thing to check in with the Father now and then to ask, “what do you want of me today, Lord?  How can I serve you better?”  If it was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for you and I.  

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

 Mark 1:21 - 28

During my years of higher education I had a lot of really good teachers, some of whom I did not appreciate until long after I had taken their classes.  When I was at Catholic University we had some required religion classes.  My new testament professor was a priest whose name was “Christian Paul Ceroke”. With a name like that I guess you’d have to end up in some sort of ministry.  I had him for one semester, and never heard anything about him after that, until, as I was thinking about today’s gospel, I put his name in Google and found his obituary -- and learned that he was a noted scholar and teacher, and a member of the Carmelite Order.  The thing I remember most about Father Ceroke was that he made the New Testament come alive.  His method was to assign us a reading from scripture, and then he would discuss it at the next class.  His word pictures and enthusiasm left me with a life-long interest in the bible, especially the gospels.  

In today’s gospel  Mark tells us, before Jesus performs the exorcism, that the people who heard him were astonished.  Now I can understand words like “interested” or “enlightened” or even “enthused”, but astonished?  That’s the word used in several translations, so I wondered what the Greek word was.  It is “ekplesso” and to my surprise, it means “to be blown away”.  We never learn what Jesus was actually teaching.  I doubt he was telling the people anything very new.  In fact when we actually see examples of Jesus’ teaching in the gospels, he draws from the long tradition of the Old Testament and picks and chooses what to emphasize.  But it must have been the way he taught -- Mark says it was because he taught with authority.  

Now Mark compares Jesus’ teaching  to that of the scribes, who taught by citing the law and the prophets to bolster what they were saying.  But you wouldn’t have to go too far to find places where Jesus cites authority for his teaching.  So I went back to my Greek dictionary and learned that the word “exousia” can mean “power” -- Jesus taught with power.  And maybe this is more to the point; Jesus was interesting to listen to; he made you want to hear more; and that’s a major characteristic of a great teacher.  

Father Ceroke taught with power.  He got me to open my bible back in the days when Catholics were not really known as bible folk.  I remember the bible in our house when I was growing up.  It was huge, and the first few pages consisted of forms where you could put down the various milestones of each of your children -- birth, baptism, first communion, and so on.  Our bible never got opened beyond those pages, but it sure was pretty.  

One thing about power, though, it always raises opposition.  You see, people don’t like to be under someone else’s power.  Some of my classmates took offense because Father Ceroke seemed to speak irreverently about the scriptures.  He said, for example, that some people followed Jesus around because he provided bread and fish.  He said some people enjoyed watching him confront the Pharisees; they liked a good fight.  Others took offense because Father Ceroke graded based upon essays we had to write.  This was a long way from true and false tests.  In any event, even though Father Ceroke taught with power, made the scriptures come alive for some of us, in doing so he raised up opposition.

And that’s what we see happening in the gospel story.  Jesus’ teaching, which astonishes his hearers, raises opposition.  We probably see the possessed man as someone who howls at the moon and has convulsions or needs to be chained up so he won’t hurt himself.  After all, some possessed people described in the gospels were like that.  But think about it, this possessed man is in a synagogue; he’s probably an upstanding citizen.  But the unclean spirit in him calls out, “What do you want with us, Jesus!  Have you come to destroy us?”  Whatever Jesus was teaching, the unclean spirit in the man saw it as a threat.  And you know, I think that’s a reaction all of us have when we are challenged to change, when the way we see the world is threatened.  Our tendency is always to withdraw into a more comfortable environment, one in which we aren’t threatened.  We divide ourselves from each other.  And this tendency is magnified tremendously in these days, because with the click of a mouse we can find a silo in cyberspace where everyone agrees with me; a place where my ideas are safe and I am not challenged.  

A lot of the people followed Jesus because his teaching astonished them, because he challenged them to change, to re-examine the beliefs they thought were set in concrete.  And those who did so were changed; they were on the way to salvation.  But there were those who reacted by crying out “What do you want with us, have you come to destroy us?” And in the end they thought it was better to put an end to Jesus.  

So today, when we hear Jesus teach, are we astonished? Are we ready to change? Or would we rather he leave us alone and have him take his message elsewhere.  

Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 1:14 - 20

Did you ever think about how there are two ways to approach life; one is to hang on to what you have, and the other is to progress forward by leaving things behind. It’s true. I can give you a short and incomplete summary of some of my own losses as I moved forward in life. I grew up in Montana and never in my early life had any notion that I would leave the state. But I did; I went to college and Medical school -- and even then believed I’d return someday to live. But I had to choose, and I chose other things over returning to live there. When I was in college I thought about being a professor and getting a PhD. But I gave that idea up because I couldn’t do that and go to medical school. When it came time for speciality training I gave up surgery and neurology in favor of medical oncology. And so it goes. You move forward by giving up options, which is another way of saying, by making choices.

And I can think of people who have not been able to move forward because they haven’t been able to choose. I think of an elderly woman I used to visit before covid came along and you could barely get into her house. She had stuff everywhere and no one to give it to. She had no use for most of it which you could tell because of the layers of dust. And I recognize a little of that in myself as well; I have a large number of tools that I’ve collected down through the years, including a 50 year old Black and Decker jigsaw that my wife got me before our third christmas as a married couple; I used it to build a doll cradles for our two small daughters for Christmas. But even now I can’t go into Rocky’s without feeling the tug of getting another tool.

The people who heard Jesus had been anticipating the day when God would finally come to rescue his people. They lived in a state of tension -- there was now, and there was the world to come. The prophets of the Old Testament dwell on that and insist that God will come to rescue his people. John the Baptist has been proclaiming that the time is imminent, and Jesus takes up the mission, saying that the time is actually here. We have left the old world behind and we are now in the world in which God is breaking through. And Jesus demonstrates that he is the breaking through -- he is the one who brings healing, who opens the eyes of the blind, who binds up the lame, who raises the dead. Anyone who has been listening to the prophets who are being read in the synagogues every Saturday could recognize this -- if they opened their eyes.

And that’s kind of what Jesus means when he says “repent and believe in the good news.” Because Jesus knows that there must be a change in the way we think if we are to take advantage of the kingdom which is at hand. The kingdom is there for the taking -- but choices have to be made. That’s why Mark places the calling of Peter and Andrew, James and John, right after this proclamation.

Mark’s first readers must have been astonished that these four men left everything to follow Jesus. And as you know, there is a very different story of the calling of Peter and Andrew in the gospel of John. We could try to resolve these differences, but it isn’t important. Mark is emphasizing the urgency of answering Jesus’ call. John, who has Andrew going to his brother and saying “we have found the Messiah”, wants to illustrate how the good news is passed from one follower to the next.

Jesus tells Peter and John that he will make them fishers of men. When we hear that we think Jesus is making a play on words, but Mark wants us to remember that this is fulfilling a prophecy. The prophet Habakuk compared the people in need of redemption to “the fish of the sea...without a ruler” and Jeremiah has God saying “Look, I will send many fishermen… to catch them.” Finally, James and John, like Peter and Andrew, must make choices. The four leave behind their boats, their professions, their security; and Mark emphasizes that James and John leave behind even their father to follow Jesus.

So where does that leave us on this third Sunday of Ordinary time? If we want to move forward in our spiritual lives, in our journey to Jesus, we have got to make choices, some of which will hurt, but all of which will make us uncomfortable. It’s not easy to develop new habits and get rid of old ones. Maybe you need to spend less time on the internet and more time with spiritual reading. Maybe you will have to put weekly or monthly reception of the sacrament of reconciliation on your day planner or in your scheduling app on your cell phone -- and then do it. Maybe if you’ve grown cold toward the Eucharist, you need to make a visit to the blessed sacrament part of your routine, or the prayerful reception of the Eucharist once or twice during the week as well as on Sunday. Maybe during this year of Mark you might commit to reading the gospel of Mark, a bit at a time, to really get to know the one he is writing about. But you have to make choices. And you have to leave behind something when you make choices. You have to shake yourself up. Because progress means letting go of some things to pursue other things. And the kingdom of Heaven is here, at hand, but only for those who choose to leave things behind, to make choices, to repent.

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

John 1:35 - 42

I was speaking with a grandson recently about logic.  His point, if I can condense it, was that simple arguments work better than complicated ones.  In other words, it’s easier to argue against murder than that God is trinitarian.  But I got to thinking, we have a lot of arguments going on all the time, simple and complex; right now there is a great divide in our country over how the government should run.  In our church we have people who have all kinds of reasons to feel that Pope Francis is a heretic, and others who think he is finally a breath of fresh air for our church.  After all, he wants to take care of the planet and has proclaimed “Who am I to judge?” And of course if you go to facebook or twitter you can find raging arguments that sometimes go on for weeks or months.  And I think arguments by themselves never change anyone’s mind.  

In the Old Testament our heroes, the patriarchs, the good kings, the prophets, are described as living in expectation, waiting on what God plans to do next.  And when Israel falls away, or when her rulers apostatize, it’s because they stopped waiting, their thinking became fossilized.  They wanted a predictable god, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who was always surprising -- and if you wanted that God, you had to, like Saint Joseph, be ready to change, be ready to wake up and do what you were told to do in a dream.  And in a sense, that’s what is happening in this gospel story.

You see, John has been preaching and has attracted several disciples.  A disciple is not just a member of a fan club; he is someone who has decided that for a time, he will allow another person to change him.  He has stepped out of his comfort zone and although he doesn’t know where he will end up, he has concluded that something is missing in his life and he will disciple himself to someone who seems to have answers.  Being a disciple means being willing to change because of faith in the person to whom you are discipled, not because of carefully reasoned arguments.  

Andrew and the other disciple have sought out John because they want to change, and John is responsible for their deciding to follow Jesus.  And when Jesus asks, “What are you looking for?” their answer is “where are you staying?”  That never made much sense to me until I thought, they are asking to be his disciples, because a disciple lived with his master, looking after his needs while they sat at his feet and learned from him.  And Jesus’ answer makes sense in this context as well -- he invites them to become disciples.  “Come and see,” he says.  Now imagine this conversation is modern times.  Jesus would say, “What do you want?” and they would say, “We would like to get a degree in theology”.  And he would reply, “Here’s an application, and I will need ten percent of the tuition up front.”  In other words, the conversation is all in the head, not in the heart, and I doubt that Andrew and his friend would be much different after they got the degree.  

In our time, though, we seem to have lost what Andrew and his friend had -- the recognition that there is something lacking in our lives and more importantly, doing something about it becomes our highest priority.  Because what we usually do when we feel something is lacking is we go to our old favorites -- getting stuff, doing things that feel good, making ourselves the center of attention, or doing something that makes us feel in control -- our old friends, possession, pleasure, popularity and power.  Because these are all cleverly designed to quench that feeling that something is lacking in our lives.  

When you read about Jesus’ first disciples, especially in the gospel of Mark, you are struck by how they keep misunderstanding Jesus.  But they don’t leave, they keep coming back, because they trust that only he has the answers to that inner hunger, that inner sense that there must be more to life.  Contrast that attitude with our society today, where despite all the noise, people are never moved to change themselves because of logic, clever arguments, or even screaming; in fact this behavior usually results in both sides becoming less able to change, and each retreating into a silo where there circle becomes smaller and smaller, and more and more thinking the same thoughts.  

Jesus seems to be telling Andrew and his friend that he doesn’t have answers; he is the answer.  And it’s interesting that the same day Andrew decides to become a disciple of Jesus, he goes to his brother and says, “We have found the Messiah” -- and then brings him to Jesus.  Andrew is speaking from his commitment, not from experience, logic, or divine revelation.  He has decided that being Jesus’ disciple is his priority, and has put his faith in the person, not the words, not the miracles, not his own personal experience.  

Jesus is still inviting you and I to “come and see”.  But if we want to be his disciples we have to be willing to let him change us.  Are we really up for that?  

Baptism of the Lord, 2021

Mark 1:7 - 11

We recently enjoyed a three week visit from our nine-year old granddaughter.  We have nineteen grandchildren and love them all, but this one is the youngest and we hadn't seen her in a year so we can be forgiven, I hope, for all the attention she got.  But it got me thinking about love.  When we and her other grandparents first met her, it was obvious that we loved her.  Right now she’s like any nine year old; she knows how to push your buttons, and can charm most people she runs into.  But she couldn’t do that nine years ago; she was helpless, totally focused on her own comfort or lack of it, and required a lot of attention.  And still we loved her.  

I remember a time in my life, back when I was about three or four.  My mother worked as a nurse and my father was temporarily working in a different town after he got out of the army.  I was being cared for by my dad’s parents.  I have fleeting memories of this time, and my parents don’t play much of a role.  Instead, I was aware of my grandparents and of being loved -- unconditionally, I guess.  I don’t remember trying to get on their good side or acting cute or anything like that -- it seemed as though all that was necessary was for me to be myself.  I would sit at the little table and chair that my grandfather had made especially for me, and enjoy my favorite lunch which usually involved some kind of soup.  I would snuggle into a green blanket in my grandparent’s bedroom to take my nap, secure in knowing that my grandmother was in the next room.  I experienced being loved.

As I grew older, and as my granddaughter grows older, most of us will learn that some behaviors are rewarded and others aren’t.  When we are rewarded for behaving, we begin to confuse that with being loved.  Some of us, myself especially, become overachievers because the response of parents and teachers and even my classmates feels a lot like love.  But the danger is that we begin to define ourselves with our achievements, and when we experience failure, it can shatter our self esteem; it feels like we are no longer loved.  During this season of Covid the suicide rate has gone up; alcoholism and drug use are off the charts and depression is a major public health problem.  Covid has taken away the ability of many of us to engage in those behaviors that make us feel loved -- by those who depend on us, by our colleagues in business, and even by ourselves.  The opposite of feeling loved is not feeling hated, it’s feeling superfluous, unimportant, irrelevant.  

The baptism of Jesus always brings to mind the question, why did he need baptism?  Isn’t baptism about the removal of original sin?  And Jesus didn’t have that, for sure.  The Gospel of Matthew, in fact, has John saying “It is I who should be baptized by you” and Jesus replies strangely, “Let it go for now, because it is proper that we fulfill all righteousness.”  And of course the gospels make it clear that John’s was a baptism signifying repentance, not the sacramental baptism that Jesus introduced.  Of course that doesn’t help either, because why does Jesus need to repent?  And is he just going through the motions to give people an example?  I don’t know.  I could give you a lot of theories and even the writers of the New Testament are of different opinions.  But one thing is certain; when Jesus comes up out of the water, he hears the voice from heaven:  “This is my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”  And he hasn’t done anything yet.  He’s worked as a carpenter, probably took care of his mother, studied in the synagogue -- he’d led an ordinary life.  Once he became a celebrity, people looked at him and asked, “Where did he get all this?  Isn’t he the son of a carpenter?”  But Jesus himself had heard the voice from heaven and realized, “I am loved.”  And in that moment he knew that he was loved because of who he was, not because of what he had done or what he might do in the future.  Right now in this moment the stunning revelation that he was the recipient of overwhelming unconditional love.  

There are many effects of baptism.   We are given the means to overcome original sin; we are forgiven our personal sins.  We become members of the People of God stretching back to Abraham and Moses and David.  We join a people set apart.  But the Church tells us that we become adopted children of God, we become brothers and sisters of Jesus himself -- and in that moment, and in all subsequent moments, even when we sin, even when we break God’s law, if we listen carefully we will hear those words as well -- You are my beloved.  

And then the Father stands back and awaits our response to his love.  And some of us will walk away and other will be like me, sometimes trying, sometimes failing, progressing here and there, falling back -- and then there will be others who will devote their whole lives to responding to the love that was freely given, like Jesus himself, who gave himself up out of love for us, yes, but primarily out of love for the Father.  Because if you are beloved, you know that nothing can harm you, and that the Father is always there waiting for you to return his love.

We are the body of Christ, and we too hear the voice from heaven, “This is my beloved” In this year of new beginnings let us resolve to respond to this love.