The feast of the Baptism of the Lord is like a climax of the Christmas feast. Christmas celebrates the incarnation or God becoming a human being. God has a nature different from ours, the same way humans have a nature different from plants. We do have something in common with plants: we are creatures. With regard to God, scripture tells us that we are made in His image. And while that says something significant about humans, we need not be overly elated about that, just as a grass effigy need not rejoice that it is fashioned in the likeness of a human being. Incarnation or Christmas for plants would mean that one of us took the nature of plant, just as for us it means that God took our nature.
I don’t really know what the most despicable thing about plants is. But I know what it is for human beings. It is the three-letter word: SIN. Today’s feast is about God’s identification with our sin condition. This explains why John the Baptist, who perhaps understood well who Jesus was, protested that he was unworthy to baptize Jesus as He didn’t have any sin. Jesus’ insistence to be baptized is curious; yet, it actually looks like the climax of the incarnation—for He desired to become one with us in our sinfulness, even without having any sin.
This was a moment of great divide: the old would give way to the new. The Spirit of God which hovered over the deep on the original creation (Gen 1:2) would now descend like a dove upon Him, signaling a new creation. This new beginning was sometime in the past signaled to Noah after the dove returned to him bearing an olive branch to indicate that salvation—symbolized by dry land and fruitfulness—have appeared after the great flood (Gen 8:11). It was Noah’s dove, not Noah himself, which found dry land, and returning brought an olive branch, also symbolizing peace.
The flood in Noah’s time is a prefigurement of the baptismal waters that make an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness (The Rite of Baptism). And through the waters of the Red Sea, God led Israel out of slavery, to be an image of God’s holy people, set free from sin by baptism (The Rite of Baptism). Christ’s descent into the Baptismal water was meant to sanctify it, in order to quell its destructive power over God’s people, just as He did at the Red Sea. The Holy Spirit descending as a dove on Jesus, just as He brought an olive branch to Noah, signals the arrival of God’s favor and peace, a form of dry land, and an assurance of salvation.
Baptism is full of rich symbolisms. Whenever you’re present for a baby’s baptism, look out for symbolisms—like the shape of the baptismal font. Here at St. John, it is shaped like a womb from which children are begotten in the Spirit. The baptismal fonts at St. Pius X and St. Bernard’s in Tulsa are made in the form of a grave from which Christians are raised to new life in Christ. The cathedral of Burgos-Spain, for example, (one of the cathedrals we visited during our last pilgrimage) has a very large circular section where the baptismal font is located. It’s large enough for the entire congregation to gather around the baptismal font to witness the first entrance into the living family of God of those born anew and redeemed by Christ.
St. Hilary of Poitiers taught that “everything that happened to Christ during his Baptism happens to us. After the birth of water, the Holy Spirit swoops down upon us from high heaven, and we become adopted by the Father’s voice, calling us His sons and daughters.”
Baptism is our greatest gift from God: it is God’s very life and love that we share when we’re baptized. Through this new life, we overcome Adam’s sinful death. It is a love that overpowers and wins us away from love of self to the love of God and our neighbor unto His glory.
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo