Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, January 12, 2003	Listen to Audio

Note: this homily was not written out before I gave it, but was transcribed from a recording of it.

This morning, I don’t know why, maybe it was something I ate last night, I woke up earlier than usual, and couldn’t go back to sleep. Usually on Sunday mornings, I wake up in time to be able to spend at least the better part of an hour in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in our rectory chapel. This morning, rather than lie there and toss and turn, I got up and actually took some exercise, and managed to spend a bit more than an hour before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. I prayed, as usual, Morning Prayer and read something of the lives of the saints, and spent a little time just being there with the Lord.

And, as I usually do particularly on Sunday morning, knowing that all of you gather as the Lord’s people, the Lord’s family, I pray for you in a very special way. I pray that the Lord may keep you safe and healthy, that the Lord may keep you at peace within your selves, among your families, and certainly within our community and our parish community. I pray that the Lord will make you truly the people that he wants you to be.

And something moved me this morning to pray in these words: “Lord, show them how much you love them.” And as I was reflecting on those words, and in spirit lifting you up to the Lord with those word, the words came back to me, “Thomas, you show them how much I love them.” So here I am to tell you how much Jesus loves you.

Yes, I had a homily prepared for today, and yes, that wasn’t it. Although it does fit with what I was in general planning to say, because, in the book of Isaiah, speaking to the people of Israel of Isaiah’s time, and this reading that we had is from the middle part of Isaiah. In other words, it came from the prophet speaking to the people when they were living in exile. They had been defeated as a nation by the Babylonians, and they had been led out of their homeland, Jerusalem, into exile in Babylon, which as you know is present-day Iraq. There is one enduring characteristic of that part of the world, which is shared by no other part of the world. And that is, the land is made fertile by two great rivers, running parallel into the Persian Gulf, the Tigris and the Euphrates. And so, with the possible exception of the Nile Valley in Egypt, Babylon, Assyria at that time, was the most fertile, lush, prosperous region you could imagine, filled with earthly delights.

And even in captivity, the Jewish people were respected by their captors, as long they behaved themselves. They didn’t punish them; they didn’t torture them unless of course they got out of line. But they could have a pretty good living, even in captivity. And yet, even in that lush and beautiful land, the Israelites knew that was not their home. And they also knew that if the Lord was going to show his love for them, and liberate them to become again a free people, they would have to take a trip through the desert, through the wasteland, and go back to a city that had been deserted, destroyed and devastated. And yet, that’s what they longed for. The prophet Isaiah kept that promise of the Lord alive among them.

Now, many of them did say, “That’s a bunch of hogwash, don’t you realize who good we’ve got it here? Why would we want to go back to that place? We’ve got all the wonderful things to eat here – lamb, grain, wine, herbs, vegetables, even garlic and onions – why would we want to go back there?”

Why? Because this exile is not home. It’s not home.

And so, when the Lord finally did liberate them, he had to make sure that they knew he was present with them. And he did so by the promise of water. That’s why this first reading painted the picture of what the land they were going to go back to could be, through their work, but also through their faithfulness, in letting God love them, and letting God guide them. But it took faith; it wasn’t obvious. To live without faith would basically mean saying, “Hey, we’ve got it good here. Why do we want to go back there?”. Which many did; many did forsake the way of the Lord in Babylon.

Now, all this was an image pointing to what we heard in the Gospel. God had to give the people of old his promise; in Jesus, we have his presence. He is with us. In his baptism, he showed how fully with us he was. This was a symbolic way of immersing himself fully in our human condition, including taking upon himself the consequences of sin, including taking upon himself all of the suffering, all of the trials, all of the challenges that we face because of our human condition. He freely took that upon himself. See, this is how much he loves you, how much he love me, how much he loves us.

And therefore, in our baptism, we unite fully with him in his humanity, so that he can share with us his divinity. We can’t be saved if he was just making believe, if he was just pretending. We can only be saved by him becoming fully one with us. It’s only then that we can become fully one with him. Heaven is not just getting up into the bleachers of an eternal ballgame. (Of course, the way I “love” sports, any ballgame is eternal maybe even infernal!) It’s not getting into a good show, it’s not like admission to a theater, where we’re spectators. Heaven is participating in the very family life of God. And so, for that to be our salvation, our eternal destiny, for God being able to say to us, I love you so much I want you with me, with us the Trinity, in a loving relationship for eternity. In order for that to happen, God had to become one with us first. That is the heart of our faith.

And so, as we gather here every Sunday, to be nourished by the Word, to be sustained by the Eucharist, we become more and more what God wants us to be – aware of his love, so that we can go forth from here, outside, to the people we associate with today, during the week, the ones that are easy and the ones that are difficult, the ones that are pleasant, and the ones that are unpleasant. So that we can hear the Lord telling us, you and me, go and let them know how much I love them.

© Thomas Welbers, 2003