Manifestations

A Homily for the Baptism of the Lord 2025

There are, what I would call, three classic manifestations of the Divine that we celebrate each Christmas season. The first manifestation is radical inclusivity which is at the heart of the Incarnation. The second is belovedness, which we celebrate today on the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism. Finally, the third, is one that is too often ignored at Epiphany, and it’s what I call saving the best for last, which we find in the story of the Wedding Feast at Cana.

First, Radical Inclusivity: When the Word became Flesh, that didn’t just mean God became human in Jesus Christ, a singular historical person, it meant also that the whole structure of reality, the whole structure of what it means to be human, has been forever transformed. The Incarnation reverberates down the ages in every human being up to and including every one of us! And because of this, we, like God, are radically inclusive beings. And this is not primarily in what we do but, first and foremost, it’s who we are. In as far as we are in Christ we have been restructured to be as radically inclusive as Christ. And when I say radical here I mean root not some dramatic or exotic behavior. At the root of who we are; we are inclusive.

Second, Belovedness: We hear this in the gospel today, those words spoken directly to Jesus as he rises out of the waters of the Jordan: You are my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Now, because the coming of Jesus unleashes radical inclusivity, those words of God necessarily include each one of us. God says to each of us every day: You are my beloved! With you I am well pleased! Because of the radical inclusivity of the Word made Flesh we too must come to know our fundamental reality as Beloved sons and daughters with whom God is well pleased. And let’s not forget that last line “with whom I am well pleased!” God never said: With whom I am well pleased once you get it together, once you figure it out, once you clean up your act! God is well pleased with you; he is well pleased with me.

Now, before we explore that final Manifestation, let’s have a moment of honesty. I imagine we all, unfortunately, struggle with both radical inclusivity and belovedness. I can testify to the struggle in my own life. I desire to be inclusive, to live out the restructured reality of my own existence radically, but then this person does something that I cannot understand. That person says something that I cannot agree with, this nation, this political leader, this group of people behave in ways that tempt me to lump them all together and not just exclude them but feel royally justified in my exclusion. And in turn I reject my own belovedness just as I reject theirs. It’s not easy to live from the root of our inclusive selves. But, thankfully, we have the final Manifestation: Saving the Best for Last!

At the Wedding Feast in Cana, after Jesus has turned the water into wine… and not just a little water into a little wine, but six giant stone jars of water into wine, containing 20 to 30 gallons each! The headwaiter calls aside the bridegroom and says: “Everyone serves good wine first, and then when the people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.” Whatever “saving the best for last” might mean for each of us, in our own lives, Jesus is always serving the best wine now and not by drips and drabs, but by gallons! So we can always hope every day, by the wine of his grace, by his loving action expanding our hearts, that if we stay on the path, if we never give up, if we never get too comfortable in our too-easily-justified exclusionary behavior, he will continue to bring to ever deeper reality our own restructured, radically inclusive selves and draw forth our fundamental belovedness.

If we are to become fully human and fully divine in Christ then we must never get comfortable in either how we exclude others or why we exclude others. In as far as we are in Christ we are radically inclusive. In as far as we are in Christ we are beloved. In as far as we are in Christ we can trust he’s always saving the best for last. As long as we stay on the transformative journey begun when the Word became Flesh we can live into our own particular manifestation of being radically inclusive, unconditionally beloved, and therefore always growing into the women and men we have been created to be.

So, let us say “yes” once more in our Eucharist today to the radical transformation being worked out in each of us as we embody the Word becoming Flesh each and ever day.