With this feast of the Baptism of the Lord we conclude our celebration of the Christmas season. We say good-bye to the babe in the manger and we say hello to the adult Jesus – now baptized and about to begin his ministry among us. But this adult Jesus brings with him the ongoing gift of the Christmas season. I think it absolutely crucial we understand what Jesus brings to his ministry.
The feast of the Epiphany is the real high point of the Christmas season. And what the Epiphany makes clear is that the human has become the vehicle through which God expresses himself. The permanent gift of the Christmas season – what Jesus brings to his ministry – is the ongoing awareness that God chooses to express his life and love – through us. God now lives and loves through you and me.
With this feast of the Baptism of the Lord we are entering upon a new season. Jesus is beginning his ministry among us. And that ministry will be to make us clear, recognizably clear to ourselves. We could say Jesus’ ministry to us every single day is to have us join him in his own baptism – to have the heavens open up for us – and for us to experience what he experienced: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.”
But one thing we know – from the gospels and from our own experience – is that we will resist his ministry. Every day we will resist our baptism bath. We will resist Jesus washing away all the false names we gives ourselves – all the superficial descriptions we make of ourselves – all the simplistic boxes we put ourselves into. Beloved child of God? We much prefer to be only our profession or work – only our race or gender – only our age, our status, our body.
If we look to the gospels, we will see Jesus always resisting living up to the simplistic expectations of others – especially their simplistic religious expectations. He refuses to be “the expected one” of religious routine. Rather, his passion is to live out of his creative core where he is God’s beloved. And that’s what we call in the Christian tradition “soul”. “Soul” is our core loveliness, our core beauty. Jesus lives out of his soul – out of his core loveliness.
His ministry to us is to recall us to our souls. We have souls! Each of us has a core loveliness – a core beauty. God has given each of us unique gifts. No one has ever lived with the particular constellation of gifts as each of us has. God’s deepest, dearest desire is that we take these gifts and make them into verbs – that we act on our gifts and live out of them – that we give our souls – our core beauty – our deepest selves further – to others, to one another. Then we will join Jesus in becoming light for our world. By living out of our souls we will open the eyes of others to their own souls, to their own loveliness and bring them out of the hellish confinement they have given their lives.
Every day we need baptism. Every day we must let Jesus baptize us. We must let him wash away and, if need be, even scrub away what needs cleansing. More than we can ever imagine, Jesus’ ministry among us is to make us “Good News” – “Good News” to ourselves, to one another and to our world.
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