This experiential Jesus
by Jeremiah Bartram on 04/01/10 at 7:08 pm
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”….Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Luke 3, 15-16; and 21-22; reading for Sunday, January 10 2010.
Commentators
The NRSV relegates to a footnote the culminating point of the Catholic reading for this Sunday, the Baptism of the Lord: “Other ancient authorities read, You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”
In its commentary on the passage, the NRSV makes two points: first, that prayer is a regular feature of Jesus’ life “and a prominent theme of Luke’s portrait”; and secondly, a voice from heaven is again featured in Luke’s account of the Transfiguration (9.35).
Hardy stresses the fact that in Luke’s account, the voice from heaven was public, not merely something that Jesus, and only Jesus, heard. His note is worth quoting in full: “Jesus was last mentioned growing up in Nazareth. Here it is simply taken for granted that he was among the crowd who came to John to be baptized, and the vision which accompanies his baptism – which is not something only he saw, as seems to be implied in Mark and Matthew, but is apparently a public event – serves to bring him out of obscurity and indicates that he is now the protagonist of the story.”
Gospel for gays
All three synoptic gospels tell the story of Jesus being baptized by John, but as Hardy points out, the voice from heaven seems to be heard only by Jesus in both Matthew and Mark. Only in Luke is it heard by others.
The incident also figures in John’s gospel, where it is given a very different spin. First, it is not clear that Jesus sought and received John’s baptism. And secondly, John the Baptist testifies that he (presumably not the crowd, and not Jesus) saw the Spirit descend on Jesus.
With respect to Luke’s text, there are two alternative and somewhat complementary readings: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you (the text used in the Catholic mass); and, in the NRSV: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Textual treatments and variations aside, we are exploring the manifestation of the Lord in this triad of Sundays: Epiphany last week; the Baptism of the Lord, this week; and finally, next week, the miracle at the marriage feast at Cana, the first public miracle in the Gospel of John. Each of the three reveal him publicly in different ways.
**
I’ve always found it hard to understand why Jesus sought John’s baptism of repentance. I’m no theologian, but I suspect that the version in John’s gospel, which carefully avoids any such notion, makes more theoretical sense. After all, why would the sinless one need to participate in such a ritual? It’s a simpler storyline.
But Luke’s account is what the church offers today – and in my experience, asking questions and exploring apparent contradictions yields rich insights.
So why would Jesus seek the baptism of John?
We can guess at reasons. For example: he was participating fully in the human/Jewish experience, pre-resurrection, and by such participation he was fully human; he was both fulfilling and ending the old law, which his own baptism of Spirit and fire would replace.
But for me, the episode reveals something deeper: an experiential Jesus. Here is what I mean.
Jesus did not fully understand his own nature and mission, even at the very end. Here, at the beginning, he was drawn to John’s charismatic teaching and his rite of baptism, and he accepted and embraced that baptism – just as, when he was an adolescent, he accepted and embraced the teaching of the scribes in the temple, who were amazed at his premature wisdom.
In both the temple episode at the age of twelve, and in this episode (when he was presumably in his early thirties), he was obedient to the Father, who was leading him. But he did not know where he was being led.
That is the crucial point. He did not know where he was being led.
And through the experience of John’s baptism, he heard the voice of the Father, telling him – in the NRSV version, that he was the “beloved Son” of God: “with you I am well pleased.” (Italics mine.)
Or in the Catholic version, the very interesting phrase, “today I have begotten you.”
**
Today I have begotten you.
Jesus was begotten as a human creature in the womb of Mary and born at Christmas. But on this day, the day of the baptism by John in the Jordan, God begot him a second time, in a different way: begot him spiritually, by revealing to him his spiritual mission.
And in all three synoptic gospels, he goes immediately into the desert, once that mission from God is received. He needs the silence and solitude of the desert to meditate on what God has told him, in order to understand what it means. His mission is announced through a human ritual administered by the last prophet – and his response is to withdraw into the desert to be with God in prayer.
It is the same response as Paul’s, after his experience on the road to Damascus; the same response as so many subsequent followers of Jesus – Benedict, Francis, Ignatius, Charles de Foucauld – maybe all subsequent followers of Jesus. That’s the point of comparison with our own contemporary and very human experience.
I like to think of Jesus in this way. I like to think that he did not know what God wanted of him; neither did he fully understand the powers that God would work through him – until he learned that mission and experienced those powers through experience.
Experience of prayer, coupled with the experience of living and taking risks.
Such as the risk of saying to a crippled man, “reach out your hand” – without really knowing, until it happened, whether he truly had the power to make it whole.
Or the risk of saying to servants, “fill up the vessels with water, and draw it, and take it to the master of the feast” – without really knowing, until the feast master tasted it, whether it would be wine.
That makes him more like us – and in particular it gives us, gay Catholic Christians, new hope.
Because if we set aside what everyone insists that we “should” be or “should” do (and it isn’t just church authorities that claim such certain knowledge about our orientation and our lives: there’s just as much doctrinaire “should” type thinking on the opposite, permissive side of the debate); if we set aside the “shoulds”, we’re left with experience, and only experience, as the means by which God leads us and teaches us.
Since precepts and instruction only become wisdom when they are tested through lived experience.
So here’s my vision: an experiential Jesus, figuring out, one step at a time, what his path was; an experiential church, following the same practice and path as its Master; and we, gay Catholics, as part of that same church community, working out our salvation through trial and error, through shared experience.
Jack McNulty
Jan 5th, 2010
The Gospel reading for the baptism of Jesus DO NOT include the phrase you quote “You are my Son. Today I Have Begotten You”. This is part of a responsory psalm and not the text of Luke. The text of Luke reflects the idea that God is well pleased in Jesus, the Chosen One. He was beginning to move into the public arena of His life identifying with the history of Israel crossing into the Promised Land through the Jordan River.
Why was Jesus baptized by John.? We already know from Luke’s previous chapters that Jesus was Royal(David’s Descendent). His subsequent chapter of the incident at Nazareth will reveal Jesus is prophet(Today this word is fulfilled). Here a priest’s son, John, installs priestly ministry on Jesus by this baptism. Thus as King, Prophet and Priest Jesus encapsulates the dimensions of Israel’s life that focus on leadership, salvation and wholeness. In One Person everything is summed up. This will be the crux of His Public Ministry. The psalms regularly put into public statement what Israel was to be for the Nations” Priest, Prophet and King. Jesus assumes this mantle of authority which Israel had neglected.
He would build a bridge rather than a wall. All Nations would be included in this Mystery of God’s Love. You are right in saying that Jesus had to work out what all this would mean: “He learned Obedience from what he suffered”. All of us learn to examine the roles we play in the Church and the World. We have Royal Dignity.
We speak God’s Word to Power in the Church and the World. We offer the Perfect Sacrifice that Jesus did, our bodies and blood, to bring about in our own time the inclusion of everybody in Grace.
Jeremiah Bartram
Jan 8th, 2010
Thanks for this rich and informative comment. But a note on the text. Your quarrel is with Novalis, not with me. I’m looking at the mass reading for Sunday, January 10, 2010 as I write this note – and what I said was correct. Mind you, I’m looking at the French text; perhaps that’s the difference. It’s a habit of mine to reflect on the scriptures in French; for my Gospel for Gay reflections – which are wholly personal and utterly without authority of any kind – I seek out and use the NRSV equivalent. Prayerful best wishes – Jeremiah
terry
Jan 9th, 2010
When the baptism question comes, I believe my daughter has the correct answer and the gospel of Phillip displays its real cognizance, which is neither gay nor straight, but applies to all that “follow” the teachings of the Jesus of Nazareth. Emphasis “nazareth” which immediately conflicts with “history prophesied”. The Messiah was supposed to come from Egypt Hosea 11:1. While Luke has him coming Galilee, Matthew states Bethlehem, now Matthew argues Mark and Luke on that point, we see they differ from birth. Mark makes no mention until Jesus meets John the baptizer, but clearly he is not from Egypt, but from Nazareth. It appears when you pull one thread, the garment unfolds.
My daughter said, “Daddy why do I need to be baptized, I already believe in Jesus.” And I understand her question and believe it’s the correct question. Which is not addressed in the book called the “new testament” but revealed in the letters accredited to Phillip. Which the Holy Roman Catholic Church, does not recognize but the catholic church (body of Christ) does, I belong to the later.
Then we move to the Gospel of Phillip from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“If one goes down into the water and comes up without having received anything, and says “I am a Christian,” he has borrowed the name at interest. But if he receives the Holy Spirit, he has the name as a gift. He who has received a gift does not have to give it back, but of him who has borrowed it at interest, payment is demanded. This is the way it happens to one when he experiences a mystery.”
My daughter did not “borrow” in name only she was given a gift of faith, in the unseen and unknown. She and I were alike, I went to “baptism” after I had been called to believe. “born from above”, is the correct term, not “born again”, as in twice born. The transformation was to occur in life, not death. “allow the dead to bury their own dead”. We both “heard a voice” from somewhere. Since we did not have it and then did. Moving from the unseen/unknown to known.
The ritual of baptism is a costly one, if merely adorned from a ritual they borrow in name only.
Its an easy “name” to borrow like clown or Harley rider. Any costume in Halloween is the same principle, a night we can all dress up and play the part.
What matters to me on the issue of acceptance of our gay brothers and sisters is saying “I am sorry” not because you are gay, no, but for having to feel that being gay somehow needs a defense in the gospels.
But it makes sense, since the gospels have been used as the battering ram for years against you, then it would be completely sane to need them in defense.
When the real defense , used here as “you need an attorney” and a damn good one, should be of those that believe that a gay brother or sister is somehow different from the non gay brother or sister. Since its seems to me they the “new judge” are the ones that continue to persecute the gay community with the “inerrant word” of god. Which any scholar knows contains many errors.
Lukians “birth genealogy” the author first mistake. 2: 1-20 where the “timing” was off. Herod and Caesar Augustus and Quirinius were not all alive at this Lukian story.
In Sacra Pagina, the Catholic Sacred Pages Seminary books on page 49 note 1, clearly state “the author’s of Luke made a mistake”.
The better “story” and more accurate story must be the first gospel Mark. Since it appears around 70 CE, some 40 years after the post Easter Jesus.
Since Luke is more “history” memorized, aka lost in translations.
Mark 1:9
“In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; 11 and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”
Here we see “only” he, Jesus “heard” this, “he saw” the heaven open, and only “he” heard the voice come out of the heavens: “you are my beloved son, IN you I am well pleased”.
I would and do ask, who was “the voice” speaking to? was the voice talking to Jesus of Nazareth? Or was this voice speaking to the Spirit that descended like a dove “IN” him the man we know as a disciple of John. The “Spirit” had only “JUST” arrived.
The scholar Borg, calls this “pre-Easter” Jesus.
Since we have two events happening “a voice” that only “he”, Jesus heard and a Spirit” that only “he, Jesus, saw”.
As we point to Phillip Jesus was given a Gift, nothing borrowed.
I cannot speak to his “spiritual condition” prior to that event, since the first Gospel Mark, never mentions anything special about this man Jesus prior to his entrance into the study of John the Baptist, his mentor.
Luke we know is a “letter” story written to a man or group called “Theophilus” , not factual leaving Mark the better Gospel of close to “ears on the ground”.
John the Baptist had spent years in the desert. Mark 1:4
John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. 6 John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey. 7 And he was preaching, and saying, “After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals. 8 “I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Also we see John saying “one” will come after me”, we assume that is Jesus, which is not the what happened. Jesus was baptized by John and the “One” that gave the Spirit to Jesus was the “One” that followed aka the Spirit filled man. The “voice” that spoke to Jesus. And while John baptized Jesus with the “Holy Spirit”, unless Jesus baptized himself and gave himself his own holy spirit which is not recorded in any gospels.
After Jesus follows the instructions of John the Baptist’s example, he returns to follow John the Baptist until John is arrested.
Mark: 1: 14 Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is F9 at hand; repent R16 and believe F10 in the gospel.”
Jesus here clearly is a follower of John the Baptizer , since his ministry does not start until John is taken into custody where he states “the time is fulfilled, etc..
The baptism was John’s ritual, not Jesus’. The point becomes you can borrow the name or you can be gifted.
Neither one has anything to do with sexuality.
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