Dear Sisters, dear brethren, from now until the beginning of Lent we are once more in Ordinary Time, characterized above all by the green colour of the vestments and other liturgical hangings on the chalice, lectern and altar. Yet today, although it is the first such green Sunday, is also treated by the liturgy as a second Sunday after the Epiphany. Last Sunday we celebrated the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism, which is part of the threefold Epiphany mystery; the first of which is the Coming of the Magi, the second the Baptism of our Lord, and the third His first miracle at Cana. This year we do not have the benefit of hearing the Gospel of the miracle at Cana on this Sunday, as we heard it last year, but instead we have just heard other readings relating to the manifestation of our Lord as Saviour of the world which we have been celebrating since January 6th.
To begin at the end, we have just heard in the gospel reading how St John the Baptist understood what had happened on that solemn occasion when he baptised his kinsman, Jesus of Nazareth. This came from the fourth Gospel, that of St John the Apostle and Evangelist, as do the other gospel readings on this Sunday in other years of the lectionary cycle. St John gives us a different viewpoint of our Lord’s baptism from that we heard last Sunday, which came from St Matthew’s Gospel. In that account we heard a conversation between Jesus and John the Baptist, in which John tried at first to resist Jesus’s coming to be baptised, though eventually at our Lord’s gentle insistence he consented. On the other hand, the entirety of today’s Gospel reading was the Apostle John’s account of the Baptist’s own words on that occasion. John the Baptist begins today’s account with the words that are so familiar to us from every Mass: ‘Behold the Lamb of God, [behold him] who takes away the sin[s] of the world’. We did not hear these words last week in St Matthew’s account. What do these words mean? The lamb was in Israel the animal destined for the paschal sacrifice, to be put to death in the Temple at Passover time, and to be eaten by the people of Israel as a thanksgiving to God for their delivery from Egypt many centuries before. John is saying that Jesus is now effectively the lamb not selected for slaughter by the people but appointed to be sacrificed by God Himself; not to be the memorial of the Exodus, but to be the instrument through whom all sin would be taken away from the whole people of God.
John then says that he did not know Jesus as the Saviour until this moment, and indeed, that he had been given this role as baptizer principally in order that the Saviour might be revealed in this solemn epiphany. Last week we heard how the Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove. Today we have heard John the Baptist say that when he himself saw this happen, this was the sign he was expecting that ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is He who baptises with the Holy Spirit.’
It may seem strange that John says, not once but twice, ‘I myself did not know Him’, but the reason for this declaration is important: it is so that John may make it absolutely clear to his hearers that he only knows that Jesus is the One whom he has awaited because He is the one he sees being anointed by the Spirit in the very moment of His baptism by John. The very act that John was sent to do, his mission, so to speak, and the very thing he had reied to prevent Jesus from receiving at his hands, that very thing was the means of this revelation to John: that Jesus is the chosen one of God, the Lamb who is to take away the sins of the world. And as John finally sums it up n the very last sentence, ‘I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God’. That is the crucial truth revealed here to John the Baptist which he now declares openly to all his hearers.
Now we ought also to remember that the Messiah, who was being eagerly awaited by all the people of Israel, was expected to be a great king, a warrior to lead the people in a great liberation like Moses, like Joshua, like king David, like Judas Maccabaeus – all these had freed the people of Israel from oppression in Egypt or from their neighbouring countries and foreign tribes. Now they needed someone to free them from the Romans. But John the Baptist saw something very different. John was not speaking according to the desires of the people for a leader, but from the viewpoint of the prophets, who were always those who put to the people the word of God, welcome or unwelcome as it might be.
John came from that prophetic tradition of the word of God spoken with authority. He was the last such prophet in the history of the world because it was his mission and his alone to recognise the one on whom the Spirit rested at His baptism and to declare that which no one before him had ever been able to say, nor would again ever afterwards; John was given the mission to say these words about Jesus: ‘I have seen and have borned witness that this is the Son of God.’ The Son of God had at long last entered into the world, He was present in the world He Himself had created, He had come as a man, as a child of Israel, as the Lamb who would one day in the future be sacrificed.
There is something we should add to complete this picture of John’s unique role. Go back to the first reading from one of the very greatest of the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah. Isaiah speaks there the words of God to His servant, saying: ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’ This would be fulfilled in Christ, as He stood in the waters of Jordan and heard the Father’s voice: ‘You are my beloved Son’.
But not only Israel, for also the whole world’s Saviour He would be: ‘I will make you a light of the nations that my salvation my reach to the ends of the earth.’
Make A Comment
Comments (0)