The Galilean stood high on the hill, alone on the hill. Safe on the hill. and he did not like it.
Like a God, Paul said, who, alone in the Heavens, high in the Heavens, safe in the Heavens,
one day looked down to catch the eye of every human being looking up.
And the slow tear of God began to make a tear in the Heavens.
From toe to knee the tear was Compassion for all the blood
that would never again find a vein.
From knee to chest the tear was desire to unbreak every broken heart.
From chest to eyes the tear was love, to kiss all who must enter the cave of death.
From eyes to earth, the tear became Jesus, watching the brown river breaking against the waist of
John the Baptist, who was busy burying people with his big shovel hands and then lifting them
fresh and new with a force more violent than childbirth.
The Gospel is filled with stories in which people come to see and love in themselves what Jesus sees and loves in them! Jesus sees the child of God in us with such clarity that we begin to see it in ourselves.
But first he must know it in himself. The One who awakens others to love must first himself be awakened.
In the Gospels, Jesus walks the pathways of Love and helps us to do the same. All that he says and does – his meetings, his stories, his teachings, his deeds – are in the service of this awakening.
I think that the way we come to reverence and love our true self is the real reason that Jesus allows John to baptise him. He not only shows us how to allow ourselves to welcome the Spirit, and listen for the voice of the Abba. He shows us how to disentangle ourselves from all that is not Love.
What he learned at the Jordan was this: Only when we ascend out of the waters where we are given a new heart will we see the dove of peace and hear the voice of love.
