Baptism of the Lord (C)
Is 42: 1-4, 6-7;
Acts 10: 34-38;
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
There is an old parable about a tiger cub raised by goats. Thinking it was a goat, the tiger cub learned to nibble grass, to bleat and to think like a goat. One night a tiger attacked the herd of goats which scattered for safety, leaving the tiger cub bleating and nibbling. It had not learned that tigers were dangerous.
The old tiger roared: “what are you doing with these cowardly goats? Don’t you know who you are?” They he grabbed the cub by the scruff of the neck and took him to the pond and said: “See our faces reflected? Now you know WHO you are and WHOSE you are”. The tiger took the cub home and taught him to eat meat, roar and generally to act like a tiger. The cub discovered his true self.
It is only when we look into the baptismal pool that we see WHO we are. For when we look in here, we see reflected back the image of Jesus, the one into whose body we are incorporated. It is here at this font, that we discover WHOSE we are when we hear God speak of us: “You are my beloved. In you I am well pleased.”
The gospel writer Luke invites us to see Jesus as the fulfillment of the reading from Isaiah who describes a servant of God upon whom God has put his spirit. The servant is described as God’s chosen one with whom God is pleased. When Jesus received the Holy Spirit after his baptism, a voice from heaven said to him, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Isaiah says that the servant of God will be “a covenant of the people, a light for the nations.” The servant will accomplish the salvation of both the people of Israel and the other nations of the world. The fulfillment of this promise is narrated in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Here Peter for the first time preaches the good news to Gentiles, and they accept it.
Sometimes I think that we Catholics are like tigers that live with goats. We have lost the language of our faith – we bleat instead of roar. We have lost our appetite for life – we nibble grass instead of nourishing ourselves on the sustenance of life.
What happened to our true selves? The Old Testament story suggests that, instead of having God at the center, we have attempted to create ourselves as the center towards which all things are attracted.
Thus, we don’t just want to hide the truth, we fashion very elaborate fig leaves for concealment. We aren’t simply unkind to others; we want to kill those with whom we disagree. It isn’t that we lack communication, we construct towers of miscommunication. Its not that we have blind spots, something makes us prefer darkness to light.
Creating this false self is futile, our efforts are wasted. We can never be happy until we discover our true self, made in the image of God. After we have tried everything else, we leave it all behind and go home. Like the Prodigal Son.
The son didn’t go home because he was broke, or was unhappy. It was not the gambling, the prostitutes or liquor that brought him to his senses. He remembered his true self, WHO he was, and WHOSE he was. And then he realized he was eating with the pigs.
We will see our own reflection of WHO we are only when we can see the cross, and realize that we have been baptized into the death of Jesus. And that means that we have to give up goat life and start living like tigers.
I relied heavily upon a homily written by Rev. James Smith and published in CELEBRATION.
Rev. Ev Hemann