Homily. Baptism of the Lord and "The King's Speech"

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Is 42: 1-4, 6-7; Acts 10: 34-38; Matt 3:13-17

Today Jesus decides to get baptized. He is prompted to do this, “to fulfill all righteousness.” John knows that Jesus is greater so he resists. His protest is what spiritual directors call ‘resistance” to God’s activity. But Jesus persists. John eventually “allows it.” Jesus goes down into the water. Last week, an infant is manifested to the nations. This week there is another revelation: an adult comes to a sense of himself in Spirit and power. The Spirit appears, Matthew says, “like a dove” and in a voice: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus feels the overwhelming love of his Father.

The Spirit’s in-breaking leads Jesus into the desert to ponder what the Father expects him to do. After that he begins his public life, revealing the inner life of the Father and their Spirit in his ministry of teaching, healing, setting free. In doing this he fulfills “all righteousness.” This is the prophecy of Isaiah we hear this morning: calling out “prisoners from the dungeon.” The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins describes Jesus’ recognition of his mission in this way: “What I do is me. For this I come.”

You and I receive this in-breaking of the Spirit -- the inner life of the Son, the Father and their Spirit -– in baptism. It is this we celebrate today. The life of the Spirit breaks out in us at different times in our lives as we, like Jesus, fulfill God’s plan and “fulfill all righteousness” in our own lives. We see Peter in the reading from Acts today speaking boldly in the Spirit, Peter who had formerly been so imprisoned by fear that he betrayed Jesus.

This in-breaking and breaking-out of the Spirit is depicted in the current film The King’s Speech. The King’s teacher is right out of Isaiah, bringing out “prisoners from confinement.” The King, like John the Baptist, is resistant and bound by fear.  One can see the electrifying moment when the Spirit breaks out in King George VI. He finds his voice. Theologian Rosemary Haughton in The Transformation of Man calls it “the release of Power.” It's an experience of God’s love: “With you I am well pleased.” Albert Windsor comes to himself in Spirit and power. It is the recognition: “What I do is me. For this I come” – by Divine Right.

Today is a day for us to think of the mentors in our own lives who have brought us to ourselves, out of the dungeon to a sense of the identity God created us to express. It is a day to thank God for these mentors, living or dead. It is a day to ponder our own roles as mentors, to recall those we have called from confinement and set free to be who God intends for them.

Today, we bring Christmas to a close. Like Jesus, we go out to our public lives, knowing ‘What we do is not us -- but Christ. This is why we come’ as Christians. This parish, the parish of the Holy Spirit at the University of Kentucky, is an intentional formation community. Like the teacher-therapist in the film, we create the natural conditions for God’s Holy Spirit to ‘break out’ in our university students. The Spirit continues to break out in us as well if we don’t resist and “allow it.” All of our religious education programs for our children do the same. All of you at home do this, too, as the ‘first and primary religious educators’ of your children.

Christ is born again today, as an adult, in this feast. Christ is born in us if we ‘allow it.” The teacher-therapist participated in the transformation of a man imprisoned by physical and emotional abuse as well as by a speech defect. We participate with Christ in the transformation of those given to us. Together we all work with Christ in the transformation of the world. This is an epiphany, to be sure, a new revelation to the world.