I was at a country concert a couple of years ago and I was really excited to be there. I took a picture of the artist, and I put one of the most profound lines that he says online. The line was, “I got barbecue stains on my white t-shirt.” Does anybody know who sings that song? Tim McGraw. Thank you. Not everybody knew that though, when I shared it online, because after I posted, “I got barbeque stains on my white t-shirt,” I got about 100 comments telling me how to get it out. They were all very different ways of getting out this stain. I never knew there were so many ways of getting out a stain.
Getting stains out of our white clothes is something that seems to have been an ongoing problem, even before the time of Jesus. They couldn’t figure out how to get a stain out of their whites. They couldn’t even figure out how to get a stain out of the animals that would be offered. They were supposed to be perfect animals without blemish.
Today that’s still a big problem for us. Do you know how much money is spent every year on stain removers? Take a guess: millions, billion? Twenty billion dollars is spent on stain removal and it doesn’t always work, right?
When Jesus came to the water and was baptized by John, the heavens opened up, the voice of the Lord thundered, the Holy Spirit descended and everyone heard and looked in Jesus and saw, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”
Before Jesus, there was no removal of sin because only God could forgive sin.
The whole reason that they sacrificed animals, other people, and things was because they couldn’t find a way to rid themselves of their own sin.
Whenever we find ourselves not being able to get rid of sin it usually piles up. We go further and further into sin, further and further down the path, until Jesus.
There are three phrases I want to reflect on from the Gospel.
- Let it be so for now.
- This is my beloved Son.
- Whom I am well pleased.
The first is “allow it for now.” Jesus is coming from Galilee to the Jordan River to be Baptized. The Jordan River itself isn’t pristine clean water. I have been there and it’s pretty muddy. The reason is because it’s a big flowing river and it kind of gathers all the silt from everywhere. So, Jesus, who is completely pure, is going to be baptized in this water. This is rather confusing. Why would Jesus need to be baptized? John the Baptist himself is very perplexed by this and he tries to prevent him. He says, “Lord, no, I need to be baptized by you and yet you’re asking me to baptize you?” Jesus says this phrase, “allow it for now.”
We may not even fully understand the mystery of The Baptism of the Lord but He is saying “allow it for now.”
What the Church Fathers and Saints all explain is when Jesus went into the Jordan to be baptized the waters didn’t cleanse Jesus, Jesus in turn cleansed the waters. There was something about Jesus because he was a pure stain remover. That’s all he did. What I mean by that is, normally we think when something or someone comes into contact with us, we might contract whatever it is that they have. That may be disease, that may be uncleanliness, that may be sin. Jesus changed that all around. He was the first person, the only Begotten Son, who came into this world completely pure, completely holy, completely without sin. Because he and the Father were one, He has the ability to forgive sin, the ability to cleanse us, the ability to make us pure once more.
I think about this numerous times in the Gospel when the lepers would come and ask for healing, He wasn’t afraid to touch them. He didn’t contract their leprosy, rather, he healed them. I think about the woman who is hemorrhaging for many years. She reached out to touch Him, to touch his cloth, and He healed her. All of the healings that Jesus brought about in the Gospels are signs to us of his ability to restore someone to perfection, to remove the stain of sin in our lives.
Sometimes we forget that when we were born into this world, we inherited original sin. We came into this world with the stain that we ourselves could not remove. So, Jesus came to cleanse us, to renew us.
Allow it for now. I want you to think of the things in your own life that seem out of your hands. Maybe there’s difficult situations that you haven’t been able to heal, or fix difficult relationships. Maybe there’s a sin in your own life that you just haven’t been able to break free from and you find yourself kind of going back to that or slipping into that sin, whatever it may be. I hear the phrase “allow it for now.” Not that we accept it, but we just allow ourselves to endure it and allow Jesus to enter in. Just as he entered into that muddy water to be Baptized, He is not cleansed by the water, yet he cleanses the water. As He enters into each and every one of us, He is not dirtied by our sin, but He cleanses our sin.
I don’t know about you, but when I go to pray, if I’m frustrated with myself about a sin that I’ve been caught in or how I acted or behaved, it’s hard for me to go to prayer because I usually like to be in a really good place. When I’m at peace and everything is right in my world, that’s when I like to pray. Jesus is saying, “Allow me to pray with you right now. Whatever’s going on in your heart, whatever’s going on in your mind, whatever’s going into your life, allow Me to be with you, for now.”
Then we hear the heavens open up, and the Holy Spirit descends upon Him. It’s such a beautiful scene of Jesus standing up from the water, the water pouring off of Him, and seeing that the sky opens. Everybody else can see it and everybody else can hear it. The first time they really hear the voice of God, and the voice of the Father begins with, “You are my beloved son.”
When you were baptized, you were brought into full union with Jesus. You were baptized with Him, into his suffering, into His death, and into His resurrection. There is no separation. Because of this the Father looks upon us and says to us, “You are my beloved son. You are my beloved daughter.” It’s so important that we hear that and allow that to sink in. No matter what we do in our lives, God never stops loving us. He is your Father, you are His child, He loves you unconditionally.
There’s a second part to that. You hear the voice “you are my beloved son” and then you hear the phrase “with whom I am well pleased”. Why was Jesus so pleasing to the Father at this moment that the Father would speak it all for people to hear? The reason the Father was so pleased is because Jesus was doing the Father’s will. When he came to John and he said, “allow it for now”, John is perplexed and he’s confused, but he baptizes the Lord. Sometimes we don’t even understand that, but God the Father is saying to Jesus, “You are my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.” He’s saying that because Jesus was doing the will of the Father by being baptized.
There would be many times where Jesus would say, “allow it for now.” When Peter, especially, came to Him before He was about to be crucified, he tried to talk him out of it, and Jesus said something very similar to him, “You must allow this for now.” When he was about to ascend into heaven and Mary was begging for him to stay, he says to her, “Do not cling to me. You must allow this for now,” because He was always doing the Father’s will, and the Father was so pleased by that.
When it comes to each and every one of us, it’s important that we realize and know to the depths of our heart how beloved we are by God. Also, when we act completely in conformity with His will, when we do what God desires of us and let go of what we desire for ourselves, we will be pleasing to the Father. That’s a wonderful, amazing thing to have God the Father be pleased with us.
I want you to know that whenever you come to Mass right now, this is the most pleasing you will ever be to God because you are here fulfilling your obligation to Sunday Mass, you are here worshiping the Father, you are here receiving Jesus into you, and the Father is so pleased by that. He’s just pleased that you are here with Him.
Though we still haven’t figured out how to get stains out of our whites, Jesus figured out a way to free us from our sins, to help us with things in our life, however messy they may be, and allow Him to enter in. Allow Him to help us to hear the voice of His Father say, “You are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter in whom I am well pleased.”
I want you to close your eyes for a moment. This is a good repetition that I’ll have you do, but I want you to hear the Father say to you (I want you to even speak this out loud softly), say your first name, you are my beloved son/you are my beloved daughter with whom I am well pleased.
One more time say your name, you are my beloved son/you are my beloved daughter with whom I am well pleased.
I want you just to rest in that and try to hear the voice of the Father over and over and over calling you by name, telling you that you are his beloved child, and that He is so well pleased with you.
