St. John’s Episcopal Church
Tallahassee, FL
Matthew 3:13-17
Good morning, St. John’s.
Today is a joyful day,
is a good thing
because God knows
we could certainly use some joy
in the midst of this
changing,
challenging,
and broken world.
Today is a joyful day
because today is a baptismal day.
It’s also a day
of new beginnings
for us as a parish
as we step into this
new rhythm of three services.
And it’s no accident
that all of this happens on this day
because every year,
on the first Sunday after Epiphany,
the Church takes us back.
Back to the river.
Back to the Jordan.
Back to the baptism of Jesus.
So I want you to imagine it for a moment.
Let’s set the scene.
Imagine standing there
on the banks of the Jordan.
You can hear the water moving.
You can hear the voices:
confessions,
prayers,
nervous laughter.
You can see the people who have come.
The river is neither clean nor calm.
It is crowded and muddy,
thick with everything
that people are trying to leave behind,
and the people crowding the banks
are far from the social elite.
It’s the low-lifes
and the bottom-dwellers,
the desperate and the blamed,
the dropouts and the roustabouts,
the addicts and ashamed,
the ne’er-do-wells,
the lost in hell,
the broken and the lame.
This is who is there.
This is who has come to the water.
And if we’re honest,
that’s not so far
from who we all are, too.
So John is out there
baptizing people for repentance
when into that water . . . Jesus steps.
Jesus, the sinless one.
Jesus, who has nothing to confess.
Jesus, who needs no baptism.
John looks at him and says,
“What?! You?!
Why are you here?!
I should be baptized by you,
not the other way around!”
But into the water Jesus goes anyway.
Not because he needs to.
But because we do
and because we need him there.
And because where we are,
that is where God chooses to be.
I’ve always thought of that river
as churning with all the sins
sloughed off by all of those people,
and you’re telling me that is where
the Son of God wants to go?
Into our dirty bathwater?
Into the cesspool of our sin and shame?
You bet your sweet cheeks he does.
And as Jesus rises from the water,
the heavens open.
The Spirit descends.
And a voice speaks.
Not instructions.
Not warnings.
Not expectations.
But a name.
“You are my Son, the Beloved.
With you I am well pleased.”
Before Jesus has preached a sermon.
Before he has healed a single person.
Before he has done anything at all.
God names him.
God reveals him.
God delights in him.
God claims him.
But here’s the thing, y’all.
That voice has never stopped speaking.
Oh, we’ve stopped listening,
but it has never stopped speaking.
Imagine that voice is not only for Jesus.
Imagine it echoing across the water.
Imagine it spoken again and again
over every person who steps into the river.
And if you can,
I want you to get in
the way-back machine
and imagine or remember
your own baptism.
Maybe you were a baby,
carried in someone else’s arms.
Maybe you were older
and chose the water for yourself.
Maybe you were sprinkled.
Maybe you were dunked.
Maybe it was a river,
or a swimming pool,
or the baptistry
at your old Baptist church,
or that marble font right back there
that has weathered
every storm of this church
for nearly 200 years.
Maybe you don’t remember it at all.
But God remembers.
And what God said then
is what God is still saying now.
Not the names the world throws at you.
Not the labels you carry.
Not “not enough,” or “too much,” or “if only.”
Instead, what the voice of God is saying—
in total opposition to the ways of this world—
is . . .
My beloved.
My claimed.
My delight.
Mine.
That is what baptism does.
In a world that far too readily forsakes
the beauty and worth of human life . . .
in a world that hurls shame and blame
and traffics in anger and division . . .
baptism gives us a name—
God gives us a name—
that the world can never take away.
So today, as we baptize two beautiful babies
and remember our own baptisms, too,
listen up,
because the voice of God
is speaking once again.
Over these children.
Over this parish.
Over every life
that walks through these doors
and comes to the waters.
“You are beloved.
I delight in you.
And you are mine.”
Don’t forget it.
Don’t deny it.
And thanks be to God.
Amen.