Sunday, January 11, 2026
The Baptism of the Lord
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Baptisms
Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan
to be baptized by him.
So many stories. Margaret’s baptism came long after her commitment to Jesus., when was sixteen. Her friends were all surprised that she hadn’t been baptized long before. My parents baptized me when I was eight days old, and then later I asked the pastor at Mt. Pulaski Christian Church to baptize me again on Easter Sunday, 1979. Our stories. Then we started having kids, and they had their own moments of rebirth.
Beginning on Chris’ 12th birthday in December 1992, together we read through a chronological bible with daily readings curated by a Florida district attorney, F. LaGard Smith, who organized the laws of Leviticus by topic. We loved it. (Well, I loved it. I think Chris did too.) A year later he was baptized at Waynesville Christian Church.
During a weeklong camp at Little Galilee near Clinton, Illinois, Marc chose to be baptized in the pool by one of his camp counselors. We had advance notice and rushed to poolside to applaud his decision. A few years later Andi, who loved her first year of camp and talked non-stop about her experience on the way home, decided during her second year to also be baptized in the pool. And we were there again to watch and pray, and make some noise. Stories of our kids.
Then it was our grandchildren. When he was nine, Jack was baptized by Chris – his dad, our son. His family gathered around him as he took the plunge.
Three years later, when Aly was nine, Melissa and Chris together baptized her in the baptismal pool at West Side Christian Church. In Austin, Miles and Jasper watched with their parents from Austin, and Andi led them in a big cheer. Now, since Finn was born in March last year, we have three grandsons in Austin, and we look forward to whatever happens next for them.
In the most famous baptism of all, Jesus’ cousin John baptized him in the Jordan River. Jesus must have been near the age of 30.
John tried to prevent him, saying,
“I need to be baptized by you,
and yet you are coming to me?”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us
to fulfill all righteousness.”
Anne Rice described Jesus’ response to hearing news about his cousin’s ministry, as John left the desert and began to preach. His excited family decided to go and see for themselves.
I moved slowly towards what was at last going to separate me from all around me. I knew this. I knew it without knowing how or what would actually happen. And the only place I saw this same awareness—and some measure of this same acceptance—was in my mother’s soft, habitual gaze.
Rice imagined Jesus describing his own baptism:
I went down into the water. I felt John’s hand on my left shoulder. I felt his fingers close on my neck. I saw nothing and felt nothing and heard nothing but the cool flooding water, and then slowly I came up out of it, and stood, shocked by the flood of sunlight.
The clouds above had shifted. The sound of beating wings filled my ears. I stared forward and saw across John’s face the shadow of a dove moving upwards—and then I saw the bird itself rising into a great opening of deep blue sky, and I heard a whisper against my ears, a whisper that penetrated the sound of the wings, as though a pair of lips had touched both ears at the same time, and faint as it was, soft and secretive as it was, it seemed the edge of an immense echo.
All the riverbank had gone quiet.
And Matthew, the tax collector … was he there, watching?
After Jesus was baptized,
he came up from the water and behold,
the heavens were opened for him,
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and coming upon him.
And a voice came from the heavens, saying,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
 (Isaiah 42, Psalm 29, Acts 10, Mark 9, Matthew 3)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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