Letter to the Hebrews 2:17 tells us that ‘Jesus was made one like us, so that he could
reveal God’s compassion for sinful humanity’. Jesus was willing to suffer the
consequences of human revolt against God to manifest God’s redemptive love. When
Jesus decided to receive baptism from John the Baptist, Jesus descended into our
chaotic, troubled world, into the depth of human woundedness and misery; he took
upon himself the conditions of the sinful world to initiate a new creation. In his baptism
Jesus, so to say, released grace into water for all to become children of God through
new-birth in baptism. Gospel says, heavens were opened at Jesus’s baptism: God
welcomes all humanity to himself in Christ [God shows no partiality]. In the OT God was
often depicted as punishing and angry, in Jesus’ baptism God is offering sinful humanity
a relationship of love, forgiveness and reconciliation.
Our baptism is an opening of heaven for us, an invitation to be living signs of God’s
kingdom or to become God’s beloved in Christ. In Jesus God is saying to us, ‘you are
my beloved, you sinners are my friends, I want to redeem you, I am love; I want you to
experience your potential to love and build my kingdom’. In his baptism, Jesus
welcomes all with our differences. He invites us to plunge into God [baptism=immerse/
plunge] and let go our past failures and be filled with the Spirit. Our baptism means to
be born free to love and never let enmity, hatred, anger control our lives but work for
peace and harmony among all! We are called to be agents of Christ’s revolution of love,
which alone can save the world!
Baptism gives birth to a new person, a beloved of God. It means to grow in our
openness to Christ, listen to him and follow him, live a life of love and service. A person
can resist spiritual growth but God constantly invites all through a process of repentance
[change of heart] to re-energize our following of Christ. In our baptism God’s power
entered into us/his love. There is no greater power than love and those who live it touch
and transform the lives of others.
An old Jewish story tells of the reaction of a learned Rabbi when an excited disciple
announced, ‘the Messiah has come; he is in our city now’. ‘Really’, said the Rabbi.
Going to the window, the Rabbi looked out on the city and observed, ‘I see no
difference’. The Messiah has come and he dwells with us, does this knowledge make a
difference in our lives? Making a difference depends on us, a task we received in our
baptism, to live the knowledge that we are the beloved of God! In our baptism we were
given the fire of the Spirit, fire of love that takes away sin to reflect Christ in us, that we
may touch others with Christ’s healing love! Be touched by Jesus’ love and may you
touch the lives of others and be for them a source of healing, peace and joy! This may
be a good spiritual practice to say to yourself when you wake up each morning, ‘I am
the beloved of God’!