Friday after Epiphany
I think one of the hardest things about being a Christian is living like we believe. It's so, so easy to get caught up in worrying about the future (or the past) and to forget the great love God has for us. That's especially because we don't (usually) feel or see that love all the time.
The authors of this week's scripture readings have been doing all in their power to get us to see the truth of the gospel. Like us today, they knew that it was not an easy thing to believe that God had become man. Even if a person accepted that idea, it was scarcely believeable to learn that this God-man had died a humiliating death on the cross. Or further still, that when believers suggested this God-man had risen from the dead, this was no mere ghost, but the actual man himself.
Sometimes we forget, I think, that ours is not the first age when people have had doubts about the life of faith. But the authors of today's readings both know that people have doubts, and they also hope that by reflecting (hard) on those doubts, we will come to believe even more in Christ. So the readings today (and this week) are focused on witnesses - real people, real events, real testimony, that helps us see that Jesus' life, death and resurrection is no mere mirage, nor is it some kind of massive hoax or 500-person hallucination.
These are precisely some of the questions the author of the First Letter to John deals with (1 John 5:5-13). He is responding to those who doubt that Jesus is the savior of the world. In his response, he mentions water, blood and the Spirit, which have several meanings all related to appeasing peoples' doubts.
For instance, many Christians reading this passage interpret water and Spirit in relation to Jesus' baptism, and Blood as referring to Jesus' death on the cross. The relationship between these three things and our own baptism is direct and important. We, too, are baptized in water and the Spirit, and when we are baptized, we are baptized in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We die to our old lives and rise again to new life in Christ. This reading is enhanced by today's gospel reading (Mark 1:7-11), which depicts John the Baptist speaking about baptism and about one coming after him who is far mightier than he is.
Readers of this letter might then turn to reflect on the many, many, many people who have been baptized through the ages, and who have risked even their lives to be baptized. They did not risk persecution or death (or in our day, perhaps ridicule and looking foolish) for something that wasn't real. So the fact that so many people have seen Jesus' life, death and resurrection as real events might lead others to believe.
Yet it is not only other peoples' witness that the author identifies. He says that God himself gives witness to the truth of Jesus by water, blood and the Spirit. God the Father speaks from the heavens at Jesus' baptism; the Spirit is also there. Jesus, as God, dies on a cross. So the author admonishes people: you do not want to call God a liar, do you? As we look forward to the Church's celebration of Jesus's baptism this Sunday, this is an important reading.
In this year of being the Body of Christ, these scriptures also give us yet another opportunity to reflect on the amazing Incarnation of God, and what it means to be the Body of Christ. Water, blood, and Spirit are all present in the Eucharist. Water is added to the chalice and is also present at the washing of hands; water is often understood here to symbolize human nature mingling with the divine nature of God.
God loves us so much that he invites to share in his life, to be humans living with God in the Body of Christ. We are all invited to be part of this Body, the martyrs who give their lives in witness to Jesus through the centuries, and those who share His great love in other ways. The question we are invited to answer is whether we, too, want to testify that Jesus is the Son of God? How will we live our lives so that others know we, too, are part of this Body of Christ and that He is real and true?
- Jana M. Bennett