Baptism of Jesus
Mark 1:7-11
We are all still enlightened by the light of the feast we celebrated yesterday, the feast of Epiphany: we saw that God manifests himself, reveals himself to those far away, wants to reach every man with his light, which is the light of mercy and peace.
Today too, on this feast of the Baptism of Jesus, we are reached by the same light; today too, God reveals himself to us, and he does so in a way, that even today, may surprise us.
The Gospel passage for this feast (Mark 1:7-11) is sharply divided into two parts.
The first part (vv 7-8) speaks of John the Baptist, his preaching and the expectation that animated him: John knew the arrival of the Messiah, a strong Messiah, was imminent (Mk 1:7). The Baptist waited for a powerful Messiah who, with this strength of his, with the superiority of his power, would restore justice, chastise sinners, eliminate evil.
This is John's expectation, and it is, after all, the expectation of each of us.
What do we expect of God but that he would set things right, that he would eliminate injustice, and that he would do so forcefully? Don't we expect a God who can do everything, and therefore put an end to what makes us suffer? Do we not continue to expect this?
The second part of today's Gospel (vv 9-11) speaks of a God very different from our expectations, and it does so in every way possible, hiding among the few words a number of clues that speak of a poor God.
The first clue is the origin of this Messiah: Mark says that Jesus is not from an important place, a famous city. He does not come from Jerusalem, the political and religious center of the people, nor from Bethlehem, the city of David.
Jesus comes from Nazareth of Galilee, which means from a place of no importance, from a place from which it seemed that nothing good could come (cf. Jn. 1:46).
From Nazareth, Jesus comes down to the Jordan, to one of the lowest points on earth.
Immediately afterward Mark announces that this Messiah is coming, but he does nothing striking, nothing important; he does nothing different from what everyone else does. Like all the others who are there, He also gets baptized.
And there is one final clue, hidden in the image of the heavens being torn open. The other synoptics, at this same point in their Gospel, say that the heavens opened and a voice was heard from heaven.
Mark, on the other hand, uses a much stronger verb, which is to say that the heavens were torn open.
What is the difference?
The difference is that what opens, you can also close again. But what rips open, cannot be closed again, because the ripping has created a permanent rupture, a new condition from which there is no turning back.
If the heavens are ripped open, all the life, the beauty, the love that is up there no longer has any impediment, no frontier, and pours out onto the earth.
Mark will also use this verb at the end of his Gospel, when, immediately after Jesus' death, he says that the veil of the temple was torn (Mark 15:38).
Jesus dies crying out, and the Father somehow rips, tears, because the cry of the Son, the cry of injustice, does not leave him indifferent, as no cry ever leaves him indifferent.
In baptism, too, the same thing happens: before this humble and discreet way in which Jesus chooses to reveal himself, the Father definitively opens his world, his life, his Word, his Spirit, and does so to solemnly attest, before all, that this man in solidarity with all men is his Son, the beloved.
That this way of living is no different from God's own way of living: in him the Father recognizes himself, as every father recognizes himself in his own son.
Then the style of this Messiah and of his mission is clearer: the style is that of a God who does not flee limitation and vulnerability in order to weave bonds with men, his brothers.
He comes to save us, of course, but his way is that of friendship, of solidarity: not a gesture of deity which, from on high, without getting his hands dirty, eliminates evil. But a love that reaches out to us in the abyss of our lives, just as it is, that shares our cry; a love that tears itself apart to make room for us, to make us beloved children.
+Pierbattista
