1/11/2025 - Baptism of the Lord - Beloved, Begun
God is good. All the time. All the time. God is good.
Before Jesus goes on his healing journey—
Before he teaches in parables or confronts the powers of his day–-
Before he walks toward Jerusalem—
He goes down into the water.
Matthew is deliberate here. Jesus does not wander into the Jordan by accident. He comes intentionally, and John h resists him: “I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?”
John understands baptism as repentance—as a turning, as a change. It assumes need.
Jesus’ response reframes everything:
“Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
In Matthew’s gospel, righteousness is not moral perfection. It is covenantal faithfulness—right relationship lived publicly. To fulfill righteousness is not to separate from sinners, but to stand with them, faithfully, where they are.
So Jesus enters the water not to perform holiness, but to begin a life shaped by solidarity.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt called this natality—the truth that human dignity begins not with accomplishment, but with birth. She wrote, “The new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew.”
At the Jordan, the gospel gives that truth flesh. Jesus begins not by acting, but by being named.
And heaven opens.
The voice does not issue commands or conditions. It names an identity: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
The Greek word eudokēsa speaks of delight—joy in just being, not approval after inspection. In just being.
Belovedness comes before all else.
Belovedness comes before usefulness.
Isaiah had already taught us to expect this: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.”
Delight comes first. And then comes justice—but not the justice the world expects.
“He will not cry or lift up his voice… a bruised reed he will not break.”
Isaiah insists that God’s justice never requires the sacrifice of human dignity.
The servant does not advance righteousness by crushing the vulnerable or silencing the weak.
Justice that wounds dignity is not God’s justice.
Matthew echoes this vision in the Spirit’s descent. The Spirit comes not as fire or force, but as a dove—hovering over the waters, recalling the Spirit at creation. This is new creation language. A beginning blessed, not compelled.
Arendt wrote, “The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, ‘natural’ ruin is ultimately the fact of natality.”
Hope does not come because we finally control the world…
Hope comes because new beginnings keep arriving within it—each one fragile, each one demanding care.
At the Jordan, God does not overpower the world’s brokenness.
God entrusts a beginning to it. And that beginning is named Beloved.
And this naming is public.
Jesus is baptized in a crowd. The voice speaks aloud in a crowd: “This is my Son.”
This is revelation not just for Jesus, but for the community.
From the very start, belovedness is something meant to be recognized, honored, and protected by others.
This is where, I believe, our baptismal vows become concrete.
When we reaffirm our baptismal vows, we are not simply recalling a past event. We are remembering who we are—and whose we are. In a world that constantly reshapes our loyalties and tries to stake claim on our worth, baptism calls us back to a deeper identity: beloved, claimed, and sent.
To reaffirm these vows is to renew a living commitment. We renounce all that diminishes life—not only in ourselves, but in the systems we benefit from and the silences we keep.
We turn again toward Christ, and we promise, with God’s help, to seek justice, love mercy, and walk in the light together.
And when we promise to respect the dignity of every human being, we are making one of the most demanding vows the church asks.
This vow refuses every system that ranks human worth.
It refuses the lie that some lives must justify their existence.
It refuses the reduction of people to productivity, legal-ity, innocence, or usefulness.
To respect dignity is not merely to feel compassion. It is to structure our common life so that bruised reeds are not broken—so that the dimly burning wicks of the poor, the imprisoned, the refugee, the immigrant, the disabled, the aging, the unborn, the forgotten are protected rather than dismissed.
It means we do not ask first, What can this person contribute?
But rather, what does this life require to flourish?
Arendt warned that when societies lose their reverence for beginnings, they become capable of extraordinary cruelty. Baptism stands as the church’s resistance to that cruelty. It insists that dignity is not granted by the state, the market, or even moral achievement—but by God.
Isaiah says the servant will be “a covenant to the people, a light to the nations.” This light does not expose people for punishment; it reveals them as worthy of care. It opens blind eyes not to shame, but to see one another clearly.
At the Jordan, God does not tell Jesus what to do.
God tells him who he is.
Beloved.
Delighted in.
Begun.
And from that beginning flows a life that heals without humiliating, resists without dehumanizing, and loves without ranking worth.
So as we reaffirm our baptism today, we do so not to prove our faithfulness, but to recommit ourselves to a world where every beginning is protected, every body matters, and every life is treated as beloved.
Before we act, we are named.
Before we judge, we remember our own belovedness.
Before we attempt to heal the world, we commit—together—to respect the dignity of every human being.
May it be so. Amen.
