The baptism of Jesus

Today’s Sunday Gospel is a very short one. It is the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can read it in your Bible on Mark 1:7-11.

This is what [John the Baptist] proclaimed: “One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals. 8 I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 9 It happened in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John. 10 On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him.11 And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my beloved Son; with whom I am well pleased.”

As a layman, I find this story quite intriguing because whenever he was asked, John the Baptist always denied that he was Messiah or Elijah (although our lord Jesus later reveals to us that Elijah has indeed returned in the person of John the Baptist) or a prophet. John was a simple man, call him even a Wildman because he wore a Camels hair clothes and ate wild honey in the wilderness. But he always knew his place in God’s plan for the salvation of mankind and that’s to be the solitary voice in the wilderness making straight the paths of the Lord.

Yet in his pronouncement of the coming of the Messiah, this is what John proclaimed, “One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals. 8 I have baptized you with water; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” I’m intrigued by his use of the phrase, “One mightier than I is coming after me.” I look at this as an admission of a person who had power and authority but that the Messiah is mightier than him, to the point that he declares that he is not worthy to loosen his sandals.

Yet we know in the following verses that John did in fact baptize our Lord, which why we can look at him as a man with authority even over the Messiah. What a mystery! John the Baptist says that he is not worthy of even stooping down to loosen the Messiah’s sandals, yet when he baptized Jesus in the River Jordan, it was the Lord who stooped down so John could baptize him with water. But then we really can’t understand the ways of God. As we didn’t study Theology, therefore we cannot give you a Theological background into this mystery.

But I have no doubt that our Lord Jesus the Messiah allowed himself to be baptized by John as a sign of his humility and acceptance of John’s call for the repentance of sins for Jews. Though we know that Jesus was sinless, he was showing the people of Israel that the right path to God’s salvation is through the repentance of sins. This should not be misconstrued as Jesus seeking repentance for he has no sin at all. Jesus also knew that John was to precede him so it was his way of given John the recognition he needed, because when Jesus came, John’s mission on earth was already finished.

After his Baptism, the heavens opened and the Spirit descended like a Dove over Jesus and a voice was heard coming from the heavens…“You are my beloved Son; with whom I am well pleased.” Accordingly, Mark’s gospel suggests that only Jesus heard this voice. But I would like to believe that John the Baptist also saw the dove and heard the heavenly voice. If you opened your Bible to John 1: 29-34 you will understand what I mean.

“The next day, he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. He is the one whom I said, ‘A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me. I did not know him, but the reason why I came baptizing with water was that he might be made known to Israel.

John testified further, saying, “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from the sky and remain upon him. I did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God.’’

From this passage, you can decipher that John the Baptist was clearly sent back to earth to be the precursor of the Messiah. But it’s more than obvious to me from this passage that John wasn’t given any advance information as to who was to be the Messiah… or that he would be his own cousin Jesus. John was merely instructed that when he sees the Spirit coming down and remains with the person, that person is the Messiah and the Son of God.

So we bring back to you the message of John the Baptist that is still very relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. Although we were baptized as Catholics at a very young age, we often fall into sin, thus the Catholic Church teaches us that we no longer need to be rebaptized in order to be cleansed of our sins. The church has instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation or confession so we can take Holy Communion and have God within us in our bodies as we become a true Temple of God. This is what God with us means.