You are my Son, the beloved, my favor rests on you
Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7
Acts 10:34-38
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22
The baptism of the Lord revealed the intimacy between Jesus and the heavenly Father. Twice in today’s readings, we hear how the Father delights in the Son. In the first reading we read: “Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am please, upon whom I have put my spirit;” In the gospel, we hear that as Jesus was praying after his baptism, “heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
That proclamation was not for the sake of the Son, whose intimacy with the Father is from eternity, but for us. That is why the feast of the Baptism of the Lord is grouped together with the that of Epiphany and the wedding at Cana, as the manifestation of the Christ to the world.
His mission is to make into adopted children of God, and to make us also pleasing to the Father. That is why in the Collect we pray: “…grant that your children by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, may always be well pleasing to you…” Two things stand out regarding our transformation into children of God in whom God is well-pleased. On the one hand, it is not our work, but that of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. It is Christ, endowed by God’s Spirit, who opens the eyes of the blind, brings prisoners into confinement, and from the dungeon those who are in darkness. Paul tells us in the alternative reading from Titus, that it was “ not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy…”
On the other hand, we must cooperate because the Holy spirit does not compel us. What the Spirit does is”…training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, as we await the blessed hope…” Having been trained, we have to respond by doing what we have been trained for.
