Isaiah 42:1–4, 6–7; Acts 10:34–38;  Luke 3:15–16, 21–22

Reprised from 2021 with some revisions

Last week, we celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany. The scriptural context of our celebration was the visit of the Magi to the house of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph sometime after Jesus was born. But the feast itself represents something greater: the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles. At this moment, Jesus becomes manifest to the whole world as the Lamb of God. Recall the first revelation to the shepherds in the fields outside of Bethlehem, representing Jesus’ revelation to the poor and outcast in Israel’s midst following the nativity. The shepherds who visited the Christ child on Christmas day represented the am haarez—the people of the land. These were the unschooled Jews of the time, considered unrighteous by the teachers, scribes, and religious authorities. They were essentially the lowest caste in Ancient Israeli society, outside of tax collectors and prostitutes. To this day in Israel, the term am haarez is considered an insult from what I understand from a friend who live there. In any case, no one trusted them or valued them. It’s notable that they were the first to hear of His arrival, and they were the first to go and honor Him.

His second revelation is to the wise men from the gentiles, the other nations, and He accomplishes this through a sign they would recognize, a star indicating His birth. This underscores a couple of truths: first, that the other nations were also to be incorporated into God’s people, otherwise revelation to them would’ve been meaningless; and second, that these other nations, while they did not worship the God of Israel, may express in their faith some aspects of Divine truth. This is a doctrine of our faith, pronounced in the encyclical Nostra Aetate, in which Pope Paul VI wrote,

Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing "ways," comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men.

So we should not be surprised that the magi from the east could recognize the coming of the Messiah. Even St. Paul acknowledges this recognition by the Greeks in their monument to an unknown God in Acts 17:23, and Socrates himself eschewed the Greek pantheon for an unknown, transcendent, creator God.

Today’s reading from Isaiah foreshadows Christ’s arrival and what results from it:

Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased. Upon him I have put my spirit; he shall bring forth justice to the nations.

So first God claims this chosen one, and then He speaks directly to him:

I formed you, and set you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, To open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

This last passage reminds me of a work that may have been commonly known among educated Hellenist Jews during Jesus’ time, a work that many of you in high school and beyond have studied: Plato’s Parable of the Cave. In Plato’s work, people live in a cave and see only shadows of reality on the cave walls. They have to be dragged out of the cave to see the light, and then many of them simply can’t believe what they’re seeing. And that, also, is the challenge of the gospel. The good news is put in front of our noses and we have a hard time seeing it or accepting it. Isaiah is very explicit about what Christ’s coming will mean for all of humanity… that we’ll be led out of darkness and our blindness healed. But the people of the time had a hard time seeing it—particularly the Jews, who were waiting for a completely different kind of savior.

            This week’s readings celebrate the revelation of Christ to the people of Israel in an action that was familiar to anyone who was an observant Jew—the act of ritual washing. They used simple purification acts to represent ritual cleansing to allow them to worship in the temple or engage in other rituals. The difference between their ritual immersion (which is what the Greek word baptizo represents) and our Christian baptism is that the Sacrament of Baptism is an efficacious sign—one whose signification has an effect. John the Baptist’s baptism was a ritual signifying repentance, but these baptisms were ritual cleansing. They did not have an effect but represented a conviction or commitment on the part of the recipient. Now I have to admit that that is our Catholic Christian understanding of John’s baptism and of ritual washing. Jews see it in a very different light. Nonetheless the effects, whatever they may be, are different for Christians.

            Signs and symbols are good things. But sacraments are not merely signs and symbols. Every one of the rituals that we call sacraments have precursors in Ancient Hebrew religion or simply in human history. The difference is that when Jesus Christ engages with any one of these rituals, they become sacramental—they become visible signs that He institutes which have the invisible effect of giving grace to us. So Jesus uses signs with which all human history already recognizes and makes them sacramental—channels of grace to us. God uses material things to wipe our slate clean, to cleanse us from the stain of original  or ancestral sin, and to adopt us as His own children; He bestows this life saving grace on us in such a simple, mundane act—the act of washing. So this day is a celebration of Jesus’ baptism, which is the beginning of our baptism.

Baptism is the sign of the new covenant with the Word of God. The sign of the old covenant with Israel was circumcision. All boys at eight days would be circumcised as a sign of the relationship of the People of Israel to God. It was once customary to baptize children on the eighth day after birth. St. Paul notes in Colossians 2:11 the connection between circumcision and baptism and that in baptism we are buried with Jesus and raised from death. In 1 Peter 3, Peter says very directly, “Baptism now saves you.” It is not merely a sign of our sanctification; it begins in us that process and joins us to the Body of Christ, and it removes from us the stain of original sin—that flaw in our natures due to the failure of our ancestors Adam and Eve.

            But this baptism is just a start. It is one of three sacraments that the Church together calls sacraments of initiation. So what are we starting when we are initiated into Jesus’ Church? In His ministry, we hear one phrase repeatedly: follow me. Follow me. So He allows Himself to be baptized as an example to follow, not because He needs it, but because we do—we need to see Him and His works so we can follow His example. So we follow Him and are baptized into His body. That is the first step in discipleship, the first step in working with Jesus to fulfill all righteousness.

            What is the next step in discipleship? No doubt we need to follow His example in other things. He does the Father’s will, so we must do His father’s will. We follow His commandments because they are the Word of the Father. We follow Him by loving God with our heart, mind, soul, and strength and by loving our neighbors as ourselves. We follow Him by doing in His memory what he commanded us to do, here at this altar as we will in a few short minutes.

            And we have to be changed by what we do. For all righteousness to be fulfilled, we have to become righteous like Jesus. He came and assumed our human nature to transform it. We have to love as He loves. We have to take His word out to the world. He came to reveal Himself as the Word of God, but for all righteousness to be fulfilled, we have to reveal Him as the Good News, the Word of God come to earth for our salvation.

            And that is what we are called to do—to preach the good news, to evangelize. The Church exists to evangelize, which means you are commissioned to take the news of Jesus with you when you leave here. Some of us will preach the good news in words. Some of us will preach the good news through our actions. There are people who will never set a foot through those doors to hear me and my brother clergy preach. But they will encounter you. They will encounter me in the workplace. What will they remember? Will they remember a spirit of judgment or a spirit of love? You may be the only gospel they experience.

            Now I don’t mean that you have to go out and proselytize. Pope emeritus Benedict XVI rejected proselytizing and emphasized that the Church grows by attraction, just as Jesus drew followers to Himself through attraction. Pope Francis has repeatedly talked about the need for the Church to renew the spirit of evangelization. That is our mission—to show the world who Jesus is, to be His hands and feet, to give ourselves to others in our actions. In our baptism, we die and rise with Christ and become one with Him. In that unity, we can take Him out and show His love to the world.