During my pilgrimages to Israel I visited some of the banks of the river Jordan. Twice I visited the site on the river Jordan where Jesus was probably baptized by John the Baptist. During each of these visits I tried to imagine the situation of Israel at that time and the feelings of the people of that time. As we heard in the Gospel today, the people at that time were full of expectation. They thought and talked among themselves about whether John himself was the Messiah. But John rejected it and pointed to someone else. It was like a mass movement as many people came to John the Baptist and were baptized. The evangelist speaks of soldiers, tax collectors and even Pharisees and Sadducees who came to John. None of these groups had a good reputation in the society at the time. Some of them were labeled sinners. Since John gave baptism for the forgiveness of sins, it was obvious to everyone that people were ready to confess their sins in humility and repentance and to dare to make a new beginning through baptism and the forgiveness of sins. While many people were standing in the water and others on the banks of the Jordan, Jesus comes into the water. At first, no one notices Jesus except John.
Jesus and John the Baptist were relatives. They had probably met several times earlier in their lives. It is also probable that the only encounter took place during Mary’s visit to Elizabeth in her womb; We have no information about this in the Gospels. Jesus stands in the water with all other sinners and in the company of discriminated people who wanted to change themselves and to attain a new perspective in life. All those who came to John were not known to each other. Therefore the people did not attract attention to the stranger Jesus and they gave Jesus room to stand or dive into the water. Since the Jordan is not a large river like the Ganges, Danube or the Rhine, but more like a small stream in our villages the gathering in and at the river had a familiar atmosphere. This solidarity of Jesus with the weak, sinners, those discriminated, who wanted a positive change in life, with people who were ready to think about their weaknesses, mistakes and problems and to dare to make a new start with God’s help convinces that Jesus was among these people, as one of them. Everyone felt united with Jesus as a human being in the same boat and Jesus felt like one of them.
The first sign people saw at Jesus’ baptism was a dove descending on him. Although the evangelist writes that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove, the people in and around the waters of the Jordan River and the people of Israel at that time had not heard anything about the Holy Spirit and so they did not think in that direction. But people have known doves and also the symbol of a dove. People certainly didn’t know that everything we today call a symbol in the shape of a dove, e.g. what wedding doves mean. Many of you probably know the text of Gen. 8.11, where a dove returns to Noah’s Ark with a fresh olive branch, and since then the dove has been a symbol of peace, simplicity, gentleness, in the Old Testament and in the politics of antiquity Innocence, loyalty and love. To this day, the dove remains a symbol of peace.
As a symbol of loyalty and love, the dove of peace by the artist Pablo Picasso is known to many as a political symbol of peace at the 1949 Paris Peace Congress. When the people in the waters of the Jordan saw an unusual dove descending on Jesus, they certainly thought of the special significance of this man who stand with the sinners in the water. In later years, Christians interpreted this experience of Jesus on the Jordan as someone who had something to do with peace symbolism and arrived at the experience of the Holy Spirit, which the Evangelist expressed in the sentence, “the Holy Spirit came visibly descending on him in the form of a dove”.
The people not only saw a dove with Jesus in the Jordan, but they also heard a voice. A voice, without being able to know the origin, but as a reference to Jesus as a beloved son in whom God was well pleased, people could sense that something extraordinary was happening and that this Jesus was an extraordinary person. This experience was also later interpreted as the voice of God the Father and Jesus as the Son of God, whom God the Father described as the beloved Son and that the Holy Spirit rests on him.
What does the baptism of Jesus mean and the experience of the people at the river Jordan and John the Baptist with Jesus at the baptism? I mean, it is the attitude of solidarity and the attitude of Jesus to stand together with the sinful, weak, with the repented people and to be equal to them. Standing with these people in the water of Jordan and being baptized was the greatness and climax of experiencing Jesus as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit descending on him. Jesus’ humility and solidarity elevated him to the status of the Son of God. These experiences in the Jordan with Jesus prove to us that no one can achieve anything without humility and solidarity.
We can learn humility and solidarity from Jesus. These two important virtues are important for all success.
Fr. Joseph Pandiappallil MCBS