The First Sunday after the Epiphany, January 11, 2026

As we consider the Baptism of Jesus, we can gain great wisdom from Henri Nouwen’s description of the human condition as “beloved, broken, and blessed.”  While we may see baptism in terms of forgiveness of sins and as a ticket to heaven, baptism points us to something far more important: God’s prevenient, universal, and healing grace, that loves us into life and welcomes us with open and loving arms at our death.  God was there “to hear our borning cry” and God will be there at death with just one more surprise, companionship with the Holy One in God’s Peaceable and Evolving Realm.

From a process perspective, baptism is profoundly Pelagian in spirit.  As Saint Pelagius, seen as an arch heretic throughout history, proclaimed, every newborn bears the face of God. For process theology, although sin and brokenness are pervasive (just read the newsfeed or hear of the next political escapade imagined by our nation’s leaders), sin is not original: we are not born depraved or fallen. We are born, beloved by God: God loves us and there’s nothing we can do about it. We are conceived with the energy of God’s divine vision or aim, seeking the “best for that impasse” in our beginnings and ends, and everywhere in between.  There is something of God in us, and all creation, and that divine presence is indelible and prior to any effort on our part.

The essence of the universe is “good” and “very good,” as the creation story in Genesis proclaims, but as my dear friend and colleague, the late Rabbi Harold White, often reminded me in over two hundred wedding homilies I heard as we co-officiated interfaith weddings, “the universe was created good, but not perfect; the perfect is complete and the good has room to grow, and that is good!”  That includes humankind!

While I may choose to present the passages from Isaiah and Psalms today, I may also omit them in favor of reading about Peter’s mystical call as well as his encounter (and sermon) with Cornelius and his family. (Acts 10:1-48)  This is one of the most profound and liberating passages in scripture and Acts 10:34-43 comes alive, when it is placed in the context of Peter’s vision of the “unclean” food.  I would suggest that this be read as a reader’s theatre with narrator, Peter, and Cornelius as characters, much as we often read the Passion narratives on Palm/Passion Sunday.

On the choice of music, this is an opportunity to focus on God’s graceful presence in the hymns of the day, such as:

I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry

Child of Blessing, Child of Promise

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know, For the Bible Tells Me So

This Little Light of Mine

Go My Children with My Blessing

We learn theology as much through hymns as through books and sermons.  When we sing, we pray twice, as Augustine says, and in singing, we join, body, mind, and spirit; head, heart, and hands.

In Acts 10, the author describes multiple visionary experiences.  Cornelius and Peter both receive divine guidance that sets in motion the events that lead to the baptism of Cornelius and his household.  God gives a vision to a Gentile.  Revelation is not stingy and parochial but global and generous. God’s dreams and visions come to Persian magi and Roman military leaders.

The scene turns to Peter’s visionary experience.  For eight years I pastored an historic UCC congregation of Cape Cod, and on Cape Cod, people love their shellfish – especially oysters, lobster, and clams.  Restaurants vie for the best clam chowder on the Cape. I always enjoyed reminding my congregation that the same Bible that condemns homosexuality also denounces clam chowder!  Peter receives a vison of a smorgasbord, a first century version of the Golden Corral, with ham, lobster, clam chowder, and oysters on the half shell.  He is rightly scandalized and refuses, like Jonah, to follow the divine directive.  Yet, eventually he relents, when God mandates, “Call nothing unclean.”  In a world of in and out, saved and unsaved, clean and unclean, God transcends every boundary, welcoming everyone to God’s banquet table and the waters of baptism.

The next scene is at Cornelius’ home where Peter shares the good news of Jesus’ loving sovereignty over all creation.  God shows no partiality: God embraces all the peoples of the earth, offering healing, wholeness, and salvation, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

All heaven breaks loose.  The Pentecostal spirit descends on Cornelius’ household. The Pentecostal dream, described in Acts 2, bursts forth in mystical experiences of ecstasy.  The Holy Spirit descends on the gathered Gentiles.  What is to forbid baptism now?  That is the message: grace is prevenient, personal, and universal.  All are beloved by God and in our brokenness, we are blessed with God’s love and healing, without exception.

Matthew provides a brief description of John the Baptist’s baptism of Jesus.  Beyond the text, I imagine that John and Jesus are quite familiar with one another.  After all, they are relatives, and John leaped in Elizabeth’s womb in prenatal praise when two pregnant women, Mary and Elizabeth meet.  Perhaps, they had a special bond, played together as children, got into mischief together as teens, imagined the future together, and studied and prayed together.  While John may have been reluctant to baptize his special friend, knowing of Jesus’ piety, Jesus insists, and then God’s voice rings out, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

I believe that God’s words to Jesus are spoken to each of us.  I believe that the dove of creative transformation descends on each of us.  But we must come to the waters of grace.  Grace universal but not coercive.  Grace is inclusive in time, place, and person, but we need to say “yes” to fully experience it.  Just as we are all  “standin’ in the need of prayer,” as the Spiritual chants, we are also standing in the place of grace.

There is an ethic implicit in these stories: if God’s grace is dispensed to all, and we are all beloved, broken, and blessed, then we can affirm, despite the vicissitudes of life, “I am loved by God…and so are you!”   It is said that in his deepest moments of baptism, Luther wrote on his study table, “I was baptized.”  In like manner, even on the darkest day, God’s vision is at work in our lives in the moment to moment aim at wholeness and in God’s all-pervasive love stretching backward and forward with loving affirmation and possibility.  Moreover, baptism tells us that not only am I loved by God, but everyone is loved by God, and if God loves the outsider, like Cornelius, God also loves the anxious MAGA, the traumatized undocumented worker, the Gazan and Israeli, the Sudanese and the South African.

There’s lots of bad news and we are complicit in some of our nation’s misdeeds. As we seek to redress the wrongs we indirectly causes,  I am reminded of a conversation between Will Campbell, legendary activist and gospel and his friend P.D. East in which East sought a short definition of the Christianity.   “I’m not too bright,” he told Campbell. “Keep it simple. In ten words or less, what’s the Christian message?” Campbell responded: “We’re all bastards but God loves us anyway,” he said. To which East replied, “If you want to try again, you have two words left.”

That’s the gospel: despite our brokenness, we are beloved and blessed. We are in God’s hands, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Claim God’s love, God’s baptism, and God’s power to change the world. Beloved, broken, and blessed, let us bring healing and justice to this good earth.

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Bruce Epperly is Theologian in Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, MD and a professor in theology and spirituality at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington DC. He is the author of over eighty books, including Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet; Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-Human World; Messy Incarnation: Meditations on Christ in Process; and Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation with the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries. His latest books are Creation Sings: Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom from the Non-human World and Three Wise Wisdom: The Twelve Days of Christmas with Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna (volume seven in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” series along with his upcoming Lenten devotional, Just a Little Walk with Jesus: A Spiritual Saunter with Mark’s Gospel.  He can be reached at www.brucepperly.com.