A homily for the Baptism of the Lord, January 12, 2025
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7, Acts 10:34-38, Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
— Groucho Marx
The world of entertainment lends us a cornucopia of perspectives on the Baptism of the Lord, over and above the guidance from today’s Scripture passages that we always should do what is right so that God will remain happy with us.
Mr. Marx’s seemingly oxymoronic statement about membership was actually his acknowledgment that he’d committed a sin or two in his lifetime, and that he didn’t want to associate with similar transgressors.
Cantankerous, but honest.
Sad to say, Groucho — and anyone who actually shares that sort of sentiment — is ignoring, or at least unaware of, automatic belonging in relationships that God gave all of us.
Back to the entertainment world for a moment…
A big production number in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” explains it:
There is a brotherhood of man,
A benevolent brotherhood of man,
A noble tie that binds
All human hearts and minds
Into one brotherhood of man.
Your lifelong membership is free,
Keep a-giving each brother all you can. …
(If you know the scene, go ahead and sing or dance. Sorry about the sexist lyrics from the 1950s.)
Let’s start with our first big gift from God: ourselves. Our lives, our souls and bodies, our being created in God’s image and likeness. We each were created by the love of God as expressed through the love and intimacy of our parents. Therefore, our very existence is evidence that we come into this world with established relationships.
With God, our ultimate parent. With our parents. With their parents and grandparents and ancestors traceable back to Adam and Eve, if we wish.
With siblings, if any, and extended family members.
And with all of humankind. Because there’s no denying biology.
What we casually refer to as nature and nurture — our inherent intellect and physical skills, coupled with our upbringings and places of residence — shape who we grow up to be. Gender, ethnic heritage and language, preference for warmth over cold, small town vs. big city … all are shaped by nature and nurture.
They also help determine which groups we belong to. Some by birth. Some by choice. Some imposed on us by family or social or political forces.
And each group, regardless of what type of group it is or how we came to become members, has a set of shared beliefs and unique initiation rites.
Those group-held beliefs may include Teamwork. Honor. Charitable Service. Cynicism.
Faith.
Faith in God. Hope in God. Charity in God’s name.
The group we know as the Church has an initiation rite — Baptism — which, unlike the paddling of fraternity pledges or other secular inductions, is ordained and blessed by Almighty God.
Cousin John the Baptizer correctly told his followers that he was washing them with water, and only water, as they showed remorse for their sins. He blazed the trail for Jesus to follow, even as Jesus honored John’s work by submitting to a dunking in the Jordan River.
But that water-only Baptism of Jesus took on a sacramental and spiritual dimension when the Holy Spirit sanctified it for the beloved Son of God and, by glorious extension, for all of us. From that moment on, all who chose — all who choose — to be baptized and thereby initiated into membership in God’s Church are baptized with water and the Holy Spirit as Jesus was.
Baptism can be considered a holy door of sorts that opens for everyone all the time, not only in Church Jubilee Years such as 2025. It is, as the silly “H2$” song states, a lifelong membership offered freely to anyone and everyone who hears and accepts a call from God.
But because of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus that opened the biggest holy door — the door to eternal salvation and life in paradise — each of us must pay dues. We must take the gifts we’ve received and, however appropriately and wherever and whenever possible, pay them forward.
With membership in God’s family through Baptism comes the responsibility that Cain shirked, but which Jesus clarified: to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. To love them as siblings.
When we live our lives according to The Law of Love as preached and modeled by Jesus, God will be well pleased with us.
And we’ll have willingly joined a club worth joining, a benevolent brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind. Emphasis on “kind.”
