Homily for Baptism of Our Lord
Today, the Church takes up the threads of life again after the Christmas season. That life resumes, or perhaps more correctly, it begins, with the Baptism of our Lord. The baptism of Jesus has been a much discussed topic in the history of Christianity. The classic conundrum went as follows: "If Jesus was born free from all sin, why did he require baptism?" And the classic response was: So that he could set a fitting example for all Christians. In other words, he didn't really need it himself. He merely submitted to Baptism for the sake of others.
But such questions -and indeed such answers- seem to me to miss the whole point of the Baptism of Jesus. By plunging into the river Jordan, Jesus was signaling his complete immersion in human experience. He wasn't, as it were, going to remain a spectator on the river bank while human experience flowed by. He would experience life in all its ambiguity, good and evil.
His baptism signaled the beginning of his public life. With his private life at Nazareth now completed, Jesus is initiated into his public ministry. The baptism of Jesus is a very public event, an action witnessed by an entire community. As happened at our own baptisms, his identity is established, his name is called aloud. Baptism is first and foremost the sacrament of identity.
Hitherto, I suppose, Baptism was seen as primarily a washing away of original sin, the restoration of the infant to a condition from which it was presumed to have fallen. As the emphasis on Original Sin grew, baptism as a sacrament of identity fell out of focus. In the best Thatcherite fashion, Baptism became privatised. In fact the baptism was often performed at the hospital where the infant was born without any reference whatsoever to the local community. Baptism, so rich in symbol for the early Christians, was reduced in time to a mere ritual cleansing. For the early Christians, plunging into the waters of baptism symbolised a plunging into the Christian community for the new member. But, in our own day, the water had been reduced to an instrument of purification.
This no longer happens in practice. Nevertheless, a legacy of those days still remains. And that legacy often manifests itself in the form of a clash between the parents and the grandparents of the unfortunate infant. The following scenario is becoming increasingly common: The parents of the infant are no longer practising their faith. They make no move to have the baby baptised. The grandparents, formed as they were in the days when original sin was worth having, fear for the salvation of the infant grandchild. They put the pressure on the son or daughter to have the child baptised. Increasingly the sacrament is becoming a peace offering, a gesture or a token offered by one generation to another for the sake of peace. The sacrament -and probably the infant subsequently- falls between two stools.
Today's feast may help us towards an understanding of baptism as an adult sacrament. The infant is baptised into the adult faith of its parents or close relatives. Throughout the entire ceremony, the parents, godparents, relatives and members of the parish community rather than the infant are addressed. In addressing the adults present, the church is trying to reawaken and develop the faith of the parents who present their child for baptism. If the parents or close relatives espouse no faith, the baptism ceremony itself becomes a mere sop to superstition? We are then back to the bad old days of Baptism as a private ritual of purification rather than a public sacrament of the Church. Baptism without faith has no meaning.