As we’ve been going through Father Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World, one of the things that Father Schmemann is very careful to point out is this dichotomy that we human beings naturally fall into: we have the spiritual, which is up there, and then the physical, the ordinary, the mundane, which is down here, and we kind of have an almost “never the twain shall meet” attitude. The thing about the baptism of our Lord and God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, that we are just celebrating right now, is that it brings those two things together, definitively, absolutely, revelatorily (Is that a word?), and in a way that cannot be denied.

Because, as our Lord was incarnate, as he took upon himself human flesh, he united himself to us in all the humblest, weakest, most servile, commonest ways possible. He was laid in the manger because they didn’t have a cradle for him. He was born in poverty. He was a refugee. He was just an ordinary human being in almost every way possible. I mean, when he begins his ministry it becomes clear that he’s not just an ordinary human being, but it even says in the Scriptures that he “learned obedience”. Wrap your brain around that. What does it mean for God himself, the Son of God, to learn obedience? But that’s what the Scriptures say.

And then he comes to John the Baptist, who has been preparing the way before him diligently, working for this moment, when the Messiah will reveal himself, in all his power, in all his splendour, in all his glory. John the Baptist has been calling the people to repentance and getting them to undergo baptism, which was unheard of for the Israelites because this was what somebody who wanted to convert to Judaism did. But John is saying, no, no, all of you have to prepare yourselves by getting baptized—and they did. They flocked to him. And then, out of all those people who are flocking to him, comes the Messiah himself. And John is kind of horrified. Like, “Whoa, wait a second. You know, I should be baptized by you! I can’t do this.” And Jesus says, “Let us do so for now to fulfill all righteousness.”

And he is baptized by John the Forerunner in the Jordan. And, as he comes up out of the water, he sees the Spirit. The heavens open up.

So here we have again, heaven, high above all things, which is now opening up, and the Spirit of God—which, if anything is spiritual, I think it would be the Spirit of God—descends on the incarnate Word of God, in the form of a dove. And a voice comes from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

And so our Lord, in his baptism, unites heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical, those things which are most exalted, and those things which are humblest and most ordinary, because as Hopkins put it, the world is charged with the glory of God. The grandeur of God, it flows all through creation. And we just miss it. We just don’t realize it.

But the feast that we have here today reminds us of this, and the water that we bless today reminds us of this, because what is more ordinary than water? We use it in our cooking, we use it to clean our houses, we use it to bathe in. We use it to drink on its own or in various unfortunately mixed beverages.

It’s the stuff of life. But we don’t even think about it. We take it for granted, until it’s gone, and then that’s all we can think about. You know, if we’re walking through the desert—I haven’t done this myself, but in all the stories, the guy who’s walking through the desert, the only thing he can think of is water, right? But for most of our lives, we’re not thinking about it. So here what we’ve done today, as we have called down the Holy Spirit to descend upon this water, and to sanctify this water, and to bless this water, is to set it apart, to make it holy, set apart to God.

And then we are going to take of this water and take it into our homes and use it to bless our homes and drink it. If we need to take our pills, we drink them, as Orthodox Christians, with holy water. And we are going to use this to remind ourselves, however, often we need to, that the world is charged with the glory of God. That all these ordinary things, that we go about every day just doing, and living, and being: work and sleep and eating and praying and playing, and being with one another, all of these things, our Lord involves himself in, our Lord sanctified, made holy by his presence in them, and we now participate in the ordinariness of our daily life in union with him, indwelt by his Holy Spirit.

So that there is nothing that is ordinary, that is not now shot through with the spiritual, with the supernatural. And it’s all summed up here. In water.

The water that our Lord descended into, in anticipation of his death and his burial, his resurrection on our behalf; the water that, he, together with the Spirit of God, and God the Father, separated out, so that dry land could appear, and we could live; the water that was the forces of death and chaos, that he himself unleashed to destroy the earth, and then promised never to do that again. The water that he himself created, and drank, and bathed in, and just did all that ordinary stuff in and with, reminds us of his presence. Because, God, in him, Emmanuel, is with us.

Poem referenced:

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.