Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 29
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17
Sermon by Joel Crouse
This week we witnessed some difficult events, First, there was the invasion of Venezuela by the United States – and the President didn’t even pretend that the key motivation was news. Despite María Corina Machado, the opposition leader winning 70 per cent of the vote in the last election and the Nobel Peace Prize last year, the White House has also alluded to her being an unsuitable leader for the country. The United States action has also made other oil -based countries in the region nervous about what might come next.
And then in Minneapolis, an American mom was shot and killed by an Immigration Enforcement officer, even though she was not the target of any investigation. Immediately the White House called it an act of self defence; a position that the video itself calls seriously into question and that the mayor of the city has soundly disputed.
Not a particularly auspicious beginning for 2026.
What has followed are all sorts of assumptions and misinformation about the people involved. But that’s what happens these days: we are offered caricatures of people, depending on which side you take, in an effort to see the human in the story, and recognize the nuance.
It happens to us too, so often that maybe we don’t even notice. This week, I was filling out an online form—one of those services that promise to make life smoother—and before I’d even finished typing, the system started guessing who I was. It auto-filled my name. It suggested my address. It offered “recommended answers.” It pulled up a profile. And for a moment it felt convenient… until it didn’t. Because underneath the convenience was a quiet, unsettling message: “We already know what kind of person you are.” That’s normal now, isn’t it? We live in a time when human beings are constantly being summarized. By metrics and categories. By comment sections. By other people’s versions of us. By our voice in someone else’s story. Even by tools that can reduce a whole human being to a handful of predictive guesses.
And not only do we do it to others; we internalize those outside categories for ourselves. We start wearing the names we’ve been given -- reliable, difficult, too much, not enough, strong, a mess, a disappointment—as if they’re stitched into us. We allow them to define our actions. We let them explain us to ourselves – and others.
That is why this day matters. The Baptism of our Lord is not a sentimental scene to move past quickly. It is a moment when the deepest name is spoken out loud, when heaven insists on naming someone before the world gets its hands on them.
Jesus comes to the Jordan. John is there, doing what he’s been called to do -- calling people to repentance, washing them in the river, preparing them. And then Jesus steps forward. John hesitates, because even John can sense that something here is backwards. John is the one who needs cleansing, the one who should be receiving -- not giving. John tries to stop Jesus.
But Jesus says, in effect, “Let it happen.” Not because he’s confused about who he is, but because he knows what he’s doing. “It is proper for us,” he says, “to fulfill all righteousness.” And he goes down into the water.
And then everything opens. The heavens open. The Spirit comes down like a dove. And a voice speaks: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
It’s easy to hear that voice as a kind of divine compliment, as if God is saying, “Good job.” But listen more closely. This voice comes before Jesus has done anything the world would recognize as success. Before a single miracle. Before the Sermon on the Mount. Before crowds gather. Before conflict begins. Before the cross.
God speaks first. God names first. Beloved. That is the word that steadies everything that follows. It is the name underneath the story. It’s the name that will have to hold when the other names come—when people call Jesus a threat, a blasphemer, a troublemaker, a fraud. “Beloved” is the name that doesn’t change when the weather changes.
Jesus is an example to us of knowing who we are – of facing all that is true inside of us, and of not letting someone else dictate that. Even Jesus, in his humanity, comes to question that he is Beloved, right at the end – as all of us do at some point in our lives.
But we are reminded in our reading that this is how he was named – above and before all of us.
That’s why, for me, the Old Testament reading matters so much alongside the Gospel. Isaiah gives us this portrait of God’s servant—this quiet, stubborn, justice-bearing figure. “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights.” And then those lines that land like a hand placed gently on the shoulder: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.”
This is not the voice of a God who crushes what is fragile. This is not the voice of a God who labels people by their weakness and then dismisses them. This is not a God who stereotypes people. This is the God who delights. The God who upholds. The God who sees potential.
But we are not just watching Jesus get named. We are hearing what baptism does. We are hearing what God is like, and what God insists on saying. None of this erases our differences; it tells the truth about our worth. At the font, God does not say, “You are acceptable if you get your act together.” God does not say, “You are valuable if you prove it.” God does not say, “You are loved once you’re improved.” We are God’s people—loved for who we are right here and now.
The labels we carry can be heavy. Some of them were put on us by others. Some of them were written ourselves, quietly, over many years, and now we can hardly imagine not believing them. The problem with labels is that they start to feel like facts. They start to feel like identity.
These days, the naming comes fast. It comes through screens and systems. It comes through comparison. It comes through the little story we tell ourselves when we’re alone in the car or lying awake at night. It comes through that familiar internal voice that can be so sure of our limits. And when we do this to ourselves, we are quick to do it to others. If we accept the narrative that people say about us, why isn’t that same narrative true of people we don’t even know? This leads to a failure to think critically, with all the cost and complacency that results.
So maybe this is the invitation of this day. Not to try harder to become someone worthy. Not to scramble to fix the brand. Not to polish the image. But to listen again, as if we were standing, dripping at the edge of the river, as if Heaven were speaking over us what we too easily forgot:
“You are mine. You are loved. You are not up for debate.”
For when we believe we are beloved, we can tell the truth. We can risk kindness. We can become the kind of person Isaiah describes—someone who doesn’t break bruised reeds, someone who protects the dimly burning wick. Protected, trusted and loved, we can gain the strength to speak up and out, when wrong happens in the world – the ultimate path that our baptism, the gospel, and the ministry of Jesus calls us to walk. Amen