This Sunday, the Baptism of Jesus, brings Christmastide to an end. Today’s commemoration of the Lord’s Baptism might be a reminder of the uneven path our own life takes, and indeed of the “jerky” course that human history takes. Jesus’s baptism by John the Baptist marks a break in his life and evokes similar breaks in God’s dealing with Israel. It ends the childhood of Jesus and marks the beginning of his public life. At his baptism, Jesus becomes permanently busy about his father’s business as he hears the voice from heaven: “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.” Jesus’s private life ends and his public life begins.
There was also a major rupture or turn earlier in Israel’s history. It foreshadows Jesus’s baptism and gives it depth. Isaiah initiated the earlier turn, “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service has ended, that her guilt is expiated” (Isa 40:1-3). In a certain sense, Israel as a people had died when the Babylonian armies in 586 BCE poured into Jerusalem, destroying the temple the Lord’s house, imprisoning the Lord’s anointed, and shipping its citizens to the far corners of the Empire. Fifty years after that “death,” Isaiah announced that the people have come back to life. God had looked on their misery and would turn to them in mercy. Heaven was opened once again. It was a time for joyful proclamation.
In the baptism of Jesus, God announces a new entry into our lives. John’s baptism was a forgiveness of sins and could be repeated because people continued to sin. Jesus’ baptism was something new and unheard of. It established a once-and-for-all bond between him and sinful humanity. Because that bond between Christ and the believer was initiated at baptism, baptism is never repeated.
Our personal history is full of setbacks and fresh starts. This provides a lens through to see the Baptism of Jesus. It is God’s fresh start, even more fresh and radical than the home-coming from exile six centuries before Jesus. In a sense, heaven was closed because of the new initiative of God to bring his blessing and salvation directly to the human race rather than through a single nation. So the Baptism of Jesus is the end of his childhood with Mary and Joseph and the beginning of his mission with us.
By Richard Clifford, S.J. former President of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and Founding Dean of the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry