January 10, 2014
Following is a homily for the weekend of Sunday, January 12, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
I was giving a talk about changes since the Second Vatican Council. It was to an informal group of mostly young people whom I thought would appreciate the perspective of an older man like me. No sooner had I begun to make my points when a youngish, 30-something, raised his hand. “Vatican II destroyed the Church,” he began. And persisted with his comments at such a regular pace that that after a while I said, giving up: “Look, I’m trying to present my thoughts here. Maybe I should sit down and just let you come up and teach. Then I can ask you questions. You’ve taken over the class already.”
Sometimes teachers glory when their students exceed their gifts, but usually it’s good to know who’s the teacher and who’s the student. Something like this confusion is happening in the Gospel. Jesus comes to John to be baptized. John says, “No, I should be baptized by you.” Because to be baptized means to become someone’s student, someone’s disciple. As far as John could see, Jesus was the master to John, not his student.
This raises some interesting angles for us, some 2,000 years after the baptism of Jesus. Is Jesus our master, is he our teacher? Or, like a strange reversal of John, have we become the masters, giving Jesus lessons about how to adjust his message this way or that? For to be baptized is far more than going through a ceremony, or getting a name, or being free from sin or even joining the Church. We are baptized when we follow a way of life that imitates the master’s life, that walks in his steps.
Certainly general culture admires Jesus, but we have tamed Jesus again and again, making him into a philosopher, a monk, a King, a social worker, a therapist, a superstar. In doing this, we pull a piece of Christ out and modify the rest of him to fit into that image. That is why people cringe, for different reasons, when we identify our country as a Christian culture. On the one hand, what about non-Christians? On the other hand, what evidence would we put forward about our Christianity? Some of those who most conspicuously claim the mantle of Christian often seem the least inclined toward compassion.
But, even more, in our personal lives, we modify Jesus in so many ways, ignoring him most of the time, invoking him when convenient, softening or ignoring the stronger things he says to us, and basically reducing his power, his authority, his lordship over us. Just the word “lordship” drives us nuts. But if Jesus is not our model, our teacher, our leader, then how can we claim to be following in his steps?
One of the practices that some Catholics are adopting more and more is to let Jesus speak more clearly in their hearts. They set aside the time and listen to a verse or two of Scripture, and let those words sink inside. They first reflect on them, then sit with them in silence, then say prayers on the basis of those words, and then they act on them. This is an ancient form of prayer called “divine reading” of the Scriptures. Other Catholics I know gather together to share over the Scriptures to hear them more deeply. “The voice came from the heavens”; the voice continues to come. The Spirit continues to descend upon us, so long as we allow it.
We all know how infallible our children are in second year high school. They already know how stupid everyone else is. Who’s got anything to teach them? Smarty pants. Know-it-alls. But at least they pretend. When it comes to our listening to Jesus, and letting him be our teacher, most of the time we don’t even pretend. We just tune the teacher out … and then wonder why we never grow.