Our word baptize comes from the Greek word baptizein meaning to dip, immerse or wash (usually in water).  The event of the baptism of Jesus by John is not the ecclesiastical Sacrament of Baptism as Catholics and other mainline Christian believers have come to understand it, whereby one is initiated into the Christian community and also forgiven of past sins.  Our Sacraments are defined as “outward signs” of an encounter with Christ with the Church.  It is in that sign value that Jesus’ baptism resembles ours.  Our Baptism is a sign of our initiation into Church membership, and in committing to a life founded on Gospel thoughtfulness.  His baptism was a sign of the beginning of his public ministry and of a special anointing by God’s Holy Spirit.

From the Christian perspective, today’s Deutero-Isaiah reading describes a character whom scripture scholars call the Suffering Servant.  Among the servant’s ministerial tasks was that of giving witness to God’s desire for justice in an unjust world.  This witness to justice was not merely a nice idea; it was God’s determined Will.  From God’s perspective it was a most important necessity.  One mission of Jesus in his ministry was that he become the ultimate prophet, Gospel teacher, and sacrificial victim in terms of Jewish temple theology.  He performed signs and wonders formerly attributed to the ancient prophets as spiritual “light for the nations.”  The miraculous healing of the blind and release of prisoners to which the Isaiah text alludes conjure up an idealized world of absolute justice, a world in which everyone would have sufficient insight to be free from the disease of ignorance, and a world of healthy and responsible liberty for all.  Everyone would perceive truthfully, live thankfully, and practice justice in turn.  This was an imaginary harkening back to the Garden of Eden, intended to inspire and uplift by noble ideals.  The qualities we can associate with a perfect Eden are impossible to achieve fully, but they can be our motivation and goals.  Such values are what really ought to attract us in the Gospel.

Matthew’s remembrance of the baptism of Jesus is the most detailed and extensive of the three Synoptic Gospel accounts.  In John’s Gospel narrative, John the Baptist’s words of testimony only allude to the event.  In the Matthew’s narrative, John recognized Jesus implicitly and hesitated to baptize him.  John appreciated his own unworthiness and need to be baptized by the one whom he called “mightier than I.” Jesus persuaded him to perform the baptism as a “fulfillment of all righteousness.”  Indeed, in all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ baptism marked the beginning of his public ministry, the opening scene of the Paschal drama which went on to announce and develop the Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven, repentance and an exhortation to embrace the genuinely good news of hope in that kingdom.  The tricky word “righteousness” always falls harshly and obliquely on modern ears.  Perhaps because we have allowed it to slip out of our ordinary language and into a warped populist usage in limited circles.  In fact, it refers to God’s justice, God’s power of salvation.  The fulfillment of “all righteousness” sounds like Matthew has already aimed our attention at the Paschal Event beginning with Jesus’ final triumphal entry into Jerusalem, through the Last Supper, Arrest, Passion, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost.  And even though Matthew was not one of those witnesses to all the facets of the Paschal Event, he lived and wrote in the Post-Pentecostal Sub-Apostolic Age, during which witnesses of the historical Jesus both before and after his death and resurrection could still be found.  The anecdotal stories circulating could be related and elaborated on by those with first hand experiences, even if distant memories.  The Paschal Event was the fulfillment of all God’s justice in the cosmos.  Everything changed with that profound moment of complete, free and loving self-sacrifice at the hands of evil, cruel and misguided people among the Imperial Romans and among some of his own people themselves.  That the Holy Spirit was visible to him as she descended upon Jesus, and that he heard the divine voice address him with approval and recognition, “You are my son ...” – these two theophanic events (an audio-visual experience of God in the created world) were the inauguration of the messianic ministry.  They were summarized in the concluding verses of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ earthly presence when he gave his apostles the Great Commission to go out to all the world, to teach and baptize in his name.  We have here the first words of the story of the adult Jesus and the foundation of Christian life and ministry.

In the abbreviated reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we glimpse Peter’s insightful and decisive rationale about whether or not Gentiles could enter directly into Gospel fellowship: “... In truth, I see that God shows no partiality ... whoever fears [God] and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.”  Ought this not provide us insight about ecumenical and interreligious relationships, and even about relationships with our own family, society, or the larger Church who are different from us?  Indeed, this was a profound, challenging and even painful insight for many in the early Church.  It was as important in that day as the whole collective issue of human rights is in the Church and the world today.  The early Church members indeed wrestled with their own faith and cultures.  Under the power, wisdom and compassion God’s Holy Spirit, they changed, grew and evolved!  They let go of some long-held religious practices and strong if destructive social customs in order to embrace new, different, and more constructive behaviors in the Gospel.  After the Resurrection, this Pentecostal life-style was arguably among the greatest miracles in Church life for two thousand years.  Without this controversy, which took three or four decades (or more) to work out, many of us among today’s Christians might have been excluded from Church membership.  This must give us pause to think and consider just how powerfully God sought to make universal the Gospel and the Salvation it provides.  God’s Will is that all are saved!

With the vignettes of the infancy and childhood of Jesus we’ve heard in the Christmas and Epiphany seasons, the Church’s liturgical calendar arrives at the beginning of the first and shorter liturgical season called Ordinary Time.  It is interrupted by the Lent-Triduum-Easter seasons and will resume after Pentecost.  With the Baptism of the Lord, we consider how Jesus inaugurated his ministry, engaged and formed his disciples, and expected them to behave as responsible adult believers.  In today’s Church we must hear, reflect, pray and behave as enthusiastic, mature, adult followers of the Gospel of Christ, too.  We are not children; we ought not be childish.  Living a mature, adult faith in the Gospel is both a challenging and engaging enterprise!

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