Sermon for Baptism of Our Lord January 11, 2026
Sermon for January 11th
When I was little, nothing could make me feel better when I was sick like a nice, hot bath. The waters of the bath felt like it soaked into my very pores and relaxed a body aching from illness. Usually, after days of coughing and sneezing, I could finally rest after a hot bath. Even better were the times when I was sick at my grandpa and grandmas house. After the bath, I would wrap myself in warm, thick blankets and sit with my Grandpa. In warmth of the blankets and love of Grandpa’s embrace, no sickness stood a chance.
And there was nothing quite like a bath after a hot day working on the farm. Sweaty, dusty, and sometimes bloodied, the hot shower cleaned off the filth and unwove knots in muscles better than any masseuse. There were times I would drag my tired body into the shower, sure that I would spend the rest of the day playing video games and resting, only to have a renewed burst of energy that had me making plans with my friends and staying out way too late. The water rejuvenated both body and spirit.
The most refreshing thing in the world is a drink of water when you feel like you have squeezed every ounce of water from your body. It’s like adding fuel back to your body, which in essence, is what you are doing. As the sweat and life pour out of you, the water returns that life and keeps the body going.
Thus water, whether we drink it or bath in it, offers us life. What then could act as any better symbol than water in our baptism, that moment when God’s love prevails in our life, once and always.
Just as water works in our life, as was mentioned earlier, so do the waters of baptism operate. When we are sick with sin and the life that sin leads us to, then the waters of baptism wash us clean. God’s love, operative in those waters, washes us clean. When we feel filthy with guilt and anxiety over what we have done and what we have failed to do, the waters of baptism wash away the guilt and show us a rather startling truth. Under the grim of guilt, angst, and regret, we find that we are still a child of God. We are still the beautiful creation that God made and called good. We are still the one that God loves with a reckless, radical abandon. We can forget that, when we feel sickened by sin and guilty over the life we have lived. But God has not forgotten. We are always loved, and when we are scrubbed clean, we can get a glimpse of what it is that God sees when God looks upon us.
And baptism offers life. Its that constant well spring of life that the woman at the well was offered by Christ and which we are promised through baptism and by God’s love. It is our strength when we don’t have strength. It is our hope when we would otherwise feel hopeless. It is our grace, when we feel like only anger has any place in this world. It is love, and a desire to serve when some days it would be easier to run away from any idea of service.
This beautiful gift is what we remember this day as we celebrate the fact that Christ himself was also baptized, though not for the same reasons that we are baptized. We are baptized for all the reasons above and as an unfailing reminder that we are forever tethered to God’s love, even when we might believe otherwise.
Jesus was not baptized for the sake of being washed clean of his sin, or because his guilt and angst drove him away from God. He wasn’t baptized because he needed a forever reminder of being connected to God. He was baptized for the same reason that he did anything during his ministry, to enter the mortal experience and act as a bridge between the Holy and the mortal. He entered our baptism not for his sake, but for ours.
In Romans, Paul makes this statement.
Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.
When we say that Jesus entered the life of the world, this is not an embellishment or a metaphor. Christ entered the world. Christ entered our joys, our sorrows and our suffering. Christ even entered our dying.
It is in the waters of our baptism where we experience renewal and life, but we also experience the promise of new life. For Christ has entered these same waters, not for his sake, but for ours, to be connected to us and draw us into the love of God. Because of this, we have become bound up with Christ now and forever. Or, as Paul puts it, as we have been baptized into a death like his, so we will be raised to new life, just as Christ was.
What this day enables us to do is again give thanks for the ways in which we have been claimed by God. We don’t say these things to pay lip service to an ideal. We say these things because it has become our lived reality as a child of God. God is not distant and unknowable. God is right here, in the life we are living, and God’s love gives us the strength to keep going.
I think back on my time at my grandparent’s house, especially those moments when I was sick. To know the refreshing waters of a good hot bath was one thing, but to know that Grandpa and Grandma waited on the other side of that bath to wrap me up, to keep me warm, and to hold me firm in their love, was the true gift. So too with the waters of baptism. As a sign and symbol, those waters offer comfort. But it is in recognizing that waiting for us, in those waters and in our life, is God, ready to enfold us in love, that we come to know the true blessing of those words we speak during baptism, and any time we affirm our baptism. We are loved. Truly loved, with a love that cannot be taken from us. Like a child running to the Grandparent, seeking comfort and safety, so too do we run to God, knowing God is always there, arms open, ready again to enfold us in God’s everlasting love.
Amen