In the Beginning - WADE IN THE WATER

In the Beginning… 

In the very beginning— before light, before land, before anything— there was water.

Deep. Formless. Chaotic. And alive with possibility.

Scripture tells us that the Spirit of God hovered over those waters—a breath,  a wind, a loving presence waiting to bring something beautiful into being.

And then God began to speak. God separated the waters above from the waters below. God pulled dry land out of the deep. Out of water, God formed a world.

From the first page of the Bible to the very last, water is elemental. 

In the story of Genesis, water is the raw material of creation.

In the book of Revelation,  the River of Life, Flows through the heart of God’s restored city, watering the Tree of Life, bringing healing to the nations.

Water is elemental to the story of the world, to life itself. 

And this truth is written into our very bodies. Our bodies contain the same percentage of water as the earth’s surface. 70%

All of human health and well-being, as well as the health of all living things around us, derives from and depends upon the health of our waters. 

Humans breathe out carbon dioxide, which the oceans breathe in. And the oxygen the seas exhale, we inhale.

Every expression of climate change is somehow related to water. Every drought, every flood, every melting glacier reminds us: the health of our bodies and the health of this planet are bound together by water. 

It’s no wonder,  then, that water—like bread and cup, two ordinary elements—is crucial to our first sacrament of baptism.

When God wants to mark a new beginning, God often uses water.

Which brings us to today’s story—Jesus baptism in the Jordan River. 

In all four Gospel accounts, Jesus’ ministry is prefaced by the ministry of John the Baptizer around the Jordan River.

And in all four Gospels, it is along the banks of the Jordan that Jesus’ ministry begins. 

The Jordan River runs down the eastern edge of the Holy Land.

Its tributaries connect communities that, over the centuries, have gone by many names—

Canaan, Samaria, Judea—and today lie along Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory the West Bank. 

The Jordan River  has always been a borderland—a place where different worlds meet, overlap, and sometimes conflict. 

So when John chooses the Jordan River for his ministry, it isn’t just practical. It’s purposeful. 

Those shores were rich with the stories of his people’s ancestors. 

In the book of Joshua, the people of Israel crossed the Jordan as they stepped in the land of promise,  leaving behind the trauma of enslavement and decades of wilderness wandering. 

For the generations that followed, the Jordan symbolized deliverance.

It meant the fulfillment of God’s promises. 

It has meant freedom.

It has meant a fresh start.

So when John calls people into those waters, he is inviting them into renewal—a chance for the people to realign themselves with the ways of their Creator. 

John was not gentle with the religious leaders of his day, and he was a harsh critic of self-righteousness people who felt that their ancestry or their status earned them special privileges with God.

This reminds me of an interview I recently watched with the current leader of the KKK. The young man interviewing has clearly listened generously, and they two have established up a good rapport. But towards the end of the younger man shifts his tone. He gets very serious saying, that he felt compelled, as a fellow Christian, to urge the klansman to repent. 

European ancestry does not make this klansman closer to God. But his self-righteous beliefs caused him to treating others as lesser than. His self-righteousness caused him to abandon God’s Ways.

In a similar sense, John proclaims that being children of Abraham is not enough. What matters for righteousness is not ancestry, but aligning our lives with God’s ways of justice, mercy, and peace.

This signaled an opening up of God's covenant to people beyond the Israelites.  

And alongside this message of repentance, John announces that God is about to act.

A Messiah is coming.

One who will baptize not just with water, but with the Holy Spirit, 

A reckoning— a renewal—is close at hand.

The people respond to John’s message. They come in droves. 

They wade into the waters of the Jordan, to acknowledge their shortfalls, and to begin again. 

And from the crowds, Jesus steps forward.

At first, John hesitates.

“How can I baptize you?” he asks.

In Matthew’s Gospel, John clearly knows who Jesus is. Not just that he recognizes his cousin, but that John already recognizes him as the foretold Messiah. 

But Jesus insists that it is the right thing.

And so John relents, baptizing Jesus in the River Jordan. 

Why does Jesus get baptized? According to Matthew’s account, Jesus says it is right, in order to “to fulfill all righteousness.”  

Righteousness here does not mean rule-keeping.

In Matthew’s Gospel, righteousness means living fully into God’s saving, restoring work—

the kind of life Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount:

merciful, humble, hungry for justice, committed to love.

It means living fulling into the Ways of God. 

As one commentator puts it, Jesus is placing himself “in solidarity with John’s renewal movement.” 

He is choosing to stand with all those longing for God to set things right.

In stepping into the Jordan, Jesus is saying: I am with you. My work is a continuation of this movement. I am here for God’s work of putting the world back together.

More than just being “the script needs to be followed,” Jesus' submission to John’s baptism, this act of solidarity with all those preparing for the reign of heaven, is in keeping with his teaching and ministry. 

That the the character of God’s reign is righteousness. 

Not a righteousness based on identity or rule-following, but a righteousness thirsty for God’s justice and mercy to reign here among us. 

And so together, Jesus and John wade into those cold waters, 

And John baptizes Jesus in the Jordan—

the river of freedom,

the river of new beginnings.

And just as Jesus had been baptized, as he is coming up from the water, catching his breath,  suddenly the heavens opened up and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.

And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

We often hear this moment as God revealing Jesus’ true identity.

 And that’s right.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, it is this scene at the Jordan—rather than the visit of the Magi—that the day of Epiphany celebrates: the unveiling of who Jesus truly is.

But this moment is doing something more, too. It’s not just about who Jesus is. It’s about how God’s work unfolds in the world.

Jesus begins his ministry not with accomplishment, not with miracles, not with success— but with the assurance of his belovedness.

Before his temptation in the wilderness. 

Before the long road of teaching and healing.

Before his arrest, persecution, and murder by the state. 

Before any of that, Jesus hears God speak this truth over him: You are my beloved. And I delight in you.

That is why, during the celebration of a baptism, I read aloud these words: 

“In the waters of baptism God claims us and calls us Beloved.” 

We must also begin with a message of God’s love for us. 

For it is God’s endlessly surprising, rule-breaking, empowering love that is the the Grace through which we are saved. 

Last year, a friend of mine was sent to prison. 

For this story, we will call him Freddy. 

Freddy had made some terrible choices. 

He’d hurt some people. 

And not for the first time. 

This was the second time he’d ended up in prison before the age of 21.

He was drowning in shame.

Not just because of what he had done—

but because it felt like proof of who he was—a screw up. 

As his release date approached, I wrote him a letter. 

In it, I asked him this simple question: Freddy, what does your fresh start look like? 

That question has stayed with me.Because a fresh start is what, for many, a baptism promises.

A new story, where your future is not determined by the past.

A new commitment, to follow in Jesus way. 

This doesn’t just happen in the waters of baptism--especially for those of us who were baptized as children, but in a renewal of our baptismal vows. 

So, I want to ask you the same question today: What does a fresh start look like for you?

You may not be trying to straighten your life out, like Freddy was.

You may not be carrying labels like “convict” or “criminal.”

But most of us are carrying something.

Labels that others put on you. 

Labels you’ve learned to put on yourself. 

Labels you can’t seem to shake off.

Like…

DAMAGED GOODS

PROBLEM CHILD

BAD PARENT

FAILURE

SINNER

ALONE

Perhaps these labels carry with them shame, perhaps blame and resentment, or perhaps fear at starting again. 

I think we all carry with us the failure of a new thing. A fresh beginning. That new years resolution. That new routine. 

But with that fear, is also profound hope. 

Recently, I learned about a ministry called Deep Time, whose mission is “celebrating, employing, and creating spiritual community for people impacted by incarceration.” 

In a recent video, participants—each of them formerly incarcerated—talked about a reflection they use called “River of Life.”

 It’s a simple but powerful exercise. You tell the story of your life by drawing a river.

As you draw, you’re invited to ask:

 Where are the bends and turns—those moments when everything shifted?

 Did the river change slowly, or all at once? Where did rocks or boulders fall in—obstacles, losses, or life-altering events?

 Where did the water rush forward with strength, and where did it slow to a trickle?

One participant said the exercise helped him see what he was ready to let go of— to release into the current and allow the river to carry away. Things like the shame of being incarcerated.

He said, “I don’t feel bad talking about it anymore. I’m a felon. But I’m also a lot of other things.”

I keep thinking about that.

I wonder what Jesus let go of when he stepped into the waters of the Jordan?

And I wonder what we might be ready to release—what we might allow the current of God’s grace to carry out of our present until it no longer defines us, but becomes part of a past that has been healed.

So this week, as we go back out into a world marked by violence and fear, may we anchor our weary souls in the call we received at our baptism— a call that Scripture makes crystal clear.

We are called to love God. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are called to pursue justice and peace, to serve all people, and to follow the way Jesus set before us.

And in the midst of our daily loves, may we notice Gods love attending to our weary souls. 

May our recognition of that love enliven our joy, ignite our passion for justice, and orient our hearts towards mercy.

So that we do not go out into the world with hearts hardened like ice, but with warm, beating hearts brim with the cool rushing waters of God’s healing love.  So that we may become vessels of God’s flowing grace. 

Sermon preached by Rev. Delaney Piper on 1.11.25.