13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew 3:13-17
My sermon from Baptism of Our Lord Sunday (January 11, 2026) on Matthew 3:13-17.
*******
I’ll admit Jesus’ baptism to me has always been a bit of an odd duck when it comes to our church calendar. And that’s because why would the One who was there when the universe was made need to be reconciled to God in such a wet and public way? This episode in Jesus’ life has always been something the church has struggled with and we often describe it as something unlike what we experience when we’re connected to water and the Word. Yet for an event we imagine to be different, it’s sort of strange how we haven’t changed its name. The word we use for God’s public declaration that your story is now defined by something new remains tied to Jesus’ own being dunked in the Jordan River and hearing God’s proclamation of belovedness and grace. There is something to this practice of taking something ordinary like water and combining it with the extraordinary promises of God that continues to shape our faith. And so I wonder if we might focus less on the theological and spiritual reasons for Jesus’ baptism and instead reflect on how this moment in Jesus’ life might reveal who our God chooses to be.
And to do that, I’d like to use an insight from a resource I give to couples when they ask me to preside at their weddings. What I hand out is the book: “The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work” by John Gottman with Nan Silver. Gottman and his wife Julie have, for over three decades, studied how couples work. And this includes paying attention to couples when they’re in the honeymoon stage of their relationships as well as during times of stress and conflict. There is no one scientific formula every couple can follow which will guarantee a healthy and happy relationship. Yet there are practices we can apply to any relationship – marriage or otherwise – which can offer us more respect and care. One of the things in relationships Gottman describes is something he calls “a bid.” A bid is simply an action or word someone makes asking for their partner’s attention, affection, humor, or support. “Bids can be as minor as asking for a backrub or as significant as seeking help in carrying the burden when an aging parent is ill.” A bid can be a sigh while looking out a window or inviting someone to look at a video you saw or even asking for five minutes alone when you’re feeling overwhelmed. Bids are more than cries for attention and they are not opportunities where mindreading is at play. They are, instead, a request for our partner to do a physical, emotional, and mental turn towards us so we can feel loved, known, and valued. It’s in the bids we make to one another where trust is built and where relationships flourish. And while most relationship advice can often feel difficult to immediately apply since we regularly need to recognize how our hurts, expectations, and past relationships have shaped how we treat others, answering a bid is something anyone can do right now. It’s an invitation to pay attention and, even when you’re busy, put down the phone, turn towards your partner, and ask “what’s up?” when a sigh or a word or an invitation is offered. As Gottman wrote, “as comical as it may sound, romance is strengthened in the supermarket aisle when your partner asks, ‘Are we out of butter?’ and you answer, ‘I don’t know. Let me go get some just in case,’ instead of shrugging apathetically. It grows when you know your spouse is having a bad day at work and you take a few seconds out of your schedule to send him an encouraging text. In all of these instances, partners are making a choice to turn toward each other rather than away.” When we don’t take our everyday interactions for granted, we live out the fact that our relationships actually matter. And when our bids are constantly ignored, pushed aside, or met with defensiveness, it’s hard to not feel as if we’re lost and completely on our own.
Now there’s another reason why I think noticing bids matters and that’s because I think we’re surrounded by all kinds of things making bids for our attention. This is more than merely complaining about kids looking at their phones or how it takes hearing something eight times in eight different ways before we add some church thing to our personal calendars. Rather, the act of being alive feels as if it’s been reduced to something like creating content we then feed into computer algorithms which defines who we get to be. If we don’t post it, like it, announce it, or share it, then what we do or say has no value. Social capital is defined not by the trust we’ve built in small ways with those who God calls us to care for. It is, instead, all about whether we can send a notification out and get other people’s eyes to see what we’re up to. When too many acts include a gun in one hand and a phone in the other with the hope of making heartbreak viral, our bids are very broken. Bids are less about being in relationship with others and more demands that only one point of view, opinion, algorithm, or way of life actually matters. Yet it’s in the midst of this moment when our bids feel warped that we, in our readings today, meet Jesus when he appears as an adult for the very first time. Jesus’ early life is, for us, a mystery since only Luke provides any story of Jesus between the ages of 2 to 30. And Jesus’ arrival at this point in the story feels very un-Jesus like. He doesn’t perform a miracle; he doesn’t preach a sermon; he doesn’t heal anyone. All Jesus does is patiently wait for his turn to enter the waters. In terms of bids, he doesn’t seem to be doing anything. But this pause in the Jesus we expect invites us to reflect on how Jesus got here in the first place. And when we do that in light of his story in Matthew full of strange visitors, his Jewish identity, the impact of state-sponsored violence, and his flight to Egypt, we realize Jesus’ life was full of bids. In a world with high infant mortality, disease, poverty, war, and malnutrition, Jesus being able to leave the care of his parents and go into the wilderness was pretty amazing. And during his life, this Son of God made all kinds of bids for food, protection, care, and grace. The divine shouldn’t, I think, need to make the bids we do yet Jesus knew this is what life is all about. The bids we express for connection is something God embraced since being in relationship is who our God chooses to be. The God who as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit embodies a community of mutuality invites us to lay claim to the same. And rather than use force, violence, and coercive demands to turn us towards God, God did what God always does: showing up in bids big and small to let you know how loved you are. And while we don’t always recognize the bids God makes, the promise at the heart of your baptism – that you truly are wrapped up in the fullness of Jesus’s ongoing story – is a promise that never goes away. So I wonder if Jesus’ baptism can be less a theological conundrum and more a reminder that our relationships to one another and with God actually matters. And rather than dismissing bids or replacing them with attention-demanding content, we can let them be human and holy. Needing care, protection, and support is not the opposite of strength or independence. Instead it’s the life God chose and Jesus embraced in a ministry where God’s kingdom shone bright with wholeness, justice, forgiveness, and hope. And if Jesus was willing to do the hard work of making God’s love real in the world and cling to everything life brought his way, we who have been brought into his body through water, in word, and with faith – we get to do the same.
Amen.