The Baptism of the Lord, January 10, 2016, Year C
Annunciations are common in the Bible: Gabriel announces to Mary that she will give birth to Jesus, the son of God. An angel announces to her husband Joseph who the child is. Then later we have the annunciation during the transfiguration: “this is my beloved son”. And when John baptized Jesus, there was a voice announcing who Jesus was. Biblical annunciations are literary devices, we do not have to take them literally. They are created by the authors to emphasize the meaning of the events. These stories help us understand the beliefs and theologies of our biblical writers.
Without annunciations we can assume that biblical personalities lived lives similar to ours. They would often ask why God placed them in particular situations. To make sense of a life, it usually takes a whole life. What is true for us, is also true for Jesus. It would seem that the historical Jesus originally conceived of himself simply as a disciple of John the Baptist. Yet John was arrested and became a martyr, so Jesus could no longer be John’s disciple. He took over John’s ministry, and became greater than his mentor.
The bible says that no one around Jesus and John would have realized the superiority of Jesus to John when the baptism took place. The view that Jesus was greater than John only came much later: John was “only” the messenger, the precursor announcing Jesus. This superiority of Jesus to John was eventually solidified by Jesus’ death and resurrection. Luke obviously inserted late first-century theology into a passage which speaks about events that took place 40 or 50 years before he wrote his gospel.
The passage from Isaiah (Is 40:1-5, 9-11) is a classic example: Isaiah begins to understand the uniqueness of his call only around the end of his ministry. Though he is certain that he is a prophet, it takes him a lifetime to realize how different he is from other prophets. He does not attack his contemporaries like most of his prophetic predecessors. Eventually he understands that even non-Jews will benefit from his ministry. It took a long time for Isaiah to discover the uniqueness of his call to be a prophet.
Is it possible that it also took time for the historical Jesus to discover his own uniqueness? I am convinced that this is the case! As we only “gradually” discover who we are, so did Jesus. Strange things happen when we begin to understand annunciations as literary devices. If we do so, we might actually be able to identify ourselves with certain individuals we had never dared to do before. If we see annunciations as a literary device, we might identify even with Jesus of Nazareth. Then a voice tells us: “You are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter in whom I am well pleased”.
cf: www.fosilonline.com (Roger Vermalen Karban)
Fr. Wolfgang Felber SJ