FIRST READING: Isaiah 42: 1-4; 6-7. Thus says the Lord; Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him, he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law. “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.”
SECOND READING: Acts 10: 34-38. Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the word which he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all), the word which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”
GOSPEL: Luke 3:15-16; 21-22. As the people were in expectation, and all men questioned in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he were the Christ. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, “Thou art my beloved Son, with thee I am well pleased.”
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Reflecting upon the life of Jesus years after his death and resurrection, the early Christians seem to have decided that Jesus’ first public appearance had been when he went to John to be baptised. On that occasion, it seems that Jesus had still been mostly unknown. It also seems that he had still no clear concept of what his mission might have been. Luke appears to indicate this by Jesus’ silence. As it turned out, John’s vision was fundamentally different from that of Jesus: Jesus did not simply preach a spiritual message, as John did, but also a social and political one. At the moment of his mainly-symbolic baptism, Jesus seems to have been as yet unprepared for the revolution he would later go on to propose.
Isaiah’s text does not let us lose sight of this revolution. The text is quite remarkable in itself. It is part of a ‘Servant of Yahweh’ cycle, the work of a 6th-century BCE author writing near the end of the Babylonian captivity. The content of the whole cycle—a leader who rules by dying—is so extraordinary and atypical that it seems quite feasible to conclude that, consciously, the author really had in mind no-one in particular when composing such odd texts, and that he must have been inspired to do so. Unknowingly, he could indeed have been writing about Jesus. In any case, the beautiful text we have today fits Jesus like a glove, as does the whole ‘Servant of Yahweh’ cycle.
As Peter and Luke point out, Jesus had not only been full of the Holy Spirit, like John and so many others had been, but also ‘with power’ – ‘dynami’ (Peter) and ‘fire’ – ‘pyri’ (Luke). These qualifications, not at all apparent at his baptism, indicate Jesus’ profound difference from John or any other prophet before him. They are hints of the revolution that he was to bring. They are also clues to our own baptism.
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