1st Sunday After the Epiphany

Epiphany 1A: Isaiah 42:1-9; Psalm 29

Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17

The Rev'd Stephen Siptroth

January 11, 2026

Today’s Gospel brings us to the banks of the Jordan River. Jesus comes to John to be baptized—and John is uneasy.  He knows who Jesus is.  He knows that power usually protects itself, distances itself, rises above the crowd.  But Jesus does something utterly unexpected.

He steps into the water.  Not above it.  Not behind guards.  Not separated from the vulnerable.

He steps into the same muddy waters as those whom John baptized before him.  He steps into the same waters, asking to be baptized, to be included in John’s story of resistance against a coercive, death-dealing power of empire.

Today, we hear our Gospel story in the aftermath of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis. Renee Nicole Good was killed.  A community already living with fear is shaken again.  Another unjust murder at the hands of state actors – only six blocks away from where George Floyd was killed, also by state actors.  Families who live under the daily threat of detention and deportation have been reminded, brutally, that their bodies are considered expendable, their lives negotiable, their presence suspect.  All of us are reminded that the empire deals in the forces of death, ready to eliminate anyone without hesitation.

The Church must speak plainly: what we witnessed is an injustice.It is a sin against human dignity.It is a violation of the sacred worth God has placed in every person.

The Gospel does not allow us to spiritualize this moment away.  Jesus did not come to the Jordan to bless systems of violence, to turn a blind eye to them, or to excuse them in the name of state security.  He did not come to sanctify the power of the state when it turns deadly.  Jesus came to stand in the water with those who are watched, policed, suspected, and harmed by the state.

The state exists to enforce borders.  Jesus came to dismantle them, to transcend them.  Jesus came to place his body between the violent forces of empire and the vulnerable, the marginalized, the oppressed, all of God’s people.

The Jordan River is a borderland.  And Jesus deliberately steps into it—not to claim authority, but to claim solidarity.  He places his body where bodies are already at risk.  This matters today.  Because authoritarian systems always justify themselves by claiming necessity.  Authoritarian systems tell us and want us to believe:

This is just how order is maintained.

This is regrettable but unavoidable.

This is for our own safety.

This is justified.

But the baptism of Jesus exposes that lie.  God’s way does not begin with force.  God’s way begins with belovedness.

When Jesus rises from the water, the heavens open—not to endorse violence, but to interrupt it. God speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

God does not say, “This is the enforcer of my way.”God says, “This is my Beloved.”

God still speaks those words. 

God still speaks those words over every person targeted by ICE, by the state, by systems of fear.  God still speaks those words over immigrants and asylum seekers.  God still speaks those words over families who fear a knock at their front door.  God still speaks those words over a woman whose life was taken by another human being claiming authority but denying her humanity.  God still speaks those words: My beloveds.

In the Gospel, Jesus’s baptism sets him on a collision course with the state.  He will heal without permission.  He will forgive without authorization.  He will gather people without regard for legal status, purity codes, or political or religious boundaries.  And for that, he will be executed by an authoritarian regime that could not tolerate a Reign built on mercy rather than control.

So, when we witness violence carried out in the name of enforcement – when state power kills rather than protects – the Church cannot be silent.  Silence is not neutrality.  Silence is complicity.

And neither is despair our calling.  Our hope today is not naïve optimism.  Our hope is baptismal hope.  The hope that says: God has already stepped into these waters.  God has already named the vulnerable as beloved.  God has already exposed the lie that violence is salvific.  God has already joined us in all of the muddy waters we wade through, to be with us and to remind us that we are beloved.  God has already joined us in the midst of the violence we inflict on one another to remind us of the power of love.  God has already joined us to remind us who we are and whose we are – all of us, God’s beloveds.  

In our baptism, we were not commissioned to defend injustice.  We were not anointed to excuse cruelty.  We were claimed as beloved, and we were sent to live as if belovedness, not fear, is the deepest truth of all. 

The Heavens are still open.  The Spirit has not withdrawn.  God’s voice still speaks, over Minneapolis, over immigrant communities, over all who stand up to the violence of the state, over a wounded people: You are my beloveds. 

May that truth strengthen us to resist whatever dehumanizes.  May it give us courage to stand where Jesus stands.  And may it carry us forward, even now, especially now, in hope and in love.

Amen.