Baptism of the Lord

The Baptism of the Lord

January 11, 2026

The Rev’d Charles Everson

Church of the Atonement

Before Jesus does anything impressive – before he preaches a sermon, before he heals the sick, before he calls his disciples – God speaks.

Jesus steps into the muddy waters of the Jordan, standing shoulder to shoulder with sinners, and a voice from heaven says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

God does not wait to see how Jesus performs. God does not say, “This is my Son, with whom I will be pleased, provided everything goes according to plan.” God speaks delight first. Identity first. Love first.

Before Jesus does anything, God delights in him.

If we’re honest, that order feels backwards to most of us. We are deeply formed by the idea that God’s love is earned. We start to believe – sometimes without ever saying it out loud – that God is pleased with us if we believe the right things, if we behave well enough, if we avoid certain sins, if we do our part. Baptism, then, can start to feel like a kind of probationary contract – one mistake away from being revoked: God has done God’s part, and now the pressure is on us not to mess it up.

Which is why renewing our baptismal vows can feel a little heavy. We hear those promises, and if we’re paying attention, we immediately think, How in the world can I possible live up to all of this? What happens when I don’t?

That question is precisely why Matthew gives us this strange, unsettling scene at the River Jordan.

John knows what his baptism is for – sinners stepping into a muddy river for the forgiveness of sins, and Jesus certainly doesn’t belong in that category.  So when Jesus comes to be baptized, John tries to stop him. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” In other words: this is out of order. This doesn’t compute. This isn’t how holiness works.

And Jesus responds, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

In St. Matthew’s Gospel, righteousness doesn’t mean being morally impressive. It means being faithfully aligned with God’s saving purpose. Jesus steps into the water not because he needs repentance, but because we do. He goes where sinners go. He stands where broken people stand. From the very beginning, he refuses to save us from a distance.

Jesus stands with sinners so that sinners may stand with him.

And it is there, in that muddy, ordinary water – that God speaks delight.

God’s delight is not a reward for spiritual success. It is a declaration of identity. God calls Jesus his beloved son before Jesus does anything.

For some of us, this image of God as Father, followed by words like beloved and delight, doesn’t seem to make sense in light of our relationship with our earthly father.  For some, this fatherly relationship brings up difficult memories and emotions.  Think of the ridiculousness of the father in the story of the Prodigal Son.  The son went out and whored himself out and wasted his inheritance before his father even died, and after all of that, the Father literally ran out to meet him when he returned home.  God the Father’s love for us is absolutely ridiculous and unfathomable.

This scriptural metaphor doesn’t mean that all human fathers reflect God faithfully.  On the flip side, God’s delight is not dependent on our having had a perfect experience of love in this life.  This promise is for all ofus. And it is precisely because human love is imperfect that baptism does not rest on our strength, but on the faithfulness of the God who meets us in the water.

In the waters of baptism, God does not say, “Let’s see how faithful you are, and then we’ll talk.” In baptism, God speaks to us first. Claims us first. Loves us first.

The early Church had to learn this the hard way, as St. Luke reminds us in the book of Acts.  Peter, standing in the house of Cornelius, has a realization: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” Peter is converted not by an argument, but by the Spirit showing up where he never expected.

God’s delight is wider than Peter imagined. God’s grace moves faster than the Church is usually comfortable with. And suddenly it becomes clear that baptism is not something reserved for those who behave a certain way, but a free gift given to all who ask – especially the worst of sinners.

Because if God delights before achievement, then the Church cannot turn baptism into a test of worthiness. And if God shows no partiality, then baptism dismantles every hierarchy of human value we try to construct – racial, economic, moral, cultural. The font is the great leveler of human equality.

Which brings us to the vows we are about to renew.

Listen closely to what we actually promise – and how we promise it. We don’t say, “I will, because I am strong enough to do it on my own.” We say, again and again, “I will, with God’s help.”

These three words – with God’s help – tell the truth about us, and about God. The Christian life isn’t about us choosing to do good on our own, it is about cooperative grace – God’s grace at God’s initiative, sustained by God’s mercy, lived out in fragile and broken human lives.

And that means these vows are not conditions of God’s delight. They describe what the Christian life looks like when you already know you are loved.

We don’t resist evil to make God love us. We resist evil because we are already loved. We don’t seek Christ in all persons to earn our place in the Church. We do it because Christ has already claimed us as his own. We don’t act justly and love mercy[1] to impress God. We do it because God’s unconditional love for us is so overwhelming that we can’t help but share it with those around us.

God’s delight does not remove our responsibility, it makes obedience something we can actually begin to attempt. It gives us the courage to repent when we fall. The freedom to tell the truth about ourselves and the world. The strength to love our neighbors as ourselves. The humility to keep trying, even when we fail.

And so we return today to the font, and in so doing, we remember who we are. We are standing again in the muddy waters where heaven was opened. And before we promise anything, God has already spoken.

You are my beloved. With you, I am well pleased. Amen.

[1] Micah 6:8 (NRSV)