Following the Beloved
Baptism of the Lord
When I was a priest in Albany, GA, I was approached by a person who had a tertiary relationship to my parish. We were setting up for a weekend event, and I was dressed in my clerical shirt. Without much precedent, he said, “You know, I really like Catholics.” As an Episcopal priest, I resisted the urge to explain the affiliation I have with the Catholic Tradition yet not with the Roman church. He probably knew, anyway. Then he told me why he liked “Catholics.”
This older man was in line to be drafted into the Vietnam War, and he was spared this fate because of one renegade Catholic by the name of Daniel Berrigan. Berrigan was a Jesuit priest and radical activist associated with the Catonsville Nine. On May 17th, 1968 Berrigan and the others used homemade napalm to burn and destroy 378 draft files, landing him on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list. He was incarcerated for three years after a short stint on the run and hiding out in the home of William Stringfellow. The man who had approached me said that one of those draft files was his own.
I don’t think I will ever forget that encounter on a Saturday morning in Moultrie, GA, in part because Berrigan’s public and political witness bore fruit that I was able to see in person. The statement published by the Catonsville Nine does not shy away from their intention in destroying the documents:
“We confront the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country's crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war, and is hostile to the poor.”
The baptism of Jesus is often a tricky festival in the church’s calendar. Why would a sinless savior, the spotless Lamb of God, require a baptism for repentance into the Jordan? What is the purpose of John’s baptism and repentance in such a life that is so much “greater” than John’s own?
With the help of Ched Meyers, we can begin to understand the social, religious, and political dimensions of this scene, and the ways in which it stands apart from the other synoptic Gospels.
Meyers points out that Jesus’ origins in Mark, contrary to the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, present him as a kind of “nobody from nowhere” in the eyes of the gathered crowds. He is simple from Nazareth in Galilee with no public status, and his identity – both from the first verses of the Gospel and this epiphany in the Jordan – is known only to the reader and Jesus (and perhaps John, though the extent of what he knows is unclear). Mark has separated Jesus from a kind of heroic lineage, as Meyers points out, identifying him only through the witness of John, as a “stronger one” whose sandals he is unfit to remove, and the epiphany from heaven, which identifies Jesus for the reader as the Spirit-filled Beloved Son of God.
With John the Baptizer’s subversive appearance and symbolic relationship to Elijah, as well as Jesus’ relatively unsung origin, Mark’s introduction proclaiming the “beginning of the Gospel” sets us up for more than what appears. Yet, it seems that we are also meant to identify with the “hero” of this story insofar as he is apparently “nobody from nowhere.” It does not take heroic lineage or aristocratic upbringing to be anointed as the Beloved Son. The new humanity inaugurated in this baptism is precisely the new humanity inaugurated in humanity-on-the-ground. There is no ivory tower, pomp and circumstance, gilded throne, or jeweled crown. Indeed, this baptism into the Jordan sets him in opposition to such authorities and powers.
If we are, with Ched Meyers, to suggest that Jesus’ baptism is indeed a baptism for repentance, what does that entail? There is doubtless an alternative beginning in this moment, where the Gospel proclaimed from the first verse is coming of age in the waters of the Jordan – a Gospel that is necessarily juxtaposed to Caesar and Rome because it is a Gospel that is not Caesar’s. Jesus’ borderland upbringing in the gentile-surrounded town of Nazareth in Galilee will have not avoided the influences of Roman power and “peacekeeping.” For Meyers, the baptism is summarized as such: “The new creation begins with a renunciation of the old order.”
If Jesus does submit to a baptism of repentance, it is a repentance reflected later in the subversive lives of such saints as Daniel Berrigan, who uncompromisingly challenged the principalities and powers “for the life of the world,” literally. Jesus enters into a life of renunciation that leads toward conflict and execution at the hands of the very powers he challenges. But it is this very radical and peripheral bumpkin from Nazareth who is declared to be God’s own Son. If we need any confirmation of this renunciation into the new humanity, we need look no further than the next pericope in the Gospel. Immediately following this epiphany, Jesus is thrust into the wilderness where every power he has just renounced become the key temptations to undo his repentance. He has turned from the powers and principalities of this world toward the Kingdom and its justice, and the ruler of this world immediately seeks to bring him back on board with the program.
A baptized life is one of renunciation, as our own baptismal liturgy reminds us each time. In the Episcopal Church, we will reaffirm our baptismal covenant wherein we renounce “Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God,” “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God,” “and all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God.” The questions that follow begin with, “Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?” Repentance is built into the liturgy each time we baptize and remember our baptisms. Even more, repentance is identified as a renunciation of the powers of this world, the ruler of this world, and all inordinate desires instilled by our formation in this world.
To follow the Beloved is to follow along a way of renunciation and resistance. It is to challenge the dividing walls that separate race, class, religion, and nationality. To follow the Beloved into the new humanity is to accept a renunciation of the old, the renunciation of power and its violence, the renunciation of status and its coercion. To follow the Beloved into the new humanity is to bear witness to the new reality that the life of the world is given in the subversive way pioneered by this nobody from Nazareth, the Beloved Son of God.