Homily for the Baptism of the Lord (C)
Today’s readings use some artful cinematography. Today we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. Our readings give us scenes before baptism and immediately after baptism, but they cut away so that we don’t see the baptisms. This montage of before and after shots nonetheless serves to highlight the uniqueness of Christian baptism. Luke cuts from John the Baptist’s preaching to Jesus praying after his baptism. The Holy Spirit descends like a dove and a voice from heaven speaks to the Lord. The scene is obviously meant to show approval for Jesus’ baptism at the hands of John.
The scene chosen today from Acts of the Apostles is also meant to put the stamp of divine approval on baptism. To understand Peter’s words in the house of Cornelius, we need to remember the whole context of the chapter in which they occur, Acts 10. The scene unfolds in the earliest days of the Church when there was still doubt about who could belong to the Church: was the message of Jesus directed only to Jews or were all people called to Christianity? In Acts 10, the centurion Cornelius—a Roman, not a Jew—receives a vision that prompts him to call Peter to his house. At the same time, Peter receives a vision in which he’s told to eat all of the animals that Jewish dietary laws consider forbidden. The vision was not a marketing ploy for the pork and shellfish industry, but instead it ensured that Peter didn’t hesitate to go to a Gentile’s house when Cornelius’s servants came to find him. At Cornelius’s house Peter preached the message that we hear today. The word was sent to the Israelites, he says, but it was intended, as Isaiah prophesied in the first reading, “to bring forth justice to the nations,” in other words, to extend beyond Israel itself.
What we unfortunately don’t read today is what happens next. As if anyone missed the first several hints, the Holy Spirit descends on the people in Cornelius’s house, who begin to speak in tongues, and Peter says, “Can anyone forbid water for baptizing these people?” (Acts 10:47). God’s will is that baptism should be conferred on Gentiles as well as Jews and that all nations should enter the Church, even Roman centurions.
Now if you were a medieval theologian, who spent your days raising difficulties about sacramental theology, the story of Cornelius’s baptism might provoke another question: if the Holy Spirit had already descended on everyone in Cornelius’s household, why did they even need to be baptized? Isn’t getting the Holy Spirit the whole point of baptism? And once you’ve got the Holy Spirit, doesn’t the ceremony become redundant? If you remember from Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus, John the Baptist himself poses a similar question about the baptism of Jesus. “I need to be baptized by you,” he says. “Why do you come to me?” (Matt 3:4).
Continue reading “The uniqueness of Christian Baptism: homily for the Baptism of the Lord”
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 