When I read the Gospel account about Jesus' baptism in the River Jordan, I am troubled, and wonder what greater meaning can it have? Jesus would not go through the action of being "cleansed" when he had no sin. Nor do I believe that he who is Truth perform a "fake" baptism for the sake of giving an example to us. There has to be a greater truth underlying the act.
Clement, speaking of the effect of baptism, says that those who sought freedom from the restraints of christianity often became reductionists, like Marx, Feuerbac, Nietche and Freud. Partly, he says, this came about because Christianity became, in part, degenerated into a type of moralism. And morality itself had degenerated into infantile, repression by the super-ego, a castrating anxiety about purity, or its sublimation into a kind of angelism bordering on dissociation, almost to the point of schizophrenia, between the orderly ideal and the intractable real life.
How then to we find the true freedom that is both in sync with Jesus and yet offers authentic liberty to the human soul? By walking down into the River Jordan and rejecting all acts that bind us to ourselves. And where does this act of confession take us? Into the mystical life of a Christian. And how does this affect our daily lives? It becomes that inner drive that will not let us be content with life as it is, that tells us that there is more to life than we are experiencing. It is the thrist to know more, to love deeper, to see more clearly.
And that thirst can only be quenced by the source of water...He who took the River Jordan when he decended into it, and now allows it to flow into our souls, freely, not just cleansing, but filling our need for more....always more...light, grace, knowledge, understanding.
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