On Wednesday, His Grace’s theme is baptism. He says:
‘I’d like to say that, in order to grasp something of the full initial impact of Christian baptism, it’s quite important for us to set aside the passages we have in the Gospels of Jesus’s life before he came to John to be baptized, and so this includes what are referred to as the infancy narratives, in the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke. I think to get the full impact, of just how it might have been, we need to set these later Gospels aside and go all the way back to Mark. I think this is something of the closest echo we’ll get to those first Christian communities who experienced baptism, and how it might have been, as the first Christians discovered Jesus.
‘This is how it happens, this is how it begins: in adulthood. The Gospel tells us:
‘“In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and he was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.”
‘Mark’s, without a shadow of a doubt, is the earliest Gospel that has been given to us. The story is only just getting going. There’s no Angel Gabriel. There are no infancy narratives. Mary is unnamed in Mark 3 when she comes, as she sees it, to have a go at rescuing Jesus. The beginning is John the Baptist. It begins in baptism.’
The impression clearly formed is that the Archbishop’s ideas are not mere bookish speculation but, as it were, bucket-and-spade, in the sense of his having visited the place where he thinks it was that Jesus was baptized. He tells us about the place, in the Holy Land, over the Jordan, where there is a confluence, troubled waters, and danger in entering into them. The picture he evokes of broiling surge, plunging deep, a GPS map-point, a trial in ways apart from our sacrament. Where waters churn and threaten to swallow you. And he is convinced it happened there. He is convinced. He relates it to our own baptism:
‘We all know the scene, don’t we? It’s a part of our lives – of who we are as Christians. With the sprinkling of water, and the oil, and the candle. The take-it-for-granted things of Christian life. And that little gathering of people clustered about the font, at the entrance into the church, our first steps, when we have to be carried by others, who all our lives will nurture us, toward the liturgical east of the sanctuary, all of them trying to remember their lines right, who perhaps don’t get to church that often. It’s a very beautiful part of our lives as Christians, where we welcome a new child into our community of faith in Jesus.’
Christ the King of Peace – and yet in these verses Jesus tells us, confusingly, that he has come to bring not peace on earth but conflict. These are challenging verses. They demand we ask, what can this mean? The symbolism of fire encompasses a range of meanings. Fire is used in the Bible to signify God’s love for humanity. It is also a response of man to God: ‘My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue.’ (Psalm 39: 3) It is also the fire of Pentecost, when the tongues of fire descended to the apostles and they received their commission to preach the Gospel and establish the Church of Jesus Christ. Christ’s death on the cross must precede this commissioning [ … ]
Jesus’ teachings often challenged the worldly values and materialistic mindset prevalent in society. Jesus emphasized the importance of prioritizing eternal treasures over earthly possessions. One notable interaction occurred when a rich young ruler approached Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life (Mark 10:17-22, KJV) [ … ]
The poem contemplates the poet’s relationship to Christ’s sacrifice, focusing on themes of inadequacy, grace, and surrender. It opens with the poet’s realization that human efforts cannot ‘deal with’ or match Christ’s ‘mighty passion’, which represents Christ’s intense suffering and ultimate sacrifice. The poet acknowledges that even if he were to die for Christ, he would still ‘lag behind’, as his own sins are deserving of condemnation. This indicates a sense of spiritual and moral inferiority, highlighting a gap between human and divine capacity for sacrifice and atonement [ … ]
