Baptism of Our Lord Sunday 2026- baptism is only the beginning

“I guess I thought that we were done.” The pastor was talking to the parents of Kyle. Kyle had been a significant part of a Confirmation class of a group of 9th graders. He rarely missed a session. He joined in the discussion. As it turns out, he hadn’t been baptized so on Pentecost he was baptized and even joined the church. It was a marvelous celebration among the confirmands, their families, and their mentors. But then Kyle disappeared. A few weeks went by, and he was nowhere to be found. The pastor called up his parents to check in and the dad said, “Oh, well, I guess I thought Kyle was all done. I mean, he was baptized and confirmed and everything. Isn’t he done?”

Is baptism the culmination of one’s faith? I guess that depends on whether you see it as an an ending or a beginning? In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is baptized before his ministry begins. No water into wine. No parables. No casting out demons. No healing or raising from the dead. Just a carpenter’s son. Just Joseph’s boy to most people….. but not to John the Baptist.

Jesus shows up at the river and John knows what’s up. He has been preparing the way for Jesus after all. And so John thinks “what are you doing here?” You want me to baptize you? But John had been preaching a baptism of repentance. What sin could Jesus have to repent from? What would he possibly need forgiveness for? If you are thinking that idea sounds crazy, then you can relate to John’s confusion and protest. I’m not baptizing you. You are so much greater than me. The student doesn’t baptize the teacher. Interestingly enough, this is the only gospel where we get this conversation between John and Jesus where Jesus basically says “look, you have to do this John.” You have to let me receive baptism.

Baptism is about repentance and a cleansing of sin, but if Jesus has nothing to repent of and didn’t need cleansing, what does his baptism really mean? Baptism is also about complete immersion or as Rev. Sandra Brawn says “to become one with something.” She describes Jesus’ baptism as a humble act that is more about God’s solidarity. It is incarnational and showing us that “whatever strife we face, Jesus is immersed in it with us.” SALT commentary echoes this in saying “Jesus has come to turn conventional religious ideas on their head. The one with whom God is “well pleased” doesn’t so much come “from on high” as “from below” or “from alongside,” standing with us in solidarity — so that in the end, our baptism isn’t only by Jesus, it’s also with Jesus and in Jesus.” Troy Miller says “The one who is now being baptized by human hands, amid a call to repentance, is also the one who will usher in God’s kingdom and bring the good news of forgiveness to those same human hands”

And this moment of solidarity, this proclamation of God as “this is my beloved with whom I am well pleased, this anointing of the Spirit…..this is the inauguration of Jesus’s ministry. In Frederic Backman’s book My Friends, one of the main characters says to his friends “I love you and I believe in you.” Before Jesus has done anything, God is saying “I love you and I believe in you.” How many of you just need to hear that? I love you and I believe in you. This is only the beginning. And what kind of ministry is Jesus baptized for? What does the Spirit prepare him to do? We hear of this in Isaiah’s servant passage in Isaiah 42: 1 which says

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,     my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him;     he will bring forth justice to the nations.

Again in 42:3-4 “he will faithfully bring forth justice. 4 He will not grow faint or be crushed     until he has established justice in the earth,”

What does this justice look like? Matthew 4: 23-24 says “Jesus went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. 24 So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, people possessed by demons or having epilepsy or afflicted with paralysis, and he cured them.” In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus’s first sermon proclaims “

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,     because he has anointed me     to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners     and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

When we are baptized, the water represents both death and life. Dying to self and rising to new life in Christ. It is just as much an ending as it is a beginning. In one sense, it is a confirmation of what God has done and is doing in our lives through grace and a commissioning for us to go and live into our baptism. How do we live into our baptism? Or how, we might ask, do we really remember our baptism?

When we are baptized and when we share in and remember our baptism, we take vows together. Vows that we will share again together in just a moment in which we renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of our sin. Only after that can we then accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. And after this confession and resisting we collectively confess Jesus Christ as our Savior, placing our whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as our Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races.

Living into and remembering our baptism is an active remembrance. It is an everyday remembrance. When we stand under the shower and feel the water we remember we are beloved. When we greet people at the gas station, post office, coffee shop, or cubicle next to us we remember, they are beloved too. In our baptism, we remember we are beloved children of God but we also remember that everyone else is too.

In the wake of a seeing humanity from the polar ends of idolizing or demonizing with virtually no middle ground, how do we trade in our dehumanization for rehumanization, for seeing others through the waters of our baptism. Just this past week, a woman by the name of Renee Good was shot point blank in Minneapolis by an ICE agent followed by two more with gunshot wounds the next day in Portland. I’m not here to discuss theories and angles and perspectives. I am here to say that these are volatile times, and the more we dehumanize one another and the more that we give in to fear, the further we are from remembering our baptism. Austin Channing Brown says “we are still fighting the core question over and over again… who gets to be human? Renee Good was human. As was her partner who witnessed the tragedy unfold. As were the witnesses present. As were the folks ICE was trying to kidnap. And as were the ICE agents. Austin says “until we believe in the humanity of all, as a country, we will continue to kill the poets.”

The poets have responded in a large way around the events of this past week, calling us back to the waters of our baptism, back to remembering who and whose we are.

Ullie Kaye writes:

“In the not so distant future, I hope we come to realize that we are all made in God’s image.

And that the moment we celebrate or mourn death based on political allegiance rather than seeing inherent value in every human being, we are choosing the comfort of personal ideology at the expense of breaking our own moral compass.

The truth does not change like the wind.

It is we who are blown and tossed about like waves at the sea.

And I’m afraid that we are sinking quicker than we are swimming.”

Everything matters. Everything is at stake. Before we drown in our fears, might we swim in the waters of our baptism.

Jesus got into the water with us that we might be saved in and through him. Out of God’s solidarity with us, we go forward to stand in solidarity with others. Let’s come back to the waters of our baptism and allow love and mercy to drip down over our faces and get into our eyes, blurring our vision to where we only see neighbor, where we only know one another as beloved. Where we look at one another and say with grace-soaked hearts “I love you and I believe in you.”