Matthew 3:13-17
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him 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.”
My heart is broken for the people in Minnesota. For Renee Good’s family, her community, for the Presbyterian Church in Nebraska, where Renee’s uncle is the pastor, and for the question it pokes in all of us. What now? How do we heal from this?
On Sundays like this, there is no place I would rather be: floating in this music, letting the baptismal waters flow. Sometimes I think tears are like a baptism that comes from the inside out. So however you are arriving today, steady or shaken or already soggy, here’s the one thing to remember if you forget everything else: you are beloved.
Why church? That is the question we have been carrying together this month. Why this peculiar, sometimes frustrating, often beautiful thing we do… showing up week after week with the same people, singing songs we love and some we don’t, hearing sermons we love and some we don’t, passing the peace and the plate before heading to Hopsfrogs or Costco or the eleventy- millionth kid sport?
Today, the answer I want to offer is this: we come to church to be trained, again and again, to stop clenching and let grace carry us together. We come because church is a countercultural community of grace.
What a paradox, but it’s true. Church is where we do the same things again and again in order to become different.
It all started with Jesus at the water’s edge. Listen now to Matthew 3:13–17.
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit 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.”
Oh Lord, uphold me that I might uplift thee. Amen.
A year ago, our family went to Costa Rica. A bucket-list goal of mine was to learn to surf. Costa Rica is a famously easy place to learn – not because the waves are small, but because they are somewhat predictable and mostly because there are surf guides who hold your board and release you at exactly the right moment. Your only job is to get up.
We practiced on the beach. “Wave comes,” our guide said, “paddle, paddle, paddle… then pop up.” I am proud to say I did very well on the sand. The trouble came once we entered
the water. The guide released me into perfect waves. I did everything I’d been taught: an athletic push-up, a jump squat, a quick twist, and every time I went flying, tail over teakettle, into the water.
Finally, one time, I did nothing. I clung to the board like a barnacle as the wave carried me forward and yelled, “What am I supposed to do?” The guide yelled back, “Just get up.” “What about the pop-up?” “Just get up!”
And so I did. For a few glorious seconds I stood on that board. I was Moana. Granted, it was the size of a sofa… but it was steady, it was moving in the right direction, and I was standing on top of it. In that moment, I understood why people love surfing. To be, even briefly, in tune with the power and direction of the water, to be carried, to be out of my own way and out of my head… It like grace. Not because I was skilled, but because I finally stopped trying to save myself.
I have thought about that moment many times since – how often I get tripped up by how I think something should be, how much tension that creates, and how, when I stop overthinking and let the water carry me, it feels like grace.
In today’s scripture, Jesus shows up at the Jordan, where John is preaching repentance and plunging sinners beneath the water. It is a muddy, edge-of-society place… a strange place for the sinless one to stand.
John knows it. “I need to be baptized by you,” John says. “And do you come to me?” Everything about this moment is backwards. This is not what the Book of Order says! And Jesus answers with a line that is easy to skip past but worth lingering over: “Let it be so now.”
Let it be so now.
Let this strange, uncomfortable, upside-down thing happen.
This is Jesus choosing formation over exception, solidarity over status, grace before accomplishment.
Jesus does not begin his ministry with a sermon or a miracle or a five-point plan. He begins by getting in line with everyone else, by stepping into the same water, by refusing exemption, by receiving grace. This is how Jesus begins. Not standing apart, but standing with us in the water and letting it carry him too.
The theologian Brian Zahnd writes that the task of the church today is to make Christianity countercultural again. When Jesus is untethered from the interests of empire, his ideas remain radical: Enemies? Love them. Violence? Renounce it. Money? Share it. Foreigners? Welcome them. Sinners? Forgive them.
I don’t know your thoughts on this but it seems that grace is countercultural in our country. I’ve been seeing the polls like you have. Nearly half the nation is convinced the other half has lost its mind. And in times like these, grace can feel like a rare-earth metal… scarce, explosive, and something we hoard most when we are afraid.
But here’s the truth: grace is not scarce. Scripture asks us to imagine grace like water: elemental, essential for life, always flowing in the direction of justice. Flowing through us and around us. And while it’s triggering to say this in a leak-prone building, water always finds a way in, and it is powerful enough to carry us forward.
Grace itself is countercultural because it costs us things. It costs us the illusion of moral superiority. It costs us the thrill of being right. It costs us the comfort of knowing exactly who belongs and who does not.
And there is also the important question: How do we let the water carry us when some of us feel like we are drowning and others want to stay on the sand because the water doesn’t feel safe? That’s a wise question. I’d say, that’s when we probably need guides.
Last March, a rabbi friend – many of you know Rabbi Michael Holzman – called me to ask what I was doing on July 4th, 2026. I said, “I’m not sure what I’m doing on Tuesday.” He said, “What if we ate together? All of us. Not just parades or fireworks or protests, a big potluck with people of every faith together.”
This is what it looks like when grace moves from the font to the table. Faith250 was born, a multifaith project centered on shared meals and shared texts that guide us as Americans: the Declaration of Independence, Frederick Douglass’s What to the Slave Is the Fourth of
July, America the Beautiful, The New Colossus. Words that have shaped who we imagine ourselves to be.
Our Burke-Springfield interfaith clergy group began doing this faith250 project together, and our conversations moved quickly into deep water… family stories, migration stories, faith stories. Clergy who don’t agree on much of anything, except that we trust a power bigger than human power, moved past normal clergy talk… big or small attendance, this or that cool program… to who we are and what we hope and what we fear and where God is. As if a wave was carrying us. And hundreds of congregations across the US have said yes to this program, BPC is hosting the first of 4 faith250 community dinners on February 10th. We are choosing shared tables instead of clenched fists. Grace, practiced together.
Floating sounds passive. But flowing is not. Rivers carve canyons. Water wears down stone. That day of surfing, I stood up just once but came away with bruises and board burn. This work is not passive and in Scripture, the waters of God are not neutral – they always move
toward freedom, toward justice, toward life. Letting the water carry us is not opting out of responsibility and basking in the sun; it is refusing to let panic, lies, or rage determine our direction. It’s remembering that our job is still to get up and do what we can do.
I’ve come to believe that grace is less like a lesson we master and more like water we stop fighting. Everything in us has been trained to clench: to manage outcomes, to stay productive and protected, to keep our feet on the bottom at all times.
But baptism, this strange, ancient practice at the center of our life together, says something else entirely. It says: let the water carry you. And that turns out to be wildly countercultural.
We live in a world that says: earn your worth, curate your image, secure your future, control the narrative, protect yourself at all costs. And the church, at its best, tells a different story:
Here, your value is not negotiable.
Here, we tell the truth instead of branding ourselves.
Here, we rest in a culture addicted to productivity.
Here, we forgive when vengeance would be easier.
Here, we stay when leaving would be simpler.
Here, we give money away instead of hoarding it.
Here, we eat with people who aren’t the same as us.
Here, we believe that love is stronger than fear, that death does not get the last word, that power looks like a cross and not a throne.
When things feel fragile or uncertain, my instinct is to grab for control – to tighten my grip, to believe that one more plan or sentence or email will finally make me safe. But the moments that have actually changed me have come when I stopped thrashing, when I admitted I was tired, when I trusted that I did not have to hold myself together for God to hold me, when I turned to serve someone else and saw them as beloved and in the water with me.
That is what I hear in the waters of baptism. Not a demand. Not a warning. But an invitation. You do not have to prove yourself here. You do not have to deserve this love. You do not have to stay afloat on your own.
Let the water carry you.
Let it carry your fear.
Let it carry your grief.
Let it carry the parts of you worn thin from trying so hard.
And let it carry us together the same way it always has into a way of life that makes us different, that feels like grace.
Why do we do this? Because this is where Jesus is. This is where Jesus is standing.
Where there is always enough. And we are held. We are named. We are not alone. We are beloved. And from there, we get up and do the work that we are called to do. Let it be so now.