Sacred Journey. M.K. Welsch
first adherent or disciple, serving as his aide until Jesus entered the picture.
Jesus’ formal ministry is set into motion when he arrives at the shore of the Jordan River where John is working. Standing together, the two cousins exemplify the juxtaposition of the new and old world orders. John had come forth wild from the desert where he lived apart from other men. And though he indeed was the harbinger of the coming of the Christ to the sensate world, John still hewed to the tactics of the old way: hard-nosed, bombastic, and convinced God could be found through harsh disciplines of the body. “Unkempt, unshaven, and clad in the skins of animals, he had burst like a specter on the scene of the time,” the specter of a bygone age.6 John was a prophet of old, railing against sinners who transgressed the law and heaping disdain on anyone who did not adhere to fixed rules and boundaries or see the error of his ways. Yet this prophet also understood that his moment in the sun was fading and told his followers that he baptized merely with water. The one who would follow him, whose shoes he was not worthy to unlatch, would baptize them with the Holy Ghost and fire—the inner purification of Spirit raised up in matter. John freely admitted his ideas and methods must decrease so that Jesus and his doctrine might increase in the world.
Baptism
Similar to the arrival of the angel announcing the impending birth of the savior to his mother Mary, the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan represents an enormous spiritual turning point for the human race. The baptismal rite remains a solemn part of the liturgy of many religious traditions but one whose ancient origins for the most part have been lost to history. The ritual harks back to the floodwaters of the Old Testament that had enveloped the earth at the time of Noah. Just as new life took root and sprang forth after the cleansing waters of the Great Flood had receded, the individual surfacing from the waters of baptism emerges into a different kind of life—washed clean of former ways and conditions.
The Master knew that John’s revelations about him being the Messiah were true and that the end of the old order was imminent. So, in a nod to the time-honored ceremony of baptism, he humbly assents to letting his cousin immerse him in the river, saying “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” (Matt. 3:15) He used the baptismal ritual to indicate a washing away of the past before he emerged from the waters ready to take up the mantle of spiritual teacher and deliverer. Jesus would be the one to help humanity reestablish itself on earth in a different way, and his baptism signaled the unveiling of this new covenant. A new order of love and mercy was at hand.
Jesus’ teachings would model an approach to living in the material world in which spirit was primary. Setting aside the destructive weapons, prejudices, and tactics of old, an outlook held by those who believed “might makes right,” he would promote a more evolved way of thinking and acting built on the pillars of balance, wisdom, nurturing, and healing. For thirty years the Master had prepared for this moment, and now, standing next to his cousin in the river, he was given a sign that the time for his ministry to begin had arrived. It was the same sign the patriarch Noah had seen when the old world, deteriorated to the point of ruin and submerged by the deluge, was ready to be regenerated.7
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