The Baptism of the Lord - Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

8th January 2023

To visit the River Jordan these days is to look at yet another ecological disaster, so serious is this problem, which impacts on the decreasing levels of the Dead Sea, that Israel and Jordan in November 202 made a formal declaration of intent to change this situation. As a newspaper report put it…'The Dead Sea is shrinking at alarming and hazardous rates. The DoI aims to rehabilitate the Jordan River, whose runoff has decreased to 7% and, as a result, the Dead Sea level has dropped by three feet per year. Jordan has worked hard for years to mobilize international support in order to save the Dead Sea, which represents a common human heritage'.(Albawaba News Nov 19 2022).

We should be very concerned, for this feast of the baptism of Jesus centres around that depleted river, where sins might be washed away but today pollution and refuse enter in! There is a poignant symbolism at work here, for the Incarnation deals with matter as well as spirit, it wrestles with the issues of history, people and places, for matter is the content of the Word made Flesh and the material of our sacramental symbols. Our redemption in some way has to impinge on the redemption we try to bring-on all kinds of practical levels, to our disturbed and hurting world.

In a very direct manner the feast of the Baptism of Jesus plunges us into something deep, maybe not a river, but definitely into the currents of world affairs. The Church cannot isolate itself from our common life, nor our place of living and dying. Pope Francis reminds us of this in his encyclical Laudato si' - 'From the beginning of the world, but particularly through the incarnation, the mystery of Christ is at work in a hidden manner in the natural world as a whole, without thereby impinging on its autonomy'. (Ls 2:99) In other words, Christ is at work with us directly concerned with our material world and all the relationships in and of our lives, but does not take them over.

It is as the feasts of the Nativity Epiphany and Theophany point out, that the Word made flesh is now, particularly through Mary, a real family member, linked, bound to us-most importantly not only in our humanness, but through that cosmic and eternal bond of baptism. But Christ is no kind of puppet master, he pulls no strings but collaborates with us, particularly in love so that the Good News may be spread throughout creation!

As we contemplate this feast of Christ's baptism, and the added cadences of the miracle of Cana which forms part of the text of the Liturgy of the Hours ( and is part of the feast in Eastern Christianity), several elements capture our attention, firstly water; Jordan's water that washes over Christ, and the water jars at Cana at which event, as Dryden's translation of Richard Crashaw's beautiful poetry puts it 'the conscious water saw its God and blushed'. Secondly it is also our humanity, particularly the body, the naked form of Christ and the camel clothed form of John, reminders that the physical world is also blessed and holy and part of the Kingdom, and thirdly the visual experience of life seen in the symbol of the Spirit descending, and of the important communication of the Holy through music and voice in sounds, as that voice from heaven declares:'

After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened [for him], and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove [and] coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, "This is my beloved Son,* with whom I am well pleased." (Mt 3:16,17)

This is something we need to hold fast to, for we are not Gnostics or Manicheans anti-body, driven by a sense that this world is evil or of less value, in this feast the complementarity of earth and heaven are revealed, the spiritual is not opposite to the material, nor are there divisions between who we are growing into now and who we will one day be in the fullness of the Kingdom. We might do dreadful things to our planet, its living creatures and ourselves, but it is not an evil place, it is the created gift of the One who will bring all things into completion, here on this earth, we are the ones as `Isaiah says, who are to open God to others, make known the mercy and love of the Holy One:

'To open the eyes of the blind,

to bring out prisoners from confinement,

and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness'.(Is 42:7)

So it is with great hope and a sense of vocation we remember and celebrate with Christ our own baptism, even if we were simply babies and cannot physically remember we have a date to use as a celebration and perhaps the reminiscences of God-Parents and Parents, and so can now rejoice in our humanity, taking hope that the Spirit and the voice have definitely touched each one of us-and through our brother the Christ, we become bound up with him as one community, now commissioned to go out and proclaim the Good News!

God-is-with-us! Happy feast!

Lectio Divina

Saint Augustine

Sermon on Baptism ( Easter Octave Sermon)

I speak to you who have just been reborn in baptism, my little children in Christ, you who are the new offspring of the Church, gift of the Father, proof of Mother Church's fruitfulness. All of you who stand fast in the Lord are a holy seed, a new colony of bees, the very flower of our ministry and fruit of our toil, my joy and my crown. It is the words of the Apostle that I address to you: Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh and its desires, so that you may be clothed with the life of him whom you have put on in this sacrament. You have all been clothed with Christ by your baptism in him. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor freeman; there is neither male nor female; you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Such is the power of this sacrament: it is a sacrament of new life which begins here and now with the forgiveness of all past sins, and will be brought to completion in the resurrection of the dead. You have been buried with Christ by baptism into death in order that, as Christ has risen from the dead, you also may walk in newness of life.

You are walking now by faith, still on pilgrimage in a mortal body away from the Lord; but he to whom your steps are directed is himself the sure and certain way for you: Jesus Christ, who for our sake became man. For all who fear him he has stored up abundant happiness, which he will reveal to those who hope in him, bringing it to completion when we have attained the reality which even now we possess in hope.

Pope Francis

Laudato si

Chapter 2

99. In the Christian understanding of the world, the destiny of all creation is bound up with the mystery of Christ, present from the beginning: "All things have been created though him and for him" (Col 1:16).[80] The prologue of the Gospel of John (1:1-18) reveals Christ's creative work as the Divine Word (Logos). But then, unexpectedly, the prologue goes on to say that this same Word "became flesh" (Jn 1:14). One Person of the Trinity entered into the created cosmos, throwing in his lot with it, even to the cross. From the beginning of the world, but particularly through the incarnation, the mystery of Christ is at work in a hidden manner in the natural world as a whole, without thereby impinging on its autonomy.

100. The New Testament does not only tell us of the earthly Jesus and his tangible and loving relationship with the world. It also shows him risen and glorious, present throughout creation by his universal Lordship: "For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross" (Col 1:19-20). This leads us to direct our gaze to the end of time, when the Son will deliver all things to the Father, so that "God may be everything to every one" (1 Cor 15:28). Thus, the creatures of this world no longer appear to us under merely natural guise because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence.

The Baptism

How still the fish remained

As into their vision two feet descended

The waters opening

The current shifting subtly.

Above refracted through the meniscus

Blurred Jesus with John came close

But the waterweeds still waved

The fish hid in their shadow

A hush came on the valley

The living water held its breath

As the river halted for that one infinitesimal moment

A nano-second of controlled slow pouring

Droplets more potent than rain

were scooped and flung in the air

Then three things, water, body, sound

All came together in one Theophany

The fish carried on swimming,

but changed hiding places in the current

For they had sensed the dramas

Noted the sonic ripple of sound

And as if to cause us humour

Jesus, who had been baptised by John

Anointed by the cosmic blast of Word

Took on the new name of fish*.

O Lord of the Theophany, unending Light

That never sets and only rose once

Our Eastern waking and Western setting

The Star of Stars suspended over us always

Our Lord of the waters, swim with us

Not only in the plunge-pool of our baptism

But to the source of all that tumbling light

The flowing Jordan's well-spring from on High

Pere Robert 23 01 06

'ichthys' is the Greek word for fish but also the ancient Christian acronym or acrostic for the Greek phrase .. which translates into English as 'Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour'.