Father Tim Lemlin
I was baptized eight days after I was born. The power of this moment of grace seemingly had little effect upon me. I can't recall the heavens opening and hearing a voice. (Any voice that I might have heard probably would have been my Dad's - even at a whisper he could be heard a block away.) I was later told the importance of baptism. I was told that I was made a child of God and a member of the church.
God, I was told, somehow had the power to reward me for knowing, loving and serving God by bringing me to a place in which fun and happiness was most important. I can recall in grade two the teacher describing heaven as the most fun thing I enjoyed doing times one million. This sounded okay, even though I couldn't image a million, but it didn't seem to take away my fear.
Baptism has unfortunately for us become too identified with a necessary practice and not enough with a life transforming experience. It has become identified, like so many other things in our religion, with an insurance policy. The experiential significance of being baptized has been removed and replaced with an assurance that this is my ticket into heaven.
Baptism is meant to ground us in something that is bigger than us. It is meant to draw us into participating in a life that is beyond us. We have tried to capture this bigger than life reality in the word love. The First Letter of John speaks of this love as the only ingredient that can eliminate fear.
I was listening to the first reading one day during this past week when this particular passage was read. I seemed to get a different perspective. I always looked at this passage as my growing into the ability to have such love that casts out fear. That particular morning I heard the words say to me that this is how God already loves me. It also caused me to be aware that I am not as afraid as I once had been. The security is not in myself and in my abilities. It is in the awareness that God fell in love with me the first moment God saw me.
This is, I believe, the experience that Jesus has when he is baptized. This is, I believe, the experience that awaits each one of us. When we begin to be aware that our lives are being transformed, we also humbly acknowledge that it is because God has fallen in love with us. We might not see the heavens opened, or hear a voice calling us daughter or son, but we will know because the fear that is a part of each person's life will begin to disappear.
