Picture it. The stage of a grand opera house, perhaps the Met in New York City. Before us is an extravagant set with magnificent props and expensive costumes. There are hordes of people on the stage, most of whom have insignificant roles. There has just been a major dramatic moment in the opera. The lights on stage dim, except for one bright spotlight that comes to rest on the star singer, whose aria has arrived.
The singer is now the sole source of our attention. We’ve forgotten about the grand chorus, the fancy props, and the other lesser talents on the stage. Now, the singer opens her mouth, and pure brilliance springs forth. We are captivated for a moment. This singer is not simply an amazing talent; this singer is the primary character around whom the entire drama of the opera revolves. We sit on the edge of our seats as her aria unfolds.
Now, picture it. Not an opera stage in the Met, but sometime in the early first century AD. The setting isn’t a dramatic set. It is, in fact, a barren wilderness, which is flat, except for some dramatic cliffs that rise in the distance. The air is dry, the terrain is arid. John the Baptist has been spewing forth fire from his mouth and also baptizing in the Jordan River. Crowds of people have come forth to him, some of whom challenge him and receive fiery rhetoric in response.
But suddenly, the excitement around John loses our focus. Indeed, the spotlight that has been hovering on John in this great drama moves, over the arid terrain, passing glibly over the gathered crowd, and it comes to rest on a man who has traveled from Galilee, from some nowhere town called Nazareth. They say his name is Jesus. And he has come to be baptized by John, his cousin.
An initial exchange ensues between John and Jesus, in which John tries to relieve himself of the request to baptize the one he considers greater than he. He tries to say NO. But ultimately, the request is granted. At the request of Jesus, John says YES. And the star’s aria begins.
At first, there’s only a silent, visual feast for the eyes. The man named Jesus descends deep into the water of the Jordan until he can no longer be seen. We in the crowd, watching, are hushed by the drama. When will the singing begin? Where has Jesus gone? Will he emerge again? Is he still alive? And suddenly, he springs forth from the water, his face gazing up into heaven, and the heavens themselves are rent apart. Something like a dove descends, and suddenly the singing begins. Another voice, unseen but clearly heard, sings to the world, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” God says YES. And the scene closes. And the spotlight moves off into the margins, into the wilderness to follow the One named Jesus.
Every year on the First Sunday after the Epiphany we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord. It’s a familiar story, and it’s all too easy to begin to mesh this story of our Lord’s baptism with our own. Of course, there is some relation, but when I invited you to picture the extraordinary drama of Jesus’s baptism, I invited you to join me in reclaiming its uniqueness and what it means for us.
In some sense, after Jesus’s death and resurrection and after the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus’s followers, the spotlight moves from Jesus to us, his contemporary followers, to highlight our status as his living Body on earth. But the tendency is for that spotlight to stay on us and leave Jesus behind.
And this spotlight leaves nothing hidden from its blazing light. It illumines the corners of the Church that we’d rather keep in the dark, showing the Church in all her brokenness and misshapenness. The spotlight shines unforgivingly on the mess of systemic sin in our world. The spotlight reveals for all to see the secrets we keep, the sins of omission, as well as the sins we flagrantly commit out of defiance. And soon, we have forgotten where the spotlight first rested. We forget that the spotlight initially shined on the star aria of this great drama of our salvation, in which God said YES to a new creation in Jesus Christ.
But when this spotlight rests too long on us, all our misdeeds and omitted deeds are brought into the light, and it begins to seem as if we are living in a great drama of NO. It’s as if we have forgotten how to say YES to anything. We have said NO to God. We have said NO to our neighbors. We have said NO to ourselves. We have said NO to opening our hearts and our pocketbooks to the Lord who calls us to give generously of ourselves for his sake and for the sake of the world. We have said NO to anything that doesn’t serve ourselves.
Which is why today’s feast reminds us where the spotlight once rested. It rested, and should still rest, on Jesus our Lord, who was baptized in the Jordan River. This drama is God’s great aria of YES to the renewal of creation in Christ, the perfect One who nevertheless submitted to be baptized for us. It was a submission so vexing to the early Church that St. Matthew was compelled to highlight John’s objections to Jesus’s request. Jesus needed no baptism of repentance, for he needed to repent of nothing. And yet, in the face of John’s initial NO, Jesus said YES to baptism, echoing God’s great YES to his beloved creation.
Jesus said YES because his life is more profound than a simple NO to evil, sin and death. In Christ, even those things on which we rightly turn our backs are more than NOs. They are a magnanimous YES to a way of living and being that lives towards something rather than against something. It is a YES to living with the hope of a new creation that redeems the old.
Have we forgotten how to say YES? After all, it’s rather easy to say NO, and even when we shirk from saying NO, our YES may be more half-hearted than we wish to admit. Do we say NO to being a people of generosity and trust? Do we say NO to giving our whole selves, our souls and bodies, to God? And why do we say NO? Do we think we don’t have enough to give? Or are we scared that saying YES will mean forsaking some of our coveted control over life?
And when we rightly say NO to evil, sin, selfishness, systemic injustice, and everything that is not of God, do we have the strength to say YES to something greater? How do we become a people who stand for God rather than against all that is not of God?
When Jesus consented to be baptized by John, even though he had no need of it, he embodied the perfect humility of God. He didn’t accept John’s NO, but he said YES to stoop to the depths of the human condition, to identify as fully with us as possible, to show us the way to say YES for ourselves and for the sake of the world.
In baptism, when we say NO to evil, sin, and wickedness, we are also, at the same time, turning to say YES to God. We are saying YES to let Jesus rule over our lives to give us true freedom. We are saying YES to trust that God can redeem all to which we say NO and help us say YES to a new way of living.
It’s not always difficult to say NO to evil and sin. It’s much harder to say YES to being used by God in his grand project to heal the world. It’s harder to say YES to living the Gospel than to say NO to all that seems to go against it. The YES of Jesus’s consent to be baptized is the great YES of God that can make all things new again.
So, picture it. Not the Jordan River in the early first century AD. Not even the moment in which we were baptized or in which we are to be baptized if that has not yet come. Picture a whole lifetime ahead, and then a life beyond the grave, in which the spotlight that has rested for too long on our NOs comes to rest once again on the eternal YES of him who was baptized for us, the One who is the center of this drama of salvation. And then picture it. Picture him, right now and forever, turning our NO into YES.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord
January 8, 2023