Today’s readings: Isaiah 42, 1-4.6-7; Acts 10, 34-38; Matthew 3, 13-17.

Far from being the usually romanticised celebration of a newborn baby, the baptism of the Lord in the River Jordan is the initiation of a commission to bring true justice on earth. His baptism does not mark his entry in the parish registers or simply his belonging to a congregation. Its significance is outlined by the prophet Isaiah.

As in the early centuries of Christianity, baptism is mission, commitment “to serve the cause of right”. The Christ is anointed “to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and those who live in darkness”. He does not break the crushed reed, nor quench the wavering flame.

There is so much that transpires from Isaiah and that we need to recover in this day and age when there is a prevailing feeling that in our Christian communities, bureaucracy and legalism have taken over and the Christian message risks creating new forms of slavery and darkness. Along the way, we’ve lost touch with the real thing, and grapple with forms of Christian life that are ephemeral and secondary.

Jesus was commissioned to bring true justice on earth, not the worldly justice or other forms of justice that we very often believe we can bring about through our legalisms, even in our churches. All this leaves much to be desired.

Soon after Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem and his being acknowledged by wise men coming from a faraway country and culture, we plunge ourselves today in the first event of his public ministry.

It is no solemn installation or pompous inauguration. His baptism by John in the Jordan draws us more deeply into the mystery of his incarnation. His status of being human, like us, is nowhere more manifest than in his joining the queue to be baptised by John.

“For now”, Jesus must submit to this baptism, which was provisional. “For now” means ‘for the time being’, which implies waiting for the right moment to come. This is one of the meanings of baptism in Christian life: the gift of waiting, of patiently expecting the right time for the Spirit to act or speak out, of not succumbing in the meantime to the temptation of immediateness, of wanting to achieve all and now.

To learn to wait is part of our entering deeply the mystery of life. As Stanley Hauerwas writes in his book A Cross-Shattered Church, Jesus’s “let it be so for now” anticipates his prayer in the garden of Gethsemani: “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done”. The one without sin identifies himself fully with our humanity.

Jesus’s life and ministry is all about being fully human. We may really experience daily the consequences of a distorted humanity that continues to be perpetuated in all forms of suffering and distortion that we see around us. But Jesus, God become man, offers the sacred space where that darkness is enlightened, where hope surpasses despair.

Becoming human, Jean Vanier writes, “can be a long and sometimes painful process. It involves a growth to freedom, an opening up of our hearts to others, no longer hiding behind masks or behind the walls of fear and prejudice. It means discovering our common humanity”.

That is what Christian life is about. It is a path of healing towards freedom. Freedom from all that enslaves, even within religion and our Church belonging, towards the true belonging to God’s kingdom as hailed particularly by Isaiah. God’s way of love is manifested fully in Christ, who, rather than forcing his justice on sinners, instead bears their sins.

Participating in the son’s obedience may look threatening, because in the end it led to the crucifixion. Yet, obedience to the Father means letting oneself be loved by the Father. The Father’s love heals and saves, it makes our humanity complete rather than distorted.

Baptism enables us to participate in the humanity of Christ and our being anointed in Christ makes us capable of waiting and growing and desiring to become who we really are.