Lent: Day 6

[These are getting briefer and briefer as I struggle to catch up.]

Luke 3:21-38

I think it is impossible to overstate how much I love the trinitarian baptismal scenes in the gospels. We have the revelation of the three persons of the trinity, in the bodily Son, the voice of the Father, and the dovey Spirit. All of them demonstrating their inseparable but unique operations in the incarnation.

But why does Luke follow this beautiful scene with a boring genealogy? At least Matthew gets it out of the way quickly at the beginning. But perhaps Luke's use of the list at this point serves to draw more attention to it. It is easy to dismiss Matthew's version as if it is just a "preface" of some sort. Luke, though, places it right in the midst of two key theological passages [baptism and temptation]. Moreover, anyone who even pays a little attention realizes that this genealogy is quite different from Matthew's. It has tons more names, tons of different names, and goes back past Abraham all the way to Adam and God.

I think this last feature is the key. The baptism is the revelation of Christ's true identity and lineage: human and divine. If we extend this into liturgical reflection, we can see what it is to participate in Christ's baptism when we ourselves receive the water of regeneration. In the words of Maximus the Confessor, it is a "mystical adoption" in which we acquire a new birth, a new inheritance--or more accurately, or ORIGINAL inheritance--as daughters and sons of God.

In Christ's baptism we have the revelation not only of the Trinity, but of our true lineage of identity that is rooted in the creative love of God. As the Trinity reveals its inner life in the economic work of Christ's baptism, it invites us to be taken up into the life of the Trinity, to reclaim our own identity as beloved children of God through incorporation into the Body of God's only begotten Son and the love of the Spirit poured forth into our hearts.