Strip and Plunge in

Second Sunday of Advent Year B

Few Catholics would have had the privilege of experiencing baptism by immersion. Our current norm of pouring water over the forehead of an infant or an adult seems overly sanitised. The closest I’ve come to this has been the most memorable (though overrated) experience of the Lourdes bathe. Now for those of you who have never experienced this, spoiler alert. Before you get dunked in the miraculously curative waters of Lourdes, something else has to happen. It doesn’t take much imagination to guess that you would have to be stripped down to your knickers, and then to your birthday suit as you descend into the waters, with only a small hand towel to act as a fig-leaf like cover. Don’t worry about the shame of being nude in front of others. The freezing water will take care of that.

Today, the gospel introduces us to a luminary figure associated with Advent - St John the Baptist, whose ministry straddles both the Old and New Testament. He fulfils the mission of this enigmatic figure called “the Voice”, prophesied by Isaiah in the first reading. The Voice will announce the coming of the Lord and will call the peoples to make the necessary preparation by undertaking a massive engineering exercise to remove all obstacles and smoothen the passage of the returning King.

Of course, St John’s call (or Isaiah’s prophecy) is not of a physical nature - he is not suggesting that we should undertake infrastructural public works. The transformation is one which is spiritual - it is a call to repentance which is signified by the baptism which St John performs. Please note that the baptism of St John is not the sacrament of baptism, which introduces us Christians to the life of grace. His baptism is more of a ritualised form of confession - an outward sign of one’s interior repentance.

What would this repentance entail? There are two aspects to it. The first is a stripping down. He calls us to strip down to our most naked core before God- to strip ourselves of our false pretences, our soaring pride, our sense of self-sufficiency in order to create space for God. John is not only preaching this in mere words but models it in his own life. His austere lifestyle, robing himself in camel skin, living off locust and wild honey, choosing the barren wilderness as home over the comforts of a roof over his head, were testimony to his sincere desire to strip himself of all false security and empty himself of pride in order to live for God and God alone.

But I guess most of us would not need to emulate his severely ascetic lifestyle. Thank God for that. Nonetheless, here is a call to live simply, to live without being a slave to our material possessions, to trust in God’s Providence rather than in human machination and our own resources. Instead of covering ourselves with the “fig-leaves” of false security, we are challenged to stand before God naked, vulnerable and totally transparent. The call to strip down is an invitation to live counter-culturally, to resist the allure of placing more importance on things than persons, on one’s personal ambitions rather than the well-being of others, a secular culture that has relegated and exiled God to the fringes. The world invites us to grasp and try and fill our lives and homes; John calls us to strip away (like Marie Kondo).

This stripping away is reflected in the Greek word “metanoia,” used by both John and our Lord in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel. It is often translated as “repentance” in English. Our modern sense of repentance partially contains what John was saying, but not entirely. Metanoia demands a radical orientation, a total change of direction, a giving up of our original goals for something new. The Greek word, metanoia, literally means to expand or open (meta) the eyes of the heart or interior self (-noia). So, when John called the people to metanoia, he was calling them to open the eyes of their hearts, to recognise their present folly, so that they may grasp the wisdom of God.

After stripping, it’s time to take the plunge. John not only called the people to repentance, he also baptised them with his baptism of repentance. After stripping down, it was now time to immerse themselves in the waters of rebirth. The word baptism literally means to plunge or be immersed.

Of course, when John was ‘baptising’, baptism wasn’t the first sacrament of initiation into the church. The church didn’t exist. It was immersing people in water to symbolise a total change, and something new coming forth. It symbolised being cleansed and prepared for this new life and new reality. That’s also our invitation, to be immersed in God’s presence. To open to something new and create space inside our hearts, then to be immersed in the Divine Life. That’s right at the heart of our work of Advent.

When we talk about preparing for the Incarnation, the early church didn’t understand the incarnation as something that just happened to the one man, Jesus. But the larger understanding was that when God became human, God took on all human nature - the whole species! God did not just dip a finger or toe into the waters to test the temperature. No, He first stripped Himself of His status and dignity as God, and then plunged straight into the human experience, without losing His divine nature. Our Lord was completely united to our humanity. As the church Fathers write: “God has clothed his own self with humanity so that we might be clothed with divinity.” “God became human so that we might become divine”. The Incarnation is about our intimacy and union with God, as much as it is about God’s unity with man.

So, let us celebrate His first coming at Christmas and prepare to meet Him at His second coming at the end of this age, by stripping ourselves of our pride, our consternation, our need to be in control and immerse ourselves into the mystery of His Incarnation. This is the opportune time to open the eyes of our hearts and behold the glory of God.