Date: January 11, 2026

Readings: Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

Preacher: Sermon by Fr. Travis O'Brian

Baptism of the Lord                                                                                                                                   

HE CAME UP FROM THE WATER

             Today we celebrate the feast of the Baptism of the Lord as part of the season of Epiphany.  “Epiphany” means “manifestation.”  During this season, we concentrate on points in the life of Jesus wherein something new was brought to light, something was revealed, both of Jesus – who he is, his calling, his being as Emmanuel, God-with us – and thus too of the nature of reality and the love of God.  Isaiah says of God’s Messiah, “I have given you as a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out . . . from the prison those who sit in darkness.”  In the Baptism of Jesus, our eyes are opened to some new thing of God, in him and for us. “When Jesus had been baptized,” Matthew writes, “just as came up from the water. . . 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.”  Jesus saw and heard, confirmed in himself, a new way of being in relationship with God, and so all that is really real.

            The season of Epiphany challenges us to see newly – know differently, renovate our understanding of what is most real.  Because our vision of what is ultimately real about things determines how we relate to them; and how we relate to them determines the shape of the world.  The season of Epiphany summons us to see God’s being in the being of Christ Jesus.  Yet, as St John writes, “no one has ever seen God” (1:18).  We are to see, then, in Christ, the God no one can see.  What does this mean?  It demands, for one, a different way of understanding what it means to see.  It means, for two, that as we begin to see the world through the lens of the presence of God in Christ Jesus, all things will be for us transfigured; for then we will see them as holy, their true being beyond our grasp, gifts of the Love that is God.

            Let’s look at today’s scripture, the story of Jesus’ baptism.  John went into the wilderness, and called all Israel to a baptism of repentance in preparation for the coming of the Messiah, “for the kingdom of heaven,” he cried, “has come near.”  His call for repentance is a call for the people to return to the God they have turned away from, so that they might see and be ready to respond to the new thing God is preparing for them.  Jesus also goes out to be baptized by John.  But why?  What need did Jesus have for repentance?  Even John objected: “I need to be baptized by you, why are you coming to me?”  But Jesus answered, “Let it be so now.”  So he is baptized; and “just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him.”  Suddenly a new clarity is given to him.  Suddenly he sees the mystery of his being before him – and he seeks the desert “to be tempted by the devil,” which is to say, to test his new vision against Satan, governor of darkness. 

            The whole story is exceedingly strange.  A sort of mad man who eats grasshoppers dunks another man in a shallow bit of river – and the heavens open, voices sound, a Spirit descends, and the history of the world is summoned to a new course.  Suddenly something is made visible: by this wilderness liturgy, a new way of seeing and of being becomes possible.  The water washes, as it were, the eyes of Christ, who now sees in full who he is and must be.  We who follow are those who see at least glimpses what he saw: that he and the Father are one.  Except, of course, there is nothing to see, except a man, a fellow human being. 

We celebrate in this season of Epiphany the Spirit’s gift, who opens our eyes so that we might see what isn’t visible.  When we refuse the Spirit, when we insist that “all there is to see is what there is to see,” when we narrow reality to its graspable surfaces, when “mastery” is what we mean by “understanding,” we confine our lives to a kind of darkness – everything is dark that lies beyond our reach.  It is Satan, the tempter, who promises: “look, all of this can be yours, whatever you can see and grasp.”  The whole world, that is, you can make obedient to the force of your desire if only you narrow your perception of what is real.  Simply insist that all there is to see is what you can see, compute, manipulate, and you can turn everything to serve your own will alone: you can make yourself, in other words, as god.

            The water in which Jesus was baptized – what do we perceive water really is?  According to the world’s way of knowing, water is “really” H2O: a chemical compound necessary for organic life.  H2O is an increasingly valuable resource, one that wars will soon be fought over as they are now fought over oil.  If the US annexes Canada, a major motive will be access to that resource.  H2O is a commodity; we can own it, trade it, monetise it, feed it to furnaces to turn our engines and to frack gas from the shale.  To “see” water as “really” H2O is thus a first step toward mastering and conscripting it to serve our own ends – or rather, Satan’s ends.  For if all we can see is what we can see and grasp, the world narrows into something too small for us.  We seek power by controlling scarce resources.  Violence is inevitable.

            But in this sense, the water Jesus went down into, the water he came up from, was not H2O.  This water, the reality that Jesus gave himself to, was more than we can see, grasp, master, monetise.  The water of baptism is the element of the Holy Spirit, who we cannot see; this water is a vehicle of God: a mystery that holds us and to which we are beholden.  This water is holy.  It cannot be reduced to a resource.  This water tethers us to our bodies; and so to holy communion with the earth.  Water quenches all thirst, renews all life.  Water is the sign that the biological and the spiritual are intended together – if only we stay awake to the spirit.  As we give ourselves to this water, as Christ gave Himself to it, we begin to see and to know newly: that all things are full of the God we cannot see; a gift of the Love that gives us to be. 

            If water narrows for us into H2O, how can we see Christ’s body in a slip of bread?  How taste his blood in a sip of wine?  We find ourselves blind to Love’s presence, the holiness of things, God’s very being in the body of Christ Jesus.  I’m not suggesting we ought to unlearn that water is also H2O.  But I would go so far as to say that the future of the world depends on our learning to see again that H2O is not the whole, not the ultimate reality of water.  H2O itself is a window onto the mystery, a gift filled with the presence of God-for-us.  Insisting that H2O is the whole reality of water is leading us to see, understand, and relate to the world as an AI sees and relates: all things broken down to information, manipulatable, oriented toward control.  This is Satan’s world.  May this season of Epiphany, then, open our eyes to the holiness of things, that we might see more than we can see.  May we learn again to trust in the Spirit’s light, that our eyes may open to the Love manifest for us in Christ Jesus and in all creation.

                                                                                                                                    AMEN    

I have waited for him

            under the tree of science,

and he has not come . . .

                        (R.S. Thomas)