This Sunday, the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, began the new Church year by proclaiming the person of Jesus Christ.
The Baptism of the Lord is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, an appropriate place to begin the Church year. This Year of Matthew, we also get the opening of Isaiah’s proclamation of the Messiah.
Isaiah is a long, difficult book. The first 41 chapters proclaim woe to various nations of the earth. But then in chapter 42, it takes a new direction. Modern scholars call this Second Isaiah, as if it’s another author; even an old-fashioned reader like Thomas Aquinas recognizes that the book takes a dramatic turn. It begins to proclaim the Suffering Servant, who will come to save his people from these woes. What we read this Sunday is the very beginning of that prophecy.
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“Thus says the Lord: Here is my servant,” it begins. But if this is the beginning, we should pay attention to how it describes him. “Upon whom I have put my spirit,” it says, and then “He shall bring forth justice to the nations. . . . He establishes justice on the earth . . . . I, the Lord, have called you for the victory of justice.” Justice. The Messiah brings Justice.
But justice doesn’t mean what we think that it means. The first indication is that Isaiah immediately adds, “Not crying out, not shouting.” We think of protest, from Left or Right. But Jesus’s way is calm.
“A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench”: gentleness. We think of justice in terms of crushing enemies, whether Left or Right. But he is meek and gentle.
He will “bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.” In Isaiah, those “dungeons” (an odd translation: anyway, prison buildings) are real: Israel is in captivity in Assyria, on the way to Babylon. The prisons from which Jesus frees us today are no less real, though metaphorical.
But the way to freedom is through “a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind.” A new kind of justice, real justice, from a new way of seeing.
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The Psalm adds, “The Lord will bless his people with peace.” Justice and Peace.
Ironically, where Isaiah said the Messiah will not shout, the Psalm says, “The God of glory thunders,” “The voice of the Lord is over the waters . . . the voice of the Lord is mighty.” Justice does not mean protest and crushing enemies, but nor does peace mean silence. The voice of the Lord, which the same Psalm 29 says, “breaks the cedars of Lebanon . . . makes Lebanon to skip like a calf . . . flashes forth flames of fire,” breaks in and transforms us. The Messiah brings peace and justice by the power of his word, which converts us.
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In our reading from Acts, Peter is discovering that the Gospel welcomes in the Gentiles, and not only those who were of Israel by the flesh: “God shows no partiality.” That crushing of walls is a huge, and underrated, theme of the New Testament. He breaks down the walls of division. He creates peace from those who were at war.
But how? “You know the word that he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ.” Through the word of Jesus Christ. He is our peace.
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And by the Holy Spirit. The New Testament has a way of speaking that seems odd to us. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power,” it says. It sounds like Jesus was an ordinary man, who then received power from on high.
That’s not true: Jesus was the Word become flesh, God from God, Light from Light, from the very beginning. And yet Scripture shows that the same Spirit who comes on us is the Spirit that anointed Jesus. We receive the anointing of Jesus. We receive the Holy Spirit and power. And it is only that power from on high that can make justice and peace in this world.
A parallel thing happens in the Baptism of the Lord. “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” John asks Jesus. The Opening Collect of this Mass prays that, “As the Holy Spirit descended upon him, [and You, God] solemnly declared him your beloved Son,” so too “grant that your children by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, may always be well and pleasing to you.”
Jesus, who was anointed with the Holy Spirit from eternity, brings that Spirit into the waters of Baptism so that we may receive the same Spirit when we enter into those waters. And as the Spirit is the Spirit of sonship, we become children of God, “sons in the Son,” sharing in his nature.
Jesus is our justice and our peace, because only he can give to us that true justice and peace that is the truth and harmony of the Holy Trinity, the eternal right relationship of perfect love and joy.
Through the sacraments we enter into Jesus, and begin—slowly—to be transformed into the love and truth of the Trinity. On the one hand, the only true justice and peace is in Jesus, who heals our sinful hearts, so full of selfish division, and lifts us up into divine harmony. On the other hand, anything that does not result in peace and justice is not true union with Jesus.
Where do you see the tragedy of false efforts for peace and justice—on the Left and the Right?
Abortion is the most obvious lack of peace and justice. The unborn are never given a chance to breathe, experience life on earth, especially feel love and to love.