Baptism of the Lord 2025
Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:13-15, 21-22
January 12, 2025
Rev. Amy P. McCullough, PhD
When I was younger and fitter I arose most mornings, in the predawn hour, to run through the neighborhood. If my timing was right, then I would arrive at the homestretch, located at the intersection of Roland Avenue and Northern Parkway, just as the sun broke on the horizon. Being high up enough on that hill, I could see it over the cross that stands atop the Grace Church spire. I came to look forward to that moment, to await it as a blessing; God’s welcome to a new day. It was a ritual that hallowed the hours afterward.
You have rituals that mark your days, right? Coffee makers that begin to brew as you step out of bed. Taco Tuesdays or pancakes on Saturday mornings. Do you read before you go to sleep? Watch the news or Jeopardy during dinner? Rituals order our time. They create meaning. Some are infused with greater meaning. “I love you to the moon and back a thousand times over” said to a child before sleep every night. Lighting the altar candles to start worship, and then standing to receive their light as they are extinguished at worship’s end. Rituals forge connections and offer taste of transcendence.
When Jesus came to the River Jordan, washing in the water was a ritual of his people. A baptism of repentance was the name John gave to the act of immersing oneself in the water and rising up, renewed for a different way of living. Scripture doesn’t tell us why Jesus came forward for this spiritual cleansing. In fact, Matthew’s gospel nearly apologizes for his presence at the river; assuring us Jesus did not need to repent of anything. Luke doesn’t explain Jesus’s presence nor fill in the details of Jesus’s days since he was 12 years of age and lingered behind at the temple in Jerusalem. Luke simply places an adult Jesus joining the crowd who has congregated by the river, entering with them, one by one, into the water. Maybe Jesus has the angst of a young adult, wrestling to know his place in the world, sensing something of God within him but not yet sure how to step into his purpose. Maybe Jesus is more self-assured, aware of the intimate link between God and himself, and thus sought solidarity with the seekers around him. We don’t know for certain but we do know a blessing emerges he immerses himself in the river. As the water rushes over him, something happens; a power is given. You are my Son; with you I am well-pleased.
Notice when the blessing happens. It is Luke chapter 3. Jesus has not called a disciple, healed someone sick or injured, preached a sermon or feed a hungry crowd. Jesus has not done anything, except reach toward his identity as God’s beloved. This is the first truth of baptism. God’s affirmation of us is given as gift; not earned by our actions but conferred by God’s grace. You are mine. You are beloved. Hear, in the waters, how I call you by name, claim you as my child.
While all of the gospels speak of Jesus’s baptism, each writer creates their own story. They each shine the spotlight on different details of the moment, thereby offering to us a unique message. Luke’s first distinctive flourish is to remove John the Baptist from the scene. You wouldn’t know that from today’s reading. The verses assigned, when read together, make it seem John calls for repentance and then Jesus is baptized. But in the verses omitted from the chapter, John recedes from the scene. By the moment of Jesus’s baptism John has been imprisoned for his outspoken speeches by Herod, the king.
What does this tell us? Danger, even death, is a part of baptism. The blessings of belonging to God come with all the risks of living as God’s children. Water, after all, can drown as much as cleanse. A faithful life is no guarantee of protection from the Herods of the world. It is likely just the opposite. Living as a witness to the truth of God’s love for all people might well land you in prison, stripped of all security except knowing you are held in the powerful love of God. Jesus knows of the danger surrounding John. He comes for baptism anyway. He leads us toward the risky, costly life of being those washed by God’s unconditional love, uncontainable power.
A second telling detail in Luke’s account of Jesus’s baptism occurs after he has emerged from the water. Jesus prays. It is then that the heavens open and God speaks. The grace given to Jesus happens not while he is being baptized, but afterwards, while he is praying. Why is this important? Baptism is once and for all; prayer is daily, ordinary. We cannot force God’s revelatory presence, but we can make ourselves ready for it as we commit to the habits that make such thin spaces possible. Commitment is key to baptismal rituals. In the vows taken at the font, we commit to infants that we will teach them the stories of our faith and show them by our actions that we love God. In the vows taken, we promise to come to worship, to resist evil, to nurture one another? These are not fleeting vows, things to affirm without any intention of doing them. These acts – prayer, worship, stories of faith and resisting evil – are the means by which God’s grace increases within us.
I thought of such habits of the heart while listening to former President Carter’s funeral. Here was a man who lived by faith, who put his faith into action, and who spent his hours working toward the betterment of others. At his funeral last week his grandson shared, among humorous stories of a devoted grandfather, about Carter’s persistent assertion that each of us is charged with stewarding well the life we have been given to live. As the world notes the homes built, the Sunday School lessons taught, and the hospitality offered, his actions become a model for us of how ordinary tasks, done with grit and grace, add up to a life that reflects God. There are those moments when the heavens open, but most of the time our understanding of God’s grace is built over days, months, and years of ordinary faithfulness, in which the habits of worship, prayer, generosity, and holy friendships links us into God’s faithfulness.
Lastly, Luke’s baptismal scene offers a distinctive portrait of God’s words to Jesus, God’s child. While other writers portray the heavenly voice as audible to the crowd, in Luke, God’s words of beloved-ness are spoken to Jesus directly. Instead of “This is my Son,” the voice declares, “You are my Son.” There is a difference between having someone talk about you and having someone talk to you. In Luke, God speaks to Jesus, affirms his identity by way of their relationship, and gives him a calling.
What does this tell us? In a sermon titled “Owning Up to Baptism,” preacher John Timmer makes the argument that to be baptized is to be called into action; to be baptized is to be brought into a set of values, ways we must live if we take our baptism seriously.[1] Thus, baptism does more than introduce us to Jesus; to brings us into a grace that we must now follow.
To “own up” to your baptism is to say:
In baptism, I receive the free gift of God’s grace, a gift available to all. Then I will welcome the stranger. I will draw a circle wide enough to include the outcast.
In baptism, we enter into a community. Then I will live ever aware my actions affect many other people, many of whom I’ve never meet. And since the community I’m entering is the body of Christ, then I’ll remember how profoundly we are linked to each other. When someone is hurting, I will show up, pray up, feed them, defend them from danger and love without ceasing.
In baptism, we take a journey from death to life, dying with Christ we are raised with him, too. This means death will not defeat me, nor those I love. Such resurrection power means I can look horror in the face. I can hold the lives of those I’ve loved who are now dead and trust in their resurrection. I can place my days into that mysterious cycle of death and resurrection, knowing that defeat gives way to victory.
In all these ways we own up to baptism. May it be so. Amen.
[1] Timmer, John, “Owning Up to Baptism” in A Chorus of Witnesses: Model Sermons for Today’s Preacher (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 277-285.