Today’s gospel opens with something of a disagreement between Jesus and John the Baptist. John has been baptising many people. His message has been a call to turn around your life, and be baptised, because the kingdom of heaven is near. Jesus comes from Galilee and John is reluctant to baptise him.
As I pondered today’s gospel this disagreement niggled at me. My niggle seemed to have two different aspects:
- What was John the Baptist’s teaching and baptism offering that drew so many crowds? Why did he think Jesus shouldn’t be baptised but the Pharisees and Sadducees should?
- And secondly, what drew Jesus to John’s baptism? What was he hoping for from baptism? And what on earth happened when he was baptised?!
From well before Jesus’ birth and indeed up to the present day, a significant Jewish practice is that of ritual immersion in order to be cleansed of ‘ritual impurity’. Such impurity is a simple consequence of being human; unavoidable and not in any way shameful. Nevertheless, in Jewish law it is necessary to be ritually purified before any interaction with the sacred, and the practice of ritual immersion offers this.
In contrast, John’s baptism addressed moral, not ritual, impurity. Therefore it demanded a different response: repentance and atonement. John believed that the Pharisees and Sadducees who rigorously observed religious law, did not recognise themselves as morally impure and so saw no need to repent.
This question of morality remains deeply relevant. Just this week, Donald Trump spoke about morality, insisting that he is accountable only to his own personal moral judgment, with international law secondary to his will. His own mind, he said, is ‘the only thing that can stop me’. In this view, morality is purely individual rather than relational.
For the Pharisees and Sadducees their moral defence lay in Jewish law and communal accountability. They were answerable to shared standards, and to one another—a system that restrained unchecked maverick individualism.
Trump’s position inverts this entirely. By dismissing shared moral frameworks, moral authority rests solely with the one who holds power. It is a troubling vision: one in which relational or societal morality is at risk of disappearing altogether.
In today’s gospel, John insists that everyone – Pharisees and Sadducees then, and today’s powerful figures such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Nicolás Maduro, and many others – must repent. All of us, irrespective of power or status, are called to turn humbly to God and acknowledge our need for forgiveness.
Repentance, John reminds us, is never purely private. It has a communal dimension: we are accountable not only to God, but also to one another. Our collective moral understanding is not static, but deepens over time. History shows that practices such as slavery, capital punishment, and the oppression of LGBTQI+ people were not morally right, but were sustained by social systems in which power and profit outweighed compassion, and many were able – or willing – to look away.
As blind spots are exposed, we are challenged to see more clearly. Through debate, relationship, and engagement with those whose experiences differ from our own, our shared moral vision is refined, drawing us hopefully toward greater justice, dignity, and humanity—both individually and as a society.
The baptism John offered was individual in that individuals came forward and asked for it, but it was also societal. It was an outward public sign of an inner change; it was witnessed by others. And among those who came and asked for baptism was Jesus.
What was Jesus seeking? Did he need to repent and be morally cleansed? John clearly didn’t think so, trying to stop him, arguing that he, John, needed to be baptised by Jesus rather than the other way round. Jesus doesn’t really argue against John, but acknowledges John’s position, ‘Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness’. Jesus reframes the focus, turning it from sin, repentance, and judgement to ‘righteousness’. You may recall from a sermon a few weeks ago, that righteousness is one of the key themes of Matthew’s gospel, and here it is again.
Righteousness in Scripture is about being in right relation with God, and with one another. Jesus’ baptism is an act that publicly places Jesus in right relationship with God, and establishes Jesus as being in right relationship with the Jewish people who have come for baptism.
Jesus enters into the waters of the River Jordan with the people … in other words, with us. He literally steps into the river of life with us. Jesus is a physical incarnate being … with us. He enters into the sorrow of repentance, AND into the joy of new life … with us.
And then, the surprise (perhaps a surprise to Jesus as well as to all the others who were witnesses) is what happens next.
Suddenly the heavens were opened to Jesus and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” In this extraordinary moment God speaks, and the dove, symbol of peace, of new life, and sign of the Holy Spirit, descends on Jesus.
This event happens before Jesus’ public ministry has begun. This is Jesus’ first appearance after the birth and flight to Egypt narratives. And these things are proclaimed:
- He is God’s child.
- He is precious and desirable, and
- God delights in him.
What an affirmation to receive! How has Jesus earned this? What has he done?
- Well, he was born … a good start!
- Mary and Joseph, with Jesus, have fled Herod, and lived as refugees in Egypt.
- They returned to Nazareth, and now, years later, Jesus seeks out John the Baptist.
- Jesus has not done anything, at this point, in public. His public ministry has not yet begun.
We could say, if we wanted to be provocative, that he’s just been hanging about, not doing anything worthy of mention so far. Certainly Matthew doesn’t bother to mention anything. We might almost imagine his human parents nagging at him: ‘Come on Jesus. You need to get on with your life – find a proper job! Make something of yourself! You can’t just hang around here in Nazareth and live with us all your life!
And yet, what does God say to him? ‘I am very pleased with you’, ‘I delight in you’, ‘Look at you – you are the apple of my eye’.
Don’t we all long for this to be said to us? To believe this about ourselves? I think that this struggle, this inability to believe that God might call me ‘beloved child’; might say of me ‘with you I am well pleased’ is the meaning of sin. Sin is our inability to truly believe ‘I am a child of God, precious, and God delights in me’. And this is what makes righteousness – right relationship with God – so difficult; and thereby what makes right relationship with others difficult.
Our Scriptures tell us repeatedly that God gazes at every one of us as though nothing else was as important. If we can only begin to believe this then we nurture right relationship with God and with one another, because recognising our own belovedness, not because of anything we have achieved, but because we are, means that we also recognise that every other person (the one sitting beside me here today, as well as those I find it difficult to love) is a beloved child of God in whom God delights. This is sometimes called the scandal of God’s gratuitous love.
Let us hold the grace-filled truth of God’s endless love for us close through this week, and do our best to recognise every person, from your nearest and dearest, to the person who fills you with despair or dread, also as a beloved child of God. And if that feels too difficult, as it may well do, I invite you to turn to God in prayer and ask for help to see them in this way, so that you may come a little closer to living in righteousness, with God, and with those around you.
But right now, just sit for a moment, open your ears, and your heart, and hear God’s words spoken to you; ‘You are my child, chosen and marked by my love, and I delight in you.’
Amen