like a dove descending

EXODUS // EXILE // EPIPHANY

Out of Egypt I have called my Son: a call to repentance, a call to turn home.

A voice in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord.

You are my Son, my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.

As in the depth and darkness of Genesis, before the moving wind of the Spirit, there is nothing in our world but chaos, but when God’s word and Spirit come, there is an epiphany, a showing forth of God’s glory and a quickening of Creation.

Like the people of Israel, called out of Egypt, we are called to pass through a baptismal sea and through a wilderness of transformation into the land of promise.

Like the people of Israel, called back from exile, in repentance we travel from a deep darkness, the bondage of sin, along the way in the wilderness, and across the Jordan into the land of promise once again, into the light.

Through the power of the Spirit all things become new again in Christ.

In Baptism we move from gloom to glory: Baptism for Jesus and for us is being plunged into chaos, the realm of death, the deep dark & formless void, and then being summoned by God’s word out of that nothing to life.

God’s word brings to a chaotic world order, symmetry, and beauty; and a new hope for a future.

However chaotic our lives may be, they are the material out of which God builds us into a new creation. And once we begin to know his redeeming in our selves, we begin to see the Heavens open in the every day.

Creation becomes a series of windows onto eternity, showing us God’s glory. And we are called to live into this new dimension, this new vision of reality.

When Thomas Merton was a young man he lived a full and self-indulgent life of which he became ashamed; at the age of 27 he turned his back on the world and entered a monastery, only to find there the world he had lost. After years of prayer and study and meditation and sacrament, he found his way back to a new connection with the world.

One day, standing on the corner of 4th and Walnut in downtown Louisville he looked around him at all the people passing by; and he saw them with new eyes.

The heavens had opened, indeed. (On another day, he wrote about rain in the city. Rain puddles were shining in a new sun – as the pedestrians crossed at a street corner they seemed to him to be walking through radiant skies, plashing across a field of stars.)

Of course he knew that the world had not changed; but it had become for him a door to the sacred, a sign of God’s glory in the every day.

It was as if the heavens had opened for him and shown him God’s glory: it was an epiphany.

It was as if he was hearing the voice of the Lord – a voice of power, creative, renewing, beautiful, awesome, strengthening, blessing: You are my Son, my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.

And at last he could hear it as good news for himself and for the world.


http://www.law.louisville.edu/cardinallawyer/node/61


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In the gospel of Mark, Baptism reveals Jesus’ identity. He seeks Baptism, in obedience, and is endowed with the Spirit, that same Spirit that with ah! bright wings brooded over the primal waters of Genesis. With the Descent of the Dove – God’s new age now begins.

God’s creative power comes rushing out, pouring forth like a river, into and through his Son; the same power that made the world now brings forward its redemption. In the Baptism of Jesus, God identified with us: our human condition and our need for redeeming.

The Word that in Genesis brought order, goodness, life, and well-being, is now calling us from the wilderness into repentance to be transformed and released into the new world of justice, mercy, and peace. In this new beginning, as in the beginning of the world, the spirit wind, the spirit Dove shine forth upon what God has made; he calls his Son beloved, the one in whom he is well pleased, and in Christ and through Christ, by the power of his sacrifice, we are called, too, beloved and pleasing to him. It is the first day, the dawn, of creation, of new creation; all things are made new in Christ — and we live in the hope and grace of Resurrection life.

God’s blessing like a dove descending comes to rest upon us all. In Creation and in Baptism, the spirit moves over the waters. God gives form, order, to the chaotic, formless void, in Genesis; in Baptism he gives peace to lives seemingly chaotic and formless, and he does it once again through water and the spirit.

His order is one of justice, mercy, and peace. His word calls new things into being and all into right relationship under his Christ. We are called through baptism, by repentance & turning, turning home, to become his beloved children.

Through baptism – we are people of the new order of the ages established by his Word. Through baptism – we rejoice in the power of the Spirit descending upon Christ’s body. Through baptism – we are commissioned to serve as his People in the world he has made.

Let us respond to the proclamation of God’s love, by reaffirming our Baptismal Covenant.


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Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (re: March 18, 1958)
Thomas Merton, "Rain and the Rhinoceros", Raids on the Unspeakable