Christ's Baptism Renews the Whole Creation: Homily for the Synaxis of the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John in the Orthodox Church

 

Acts 19:1-8; John 1:29-34

In this season we celebrate the great feast of Theophany, of Christ’s baptism by St. John the Forerunner when the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. Epiphany reveals that the Savior Who appears from the waters of the Jordan to illumine our world of darkness is truly the God-Man, a Person of the Holy Trinity.  He is baptized to restore us, and the creation itself, to the ancient glory for which we were created.

By entering into the water, the Lord made it holy, which means that He restored and fulfilled its very nature.  We need water in order to live.  The earth needs water in order to become fertile, bearing fruit and giving life to animals of all kinds.  We wash with water and use it to maintain cleanliness and health.  Without water, we become weak and die, as do other creatures.  And in the world as we know it, water can kill us through floods and storms. Since the creation has been subjected to futility through the sin of human beings, the very water through which God gives us life may become the means of our death. But when water is blessed, God restores it to its natural state, to its place in fulfilling God’s purposes for the flourishing of the creation in holiness.  And since our homes are where we and our families live each day, how could we not want His blessing on our marriages, our children, and the physical space where we offer our lives to the Lord?  When we bless our homes, we join what is most important to us to Christ’s healing and restoration of the entire universe. We find strength to make our daily lives a liturgy, an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven, which is the natural state of those who bear the image and likeness of God.

Tragically, our first parents turned away from their high calling and ushered in the unnatural realm of corruption that we know all too well, both in the brokenness of our hearts and in our relationships with one another.  God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin when they left paradise after disregarding Him.  Through their disobedience, they had become aware that they were naked and were cast into the world as we know it.  Their nakedness showed that they had repudiated their vocation to become like God in holiness.  Having stripped themselves of their original glory, they were reduced to mortal flesh and destined for slavery to their passions and to the grave.   Because of them, the creation itself was “subjected to futility…” (Rom. 8:20)

As we prepared for Theophany, we heard this hymn: “Make ready, O Zebulon, and prepare, O Nephtali, and you, River Jordan, cease your flow and receive with joy the Master coming to be baptized. And you, Adam, rejoice with the first mother, and hide not yourselves as you did of old in paradise; for having seen you naked, He appeared to clothe you with the first robe. Yea, Christ has appeared desiring to renew the whole creation.”   If it seems strange to think of Christ being baptized in order to clothe Adam and Eve, remember St. Paul’s teaching that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  (Gal. 3:27)   In baptism, Jesus Christ clothes us with a garment of light, restoring us to our original vocation to become like Him in holiness.  He delivers us from the nakedness and vulnerability of slavery to our own passions and to the fear of the grave.  Through His and our baptism, He makes us participants in His restoration and fulfillment of the human person. He is baptized in order to save Adam and Eve, all their descendants, and the entire creation, fulfilling the glorious purposes for which He brought us all into existence.    

Life after baptism is not, however, without pain, disease, death, and other sorrows.  In contrast with the divine glory of the appearance of our Lord, the darkness of sin within us and our world of corruption becomes all the more apparent.  In the aftermath of Christ’s birth, Herod the Great had all the young boys in the region of Bethlehem murdered. St. John the Forerunner, who prepared the way for “the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world,” was arrested by Herod Antipas for prophetically denouncing the king’s immorality.  After the one who baptized Him was arrested, the Lord went to “Galilee of the Gentiles” to begin His public ministry in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that “’the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’” (Matt. 4:15-16) 

We are baptized into Christ’s death in order to rise up with Him into a life of holiness in which we regain the robe of light rejected by our first parents. In every aspect of our darkened lives, He calls us to become radiant with the divine glory He shares with us as the New Adam.  In order to do so, we must find healing for the passions that have taken root in our hearts and have distorted our relationships even with those we love most.  In how we treat everyone from those closest to us to complete strangers, we must find healing from the corruptions of pride, hatred, anger, resentment, and the desire to dominate others.  It does not matter whether we are at home, work, school, or other settings, or whether we think we are in private or in public. If we have put on Christ in baptism, we must become living icons of Christ’s salvation and mercy to all we encounter.

We must also be on guard for all the ways in which we remain inhabitants of “the region and shadow of death.”  Because the Savior has hallowed the water and the entire creation through His baptism, absolutely nothing is intrinsically evil or profane.  No dimension of God’s good creation requires us to return to the nakedness of passion in any way.  We are without excuse for doing so, for Theophany reveals that we are always on holy ground and must speak, act, and think as those who wear a garment of light.  Though we fall short of meeting the goal each day, we must always strive to manifest our Lord’s healing of the human person in every thought, word, and deed.  We must become like holy water restored to its natural place and blessing the world as a sign of its salvation.

            If we are to discern how to fulfill our vocation to bear witness to our Lord in the midst of a world still enslaved to the fear of death, we must embrace the full meaning of our baptism.  That requires constant vigilance against allowing self-centered desire to creep unnoticed into our hearts and distort our vision of ourselves, our neighbors, and our world.  That requires turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and treating others as we would have them treat us, especially when we think we are justified in responding in kind to those who have wronged us.  That requires turning away from whatever fuels our passions so that the desires of our hearts are purified and directed toward their true fulfillment in God.  As we celebrate Theophany in “the region and shadow of death,” let us focus mindfully on living each day as those who have died to sin and risen up into a life holiness.  That is how we may become brilliant living epiphanies of the salvation of the world as we wear the robe of light that Christ has restored to Adam and Eve, for He is baptized to do nothing less than “to renew the whole creation.”