Picture the scene: a ragged crowd at the banks of the Jordan — people the synagogues had no room for, people the temple priced out. Sinners. Lost causes. Screw-ups.
A prophet named John calls them back to the river where their ancestors first entered the promised land, offering one more chance: forgiveness, a washing, a new beginning.
The hope they longed for was at last coming true: the Lord was coming to seek and restore the lost of Israel…
And so the people desperate for that promise come to John to get ready.
But one day, out of that crowd, steps a man: Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus doesn’t stand above the lost, or separate from them, instead he stands with them.
Jesus enters the same muddy water of the Jordan and goes under, and as he comes up, Mark tells us the sky itself tears open. The Spirit descends like a dove. A voice speaks: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Notice the order. Jesus hasn’t preached a sermon, healed anyone, or fed a crowd yet. The Father’s love isn’t a wage for services rendered — it’s spoken first, before anything else.
Belovedness comes first. Everything after flows out of that identity; nothing builds toward it.
Most of us spend our lives the other way; trying to build an identity out of whatever’s at hand, hoping it will finally hold us up. For some it’s career — I am what I accomplish. For others a relationship, a reputation, a cause carefully defended. But none of our pursuits can bear the weight we put on them. The search for who we are never really ends; it just moves to the next version of yourself you hope will finally be enough.
That search is exhausting. Some of you know exactly how exhausting, because you’ve been auditioning for years — for parents, for peers, for yourself.
But the gospel speaks something different. It doesn’t hand you a better identity to perform. There are no more auditions. In Christ, you have already been judged — not condemned, but loved — and that verdict was rendered before you walked in the room.
Whatever comes next in life whether that be success or failure or even the grave — this is who God says you are: my son, my daughter, the Beloved.
This is who our Baptism says we are.
The same Spirit that rested on Jesus rests on you. The same voice says: not “you’ll be loved once you keep your promise,” but “you are mine, and I delight in you.”
Here’s why this matters: every one of us will fail to live up to who we want to be or should be. Our promises get broken. We will have doubt. We will fail someone we meant to love well. If our relationship with God depended on our promise-keeping, it would have an expiration date most of us hit years ago.
But the word spoken at the Jordan doesn’t depend on who you are — it comes from who Christ is.
This is Paul’s point in Galatians, written to a church sorting people into the old categories — Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female — the same labels that drove people to the Jordan in the first place. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ,” Paul says; the categories don’t vanish, but they stop being the deepest truth about you. You have been given something sturdier than any label: the name of Christ, wrapped around you like a garment that doesn’t come off when you stumble.
As we hear the many voices of this world telling us who we should be, may we listen to the One voice who spoke first, the one to whom we belong — who said “you are mine” before you agreed to anything, and who will keep saying it long after today:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. You are my beloved — with whom I am well pleased.”
-Pastor Mike Williamson