Saving Solidarity - Sermon for the Baptism of the Lord (January 11, 2026)

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 42:1–9 | Psalm 29 | Acts 10:34–43 | ​Matthew 3:13–17

“Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.” (Acts 10:34-36).
 
Today, the first Sunday after Epiphany, we celebrate a milestone moment in the earthly life of Jesus Christ our Lord: His baptism by John in the Jordan River. This is the moment that marks the start of our Lord’s public ministry… when He begins to reveal to the world the Good News of the Kingdom of God… preaching, and healing, and driving out demons… showing us God’s ways up close… opposing religious hypocrisy… and ultimately, giving up His life at the cross… dying and rising again to save all those who place our faith in Him.
 
But the baptism of the Lord is more than simply the starting point for the rest of His glorious story. It also has its own significant things to say to us… about God, and His Son, about ourselves, and about all those around us… and it might even challenge the ways we think and talk about salvation. 

These days, many in our world seem to have some pretty strong ideas about how to set everything right… and it often boils down to some version of ‘let’s just get ride of those troublemakers! Let’s make some clear walls and divisions between us and them… let’s root them out of our communities… let’s shame them, and ridicule them… let’s intimidate and force them to serve our own interests… or even take up arms and turn to violence and bloodshed to definitively separate the ‘good guys’ from the ‘bad guys’… the righteous ones from the wicked.
 
Time and again, this simplified division of humankind into ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ gets framed as the conflict between good and evil… and so our ideas of God and God’s ways can easily get wrapped up and shaped by these familiar tensions, assuming that God must be on the side of ‘the good guys’, and equally eager to wipe out the wicked too. And we can believe this about God even when we’re not quite sure which category we belong to ourselves.   
 
Thinking back to my own childhood, even though I had grown up in the Church, and believed what I was taught about God and His good ways, I was still pretty convinced that God had it out for me. That I was always just one misstep… one sin away from an eternity of torment. That God was eagerly watching and waiting for me to mess up so that He could scratch my name off of His list. And that sense of fear hung over and clouded every aspect of my faith, and how I lived day by day.
 
And when it came time for me to be baptized at the age of fifteen, that sense of dread grew even greater. Somehow I had come to see baptism as sort of my last shot at being ‘good enough’ for God. That it was my last chance to receive forgiveness, and have my slate wiped clean, so to speak… but if I sinned again… (and spoiler alert: I have sinned again since then… ) then I really would be done for.  
 
And I mean, my fifteen-year-old logic didn’t seem so far fetched at the time. And these fears and ways of thinking might even sound familiar to some of us here today. Because if God was just on the side of ‘the good guys’, and ‘the enemy of wicked sinners’, as I had imagined, then what other conclusion should I have come to? The story becomes pretty simple: be a ‘good guy’, and God will have your back. Be a ‘bad guy’, and you’re just out of luck. 

But the baptism of Jesus the Lord calls this whole simplified story I had believed into question… and it offers us instead the Good News of a Saviour.
 
In our Gospel reading today, St. Matthew tells us that Jesus of Nazareth was among the crowds of Judeans coming to be baptised by John at the Jordan River, responding to his message of repentance, and seeking for the mercy of the Living God. But when Jesus draws near to be baptized, John is not on board, and even tries to stop Him, rightly recognizing Jesus as the long awaited Messiah, the Saviour, the One sent by God to turn the hearts of His people back to the LORD, and to rescue them from all their enemies, bringing God’s good Kingdom at last.  
 
John rightly saw that Jesus had no need of repentance… that Jesus did not need to be turned back to God, and be forgiven… He was already fully in line with God’s ways.

“I need to be baptized by you,” John says to Jesus, “and do you come to me?” (Matthew 3:14).
 
But Christ responds to John: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” (Matthew 3:15). This was the way Jesus would fulfill all righteousness. This is how Jesus would go about making everything right: not by separating Himself from us sinners… but by standing with us in complete solidarity… by binding Himself to us in our sorry state, and sharing the fate of those whose only hope lies in God’s mercy… facing the waves of our judgment and death right there with us… in order to raise us up again with Him.
 
Because the baptism of Jesus is not only about what happened by the banks of the Jordan River. It is the beginning of a life completely devoted to God and God’s ways that would continually carry on this same beautiful but unexpected story of solidarity with sinners… of drawing near to them, to bring God’s mercy and grace up close to those who desperately needed it, not shying away from their darkness and sin, but seeking to bring them true freedom… taking their hands and leading them into the ways of peace… even when it means challenging and calling out the things that keep us in spiritual chains.
 
And this saving solidarity with sinners ultimately led Jesus to take up the cross, to take upon Himself the sins of the whole world, and freely accept this agonizing, humiliating, and truly brutal death to fully share the fate of all those who deserve it… and to rise again to freely give all those who trust in Him the resurrection life of God that none of us could ever possibly earn for ourselves. 
 
The journey to the cross begins in earnest in the waters of the Jordan River, as Jesus choses to stand in solidarity with sinners… binding Himself in baptism to those who know that they’re not good enough.
 
And it is in this very first act of solidarity with sinners, St. Matthew tells us, that Jesus is proclaimed to be God’s beloved Son, with whom the Father is well pleased. It’s not in His separation from the wicked, but in His drawing near to them in faithfulness and mercy that Jesus is shown to be completely in line with the heart of the Father… and enacting the Living God’s intentions and ways in the world.
 
The story of Jesus stepping into the waters of baptism… the story that leads us, step by step, straight to the cross, and the Good News of Easter morning, shows us clearly that God is not simply on the side of the ‘good guys’, whomever we might think they are at any given moment. No, in Jesus our crucified and risen Saviour, we see that God Himself stands with sinners… in solidarity… not to ignore or enable our sins, but to save us from them. To break the power of wickedness over us, and set us free for something completely different: for a life not bound by our fears, and divisions, and prejudices, and violence… but the life of God’s mercy… and forgiveness… and love… and hospitality, not just offered to us, but to all.
 
Because the Gospel is not a story of ‘good guys’ vs. ‘bad guys’. It’s not about ‘us’ vs. ‘them’. The Gospel is the Good News that Jesus our Risen Saviour is not the Lord of some… but the Lord of all.
 
This is what St. Peter came to discover in our second reading today from the book of Acts, and the world-changing encounter that God’s Holy Spirit guided him into at the house of Cornelius.
 
Now this passage deserves a lot more time and attention than we can take to discuss it this morning, but even a quick glance at it offers us a sense of the powerful implications of the great scope and scale and reach of the Good News of Jesus… back then, and today.
 
In brief, St. Peter the faithful apostle of Jesus Christ, and a life-long observant Jew, was led by God to the house of Cornelius, a Gentile. And not just any Gentile: Cornelius was a Roman army officer… a representative of the armed forces of the fierce Empire that had swallowed up not just Peter’s homeland, but what may have seemed like the whole world. As it turns out though, this Roman officer was also someone who earnestly sought to serve the Living God, who had treated the nearby Israelite community kindly, and who was told by an angel to seek out Peter, and listen to what Peter had to say.
 
And through Cornelius, St. Peter puts two and two together, and finally understands, as he puts it: “that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10:34-35). In other words, God was not just on Israel’s side… God was after the hearts and lives of the Gentiles as well. God’s saving love was not divided, or reserved for one tribe or nation over another. Anyone who fears Him… who reveres Him, and does what is right is welcome to the party… because as St. Peter was now beginning to see Jesus Christ “is Lord of all” (Acts 10:36).
 
Peter goes on to tell them the story of Jesus, and Cornelius and his whole household believe it, and immediately they receive the same outpouring of the Holy Spirit that the Apostles experienced at Pentecost. And these Gentiles, these former strangers, and even potential enemies are embraced as brothers and sisters, and baptized into the family of God in Jesus’ name.
 
The point is this: if the Living God is at work actively drawing people like Cornelius, a Gentile Roman army officer, into the family of believers in Jesus’ name, then who wouldn’t God welcome? So many of the clear categories that St. Peter was used to seeing the world through were being shattered… and by God’s Spirit Himself! So, from now on, instead of writing off this or that group as beyond God’s concern, or mercy… St. Peter and the rest of the Church had to start seeing everyone through the light of the Good News of Jesus Christ, and the salvation He has achieved for our world through His solidarity with sinners.

And so, our question this morning is this: if Jesus our Saviour is Lord of all, and He stands in solidarity with sinners to save them… what does that mean for you and I today?
 
Well, for starters, it means that even in our moments of weakness, and failures, as those beloved by God, who sent His Son to stand with sinners like us in solidarity as our Saviour… we are invited to draw near in faith and to cling to Jesus always, so that His Spirit can helps us to die to our old sinful ways, and rise again to share in Christ’s new life forever. Far from the fear and shame that kept that fifteen-year-old Rob trembling, in Jesus we know that God truly has our back… that He is eager to stand by us, eager to save us. No matter who we are, where we come from, or what we have done, He longs to draw us near.
 
But that goes the same for everyone else too! Even for those who we can’t stand… for those who do things we can’t possibly support… for those who seem to be tearing down everything we think is worth building up, or building up everything we think is desperately needing to be torn down. Those we are tempted to categorize as ‘the bad guys’… and who make it really easy to walk away from.
 
The Good News of Jesus is for them too… and Christ Jesus our Saviour calls us to love them too. 
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Not to blindly support, or quietly accept, or tolerate everything that they do. Not to remain silent when we have a chance to speak needed truth. Not to ignore injustice, and passively allow evil to have its way… but like Jesus our Lord, who stood by us when we were sinners to save us, and with His Holy Spirit at work in us, we are called to be open for God to make the Good News of His beloved Son known to them too through our lives… through everything we say, and everything we do… to stand with all those around us in God’s love even when we have to stand against them for a time… so that they might come to know that Jesus stands with them too to be their Saviour forever… knowing now that no one is beyond hope, because of God’s beloved Son, the Saviour and Lord of all. Amen.