Christ Comes to be Baptized
Christ is among us!
In his Nativity, our Lord united the created to the uncreated. He brought divinity low and wrapped it in human weakness; calling us back to himself and bringing, in his own Person, peace between God and Man; above with below; Male with Female; and Man with the entire created order. In the Nativity we also hear, and read, of God’s desire to complete his divine project, which is the creation of the human person. This act of divine condescension, we call the Incarnation of the Word.
Because we were estranged from Life himself, and could not lift ourselves up, he came to us. Because we were the man who, on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among thieves and was robbed, stripped, beaten, and left for dead, he bandaged our wounds, pouring on them oil and wine, and he brought us to the inn—his Holy Church—to rest; to be tended; and to be healed.
All of the divine freedom, mercies, goodness, and life, are given to us as a baby in a cave. But the celebration of the Feast of the Nativity is not the only feast of the Incarnation of God. Indeed, all the feasts of the Church are rooted in the incarnation of God. We typically only focus on the beautiful mystery of the Incarnation at Christmas time, but the whole of the liturgical year is incarnational. There is no feast of the Church that is not incarnational—there is no feast that is not God with us.
The liturgical year connects the divine-incarnate acts of God to time and space. It sanctifies time and space. These events sanctify our experiences: our tears, our joys, our laughter, our births and deaths—the entirety of our lives.
Keeping this in mind as we continue marveling and wondering at the depth of this mystery in the forth-coming Feast of Theophany, Christ isn’t simply “Emmanuel” at Christmas, but here, now, as we approach his Theophany, he remains “God with us”.
As with all things the Incarnate God-man does, his forthcoming baptism completes the baptismal rites first given to Israel in the Law of Moses. Baptism under the Old Covenant recognized different levels, or types of sin. And because of this, as St Basil tells us, the...
grace of pardon was not accorded all transgressions; also, it required various sacrifices, it laid down precise rules for purification, it segregated for a time one who was in a state of impurity and defilement, it appointed the observance of days and seasons, and then baptism was received as the seal of purification. -Concerning Baptism
This is the underlying context and understanding of baptism, when John appears out of the wilderness, and his baptism was different. John, as the last and greatest prophet, and the Forerunner of the Christ, forms a bridge between the Old Covenant and the New. Therefore, the baptism of John was for all sins, regardless of what they were, as the Scripture tells us:
Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. - Mark 1.5
Again, St Basil writes that the baptism of John:
recognized no distinction of sins, nor did it require a variety of sacrifices, nor did it appoint strict rules for purification or any observance of days or seasons. Indeed, with no delay at all, anyone who had confessed his sins, however numerous or grave, had access at once to the grace of God and His Christ. He was baptized in the river Jordan and straightway received pardon for his sins.
And immediately, we hear in Mark’s Gospel account that as John is baptizing in the Jordan for the forgiveness of sins, he tells the people of the coming of Christ, who will complete this baptism, who will, indeed, baptize them with the Holy Spirit. The baptism from John is for forgiveness, but the baptism from Christ is filled with the divine glory and power of God himself!
Here we might note that Christ never baptizes anyone with water, but his Forerunner does; his apostles do; the bishops do. Christ continues to baptize with the fire of the Holy Spirit. In our liturgical rites of baptism that have come down to us, there is a dual mystery going on. We are baptized with water AND the Holy Spirit. This should not be scandalous for us, because as Christ himself says to Nicodemus in the Gospel of John (3.5):
I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
So, then, if John’s baptism is for forgiveness, and Christ’s baptism is incomparably greater, why, then, does Christ submit to baptism at the hands of John? Indeed, the Forerunner asks this very question in Matthew’s Gospel (3.14-15):
Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. However, John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and [it is] you who come to me?”
In contemplating the great goodness of God, we can begin to answer this question with these two reasons:
Let us once again remember the incarnation, and that Christ’s baptism is as much a part of the incarnation as his being born to a Virgin mother. Let us also remember the voice of John who says of Christ (John 1.29):
Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
Through the whole of the incarnation, Christ identifies himself with sinners. This means that even though he did not require the forgiveness of sins, we do. He comes not to condemn the world through external laws but to bring us back to himself from within. As we are sinners in need of forgiveness and the rites of forgiveness, he himself submits to this, to fill it with himself, to deify every part of the human condition. We see this as well, while on the Cross, he cries out: My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” He didn’t do this because somehow there was a division within God, but rather because, as Ambrose and Bede tell us, we fancy ourselves abandoned by God, so Christ unites himself to this fancy as well, to fill it with divinity.
A second reason Christ submits to baptism is, again, incarnational. He comes to call the entirety of the cosmos back to himself and restore the created order once again as a gift to us. As Fr Schmemann writes:
The world tore away from God, forgot him, stopped seeing him and immersed itself in sin, darkness, and death. But God did not forget the world. Here, in his baptism, God returns it to us, shining with the glory of the stars and the beauty it had on the first day of creation[…] Everything in this world, including matter itself, its very substance, now once again becomes a path toward God, toward communion with him, toward growth in this abundant and eternal life. -Celebration of Faith: The Church Year, p. 70
On this bright and radiant liturgical day, our Divine Liturgy, restores us to this reality. It sanctifies the day. It sanctifies the hour. It sanctifies the building, the street, the city, the state, the country, the world. Let us abide in the incarnational feast of the Lord’s Nativity and Theophany, to whom be glory and honor with his unoriginate Father, and his all-holy Spirit, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.