Lectionary for Jan. 12, 2025
Baptism of Our Lord
First Sunday after Epiphany
Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 29;
Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
I’m reading Laura Smith’s Holy Care for the Whole Self as I work toward healing from some of the topsy-turvy changes in my family’s life over the last few years. In her book, Smith repeatedly insists that a key toward healing and living healthy lives is to reflect on God’s parental care for us. Think of the best human parent you can imagine—maybe your own folks or from a movie or book. God is infinitely better than that! We need to be reminded of that.
Such a reminder helped me during a time of much soul-searching. While finishing my master’s thesis, I worked at an organic tomato and mango farm in southern Israel. I wasn’t sure what was next for me professionally or romantically. I was awash in self-doubt and fear. I remember breaking down crying while dressing tomato vines and listening to “I Remember,” a song from Enter the Worship Circle. The chorus proclaims: “I remember the day you called my name, you said I was your child.” That was exactly what I needed to hear from God: I am called and claimed as God’s child.
This week, the lectionary texts tell of God calling and claiming God’s kids.
Isaiah 43 speaks to the exiles of God’s people, who have been carried to a land that wasn’t their own. God promises to rescue them from their sojourns and bring them back to the promised land. As if that weren’t enough, God insists that the people know that God is passionately pursuing their freedom and restoration because they are God’s children.
Verses 1 and 7 bookend this pericope by declaring that God formed and made God’s people and called them by name. In the first verse they are claimed by God as “mine,” and in the seventh they are called by God’s own name. Make no mistake, this is family language of a parent saying, “I made you, and I am responsible for you. I will take care of you because you are mine.”
So we don’t miss the point, God confesses to those who will be redeemed: “You are precious in my sight … I love you!” (4). God will rescue God’s “sons and daughters” (6) because they are God’s children. God is crazy about God’s kids and, more than any human parent, wants to redeem them/us from the consequences of their/our sinful actions. Central to God’s identity here is a loving, active parent who is coming to rescue beloved children.
God proclaims over each of us at our baptism—and every day after—the word that God proclaimed over Jesus at his baptism: “You are my beloved child, in you I am well pleased.”
When we fast-forward to the baptism of Jesus, we know what God is going to say because we already know who God is. God is a gracious, loving father who delights in God’s children when we are faithful and rescues us when we are faithless. Jesus is, of course, the most faithful and righteous human ever to walk the earth, because he is God’s kid in a way that no one else is. So, when Jesus chooses to be baptized again (he would have undergone many ritual baths in his life before that point, at least before entering the temple), heaven split open. As a proud father unable to contain Godself, God proclaimed: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased!” (Luke 3:22).
Then the Spirit, as a dove, floated down and landed on Jesus. There are all sorts of pneumological interpretations of what this means, but whatever else, it certainly signifies that God’s Spirit wanted to physically touch Jesus at the moment of baptism. God’s love was made manifest visually (heaven opened), aurally (“this is my beloved son!”) and physically (Spirit landing). God’s parental emotions of love and pride were on full display!
What does this mean? God is delighted to call, rescue and rejoice over God’s kids. And, as we read last week, all those who receive Jesus and believe (and follow) that he is the messiah, God gives the right to become adopted as children of God (John 1:12). If God is a doting and delighted father (and God is!), and if Jesus leads us into God’s family as beloved children (and he does!), then God proclaims over each of us at our baptism—and every day after—the word that God proclaimed over Jesus at his baptism: “You are my beloved child, in you I am well pleased.” Those words rescued me from a difficult and depressing time. And they offer hope to all of us. Our Heavenly Father loves us dearly!
