The people were waiting. Poor people, it is truly child’s play to delude them into thinking that something or someone is capable of filling the void that every person carries inside. For by waiting, you become satisfied, you convince yourself that even the Baptist could be enough, just to stop this torture that wears us out.
And the Baptist tries to interrupt this tragedy. He does it decisively: “Immerse yourself,” he says. Go down with me into the water of death, for the expected does not come from a distant horizon but from the courage to descend into the heart of the rubble that we carry wtihin. A shiver. And it’s baptism. Only then does the sky open. It’s something like a dove.
We say that the flood serves to immerse us in the truth of what we are, but then there is land. A land as beautiful as a promise. A land that opens like a breath, a new land on which to start again. A land in which to walk without shame of the divine.
God is not ashamed to kiss and embrace us in the heart of our rubble and failure. And this seems to me to be the only real good news. The one that I keep waiting for and that continually amazes me.
