Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Behold the Lamb of God” (Jn. 1, 29)

“A lot of church-going people never really got baptized.” 

That sentence jumped out at me from a very provocative article written by a Catholic priest. 

What he proposed was that we Catholics, indeed all Christians, are seldom truly baptized people. Yes, he admits, we’ve gone through the ceremony. We’ve  had the water poured over our heads. We’ve celebrated afterwards with our families. 

But, then, he insists, far too many of us have gone on living our lives pretty much like everyone else. No real difference can be observed.

Here’s how he put it: 

“True baptism is that moment when you get it, when you understand what your life’s purpose really is, when you wake up one morning and you say to yourself: ‘I think I know what I was created for.’” 

This same priest goes on to say that true baptism is different from living life on “cruise control.” It’s different than just going through the motions of living: growing up, going to school, getting a job, getting married, having children.

All of these are very important, significant, even treasurable moments in a person’s life. But many times they are just door openers to life’s next stage of “cruise control” living. 

The priest’s point is that all too often people do not allow themselves to fall into the surrender that creates a different set of eyes through which they can see a deeper meaning to “what it’s really all about.”

And the kind of baptism he’s talking about usually does not happen in moments of achieving greatness. Instead, such baptism usually occurs when we are faced with experiences of failure, of abandonment, of betrayal, of rejection, of loss, of deep hurt, or of sin. 

The good news is that this kind of pain can bring gain – if we allow ourselves to surrender our egos and bow down in prayer; if we allow ourselves to enter into a deeper experience of God, our marriages, our values. 

When that happens, we are joining Jesus plunging into the river Jordan in today’s gospel. Or, we’re like St. Paul, falling off his high horse of power and glory on the  road to Damascus. 

The point the priest was making in his article is that true baptism involves so much more than a ceremony of pouring water. It also includes discovering your soul and beginning the process of living out of that experience. It encompasses surrendering finally to the magnitude of God’s love and allowing that conviction to become the deepest, most heartfelt meaning of your life.

That’s when you’re fully baptized. 

That’s also exactly what happened to the man named Jesus. He was 30 years old, had lived a bit, perhaps failed a bit. And then “it” happened. 

Matthew, Mark and Luke tried to communicate this major transformation within Jesus with words describing the opening of the heavens and the overshadowing by a dove and a voice from the clouds that announced: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

In today’s gospel, the evangelist John does the same. But he then adds something very different. He tells how John the Baptist gave Jesus a title not found anywhere else in the entirety of the gospels: 

Lamb of God. 

This never-before-heard-of title tells us about the kind of God with whom Jesus has become fully united … A God no longer to be viewed in terms of power or majesty, might or splendor… A God who no longer wishes to be addressed in terms of awe and wonder. 

And certainly not a God to ever again be identified with violence or retribution or revenge. 

Rather, from that moment forward, the God of Jesus is to be seen as a lamb: gentle, meek, affectionate, tender. 

God is now to be seen as the lamb who opposes the misuse of power; as the sacrificial lamb who understands our pain; as the lamb led to slaughter who has endured our sufferings and joined in our agonies and anxieties and betrayals and terrors. 

Jean Vanier, the renowned founder of L’Arche, an international network of communities for people with intellectual disabilities, described the consequence of Jesus’ baptism very well when he wrote a poem-like piece called The Lamb of God. 

Here are just a few of his words: 

In front of the power and armies of Caesar, in front of their mighty weapons, stands a lamb, the Lamb of God. This lamb will break down the walls of fear, of aggression, of violence, of sin which imprison people in themselves and incite them to seek their own glory. 

This lamb will liberate in each person a new life of communion with God, with other people and with what is deepest in the self, sowing seeds for universal peace. 

This lamb comes into that part of our being that is our treasure, that sacred space within us, hidden under all our fears, walls, and anger so that we may grow in the spirit of love. 

We are called to be gentle followers of the Lamb, not people of power.

Jean Vanier tells us clearly in this description what happens to us when we allow ourselves to be truly baptized, when we allow ourselves to be immersed in the water and in the fire of the Spirit. 

What that simple and remarkably indescribable immersion will do is make us into “gentle followers of the Lamb.”