God anointed Jesus through baptism

January 11, 2004 -- Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

By Fr. Richard Ver Bust

	Fr. Richard Ver Bust

As we bring our Christmas cycle to an end, we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. It is the final manifestation or epiphany of Jesus and the beginning of his public ministry.

Our readings center on the meaning of baptism in the life of Jesus and its application to the life of the Body of Christ, the Christian community.

The second reading is from the Acts of the Apostles. In this book, Luke presents the acts of the early Christian community. He is not interested in being a historian but in being a theologian.

He interprets the events so that as he wrote in the introduction to the Gospel, the hearers of the word might better understand the instruction in the good news they had received.

The Acts inform the hearer on how the apostles, whom Jesus had selected and sent forth, proclaimed the Gospel message.

Our specific passage today is part of a speech that Luke presents as Peter's proclamation to Cornelius, the first Gentile convert. In many ways this message is a short summary of the whole Gospel.

Luke has presented other speeches of Peter but they have been directed to a Jewish audience whom we can presume knew something about Jesus and his ministry. Jesus is proclaimed as the Lord and Messiah who performed mighty deeds that were God's testimony and approval of Jesus' message.

Peter is speaking to a person whom we must presume did not know Jesus and what he did. Therefore, Luke subtly switches and includes the story of the baptism of Jesus and interprets it as the beginning of that ministry. He ties it to the preaching and ministry of John the Baptizer.

John apparently was well known outside Jewish circles and Cornelius, a God-fearing Gentile, might have heard of John's preaching. We know there were many disciples of John in that part of the world.

Being a "God-fearer" implied an openness to the message of Judaism. John's preaching certainly would have been part of the Jewish thought of an upright life.

Luke tells us that Jesus began to preach after the baptism by John. The baptism was "the way God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and power." Then Jesus "went about doing good and healing all." That is the way God worked mighty deeds through Jesus, Luke says.

Therefore, the baptism of Jesus was a crucial event. The selection of an apostle to replace Judas was based upon a witnessing from the baptism to the resurrection of Jesus. The apostles in turn were to witness and proclaim these events to others.

These events were the content of the Christian message and the challenge to an audience to accept. By accepting Christ, they participated in the salvation the message proclaimed.

(The late Fr. Richard Ver Bust directed the master's program in theology at St. Norbert College, De Pere.)