Homily @ Christmastide: Into Belovedness

 

Year C / End of the Christmas Season / Baptism of the Lord 

Readings: Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7 / Ps 103. 1-4, 24-25,27-28, 29-30 (R/v 1) / Acts 10:34-38 / Luke 3:15-16, 21-22

Many of us begin the new year with good wishes to one another and prayers to God for a better future. We also do by writing new year resolutions to change our old ways, become kinder, live happier and hopefully come closer to God.

When I was younger a childhood friend and I made resolutions for the new year together. We wrote them down and signed off at the bottom of the list. Then, we did that gesture of commitment, a pinky promise, and we tucked that piece of paper away for future reference. 

At the end of that year, we looked back and we fell short of many of those resolutions. But we still got through the year together. Now, I know what more that the pinky promise was all about. This: that we’d try to be there for each other, for good or ill, no matter what happened. It’s the sort of promise that is stronger than any failure because it is rooted in friendship.

Isn’t friendship what Jesus also desires with us? “I call you friends,” he declares to the apostles and to us. I wonder if we did make resolutions with Jesus as friends would we share a pinky promise. If we did, would we feel overwhelmed that we’ve a checklist to complete? And if we didn’t, would we judge ourselves not good enough and unworthy to be his friend?

Yet everything Christianity proclaims in scripture and prayer, worship and practice, is simply this Gospel message: that with Jesus, God’s love comes first, always. 

We need to hear this message because we are always busy, easily distracted, and often forgetful that we don’t value enough how unshakeable God’s love for all of us is. We hear this truth when St Paul tells Titus in the second reading that in Jesus, “God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race.” And as Isaiah prophesied in the first reading: “‘Here is your God”: he is the shepherd who gathers, feeds and leads his flock.

The world’s way is different. Its contracts and conditional promises, careful measurements and demarcations insist that membership has its privileges, you are either in or out. Some Christians, even amongst us, also hold this view; they police who are worthy Christians, who should receive communion, who God will save. 

So, hear this again: God’s promise is that he loves everyone and everything and this is more enduring than any sin. Truly, you and I can do nothing to alter or diminish this. For Jesus, there is no other way to love but God’s way – foolishly, indiscriminately, without calculation or agenda, expectation or condition. And, to let ourselves be loved in that same way. 

I'd like to suggest this is a message the Baptism of Jesus has for us. 

Jesus comes to the River Jordan a simple, humble man, ordinary like everyone else with their failed resolutions and unfulfilled hopes. He is eager to love, to serve, to be among us. I wonder what John the Baptist thought and felt that the powerful, mighty Messiah he proclaimed all his life now submits himself to baptism that cleanses from sin and failure. 

But Jesus is no ordinary human; he is God with us. By stepping into the water, he submerges into our human frailties, saying, “I love you as you are, not as I am.” Even more, Jesus’ action assures us that God is together with us, in the best and worst of days, in holy times or sinful moments.

Jesus himself hears this when he emerges from the waters: “You are my son, the Beloved, my favour rests on you.” His belovedness is at the very core of who he is – the father’s own. It doesn’t depend on his failure or success. His belovedness moves him forward into everything that will follow, toward every person he will meet and onward in every response he will make — be it the temptations or miracles, the outcasts or his disciples, even his enemies, and every daily moment. I believe that Jesus’ recognition that he is the Father’s beloved sustains him when things get hard, when things fall apart, when he suffers and dies. 

Belovedness is the Good News Jesus proclaimed in word and deed. In flesh, Jesus shows us what this looks like, More so, he enables us to really know that we are God’s beloved. Into belovedness we are baptised. Truly, belovedness is our birthright; claim it we must. 

As Jesus does this for us, his friends, so must we share belovedness with one another; this is our life purpose. Henri Nouwen explains: “The greatest gift my friendship can give to you is the gift of your Belovedness. I can give that gift only insofar as I have claimed it for myself. Isn’t that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of our Belovedness?”*

The unimaginable scandal of God’s love is that we are his beloved and because we are, our belovedness is very good. Try as we might, nothing will change this. And once we realize this essential truth, we must begin to live in a new way. With confidence that no one needs to prove themselves worthy. With tender understanding that there’s real goodness about ourselves and everyone else. With the mercy that we can be kind and be friends with God and one another.

I don’t think we accept this easily. If we do, it’s because we believe in God. In his goodness that no matter how we reach the finishing line this year or at the end of our lives, sprinting or crawling across, or even if we’re still in the messiness of our lives, He will still be there, saying, “you are my child, the beloved, and we’ve always been in this together.”

Today we celebrate this truth – yes, God has stepped down into the river of life with us. He has been with us when we succeeded and failed. He will be with us in everything we try and are afraid to try, even our efforts at keeping this year’s resolutions. Yes, he will walk beside us. And we can only walk with him if we recognise our faith gives us hope to persevere because we are his beloved. 

Indeed, we are. Perhaps, then, the only pinky promise that truly matters is this - his and ours.  

* Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved

Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash