The Baptism of our  Lord
READING: Matthew 3:13–17

You Are My Beloved

At the very beginning of Jesus’ public life –  before he teaches a single parable, before he heals anyone, before he challenges religious or political power –  Jesus goes down into the water of the Jordan River.

Matthew’s gospel is careful not to turn this into a spectacle. Jesus does not arrive as a figure apart, haloed and triumphant. He does not stride to the front. He queues. He waits. He steps into the same river as everyone else. This is where Jesus chooses to begin –  not above humanity, but fully within it.

Try to recall a time when you have queued with others for a long time. Perhaps at an airport when travel has ground to a halt: the slow shuffle, the shared frustration, the tired jokes exchanged with strangers. Or waiting to get into a concert or a football match – excitement mixed with uncertainty, everyone wondering whether it will be worth it in the end. In those moments, social differences blur. Titles don’t matter. Status counts for little. You are simply one person among many, bound together by waiting.

That is the scene Matthew invites us to imagine at the Jordan. A crowd. A line of ordinary people carrying regret and hope, confusion and longing. And Jesus is there, in the queue, with them.

It is striking that no famous painting of Jesus’ baptism really captures this. Most show Jesus alone with John, the focus narrowed, the crowd removed. But the gospel insists on his humanity and humility: Jesus begins not by standing out, but by standing with. He chooses solidarity before significance.

And then Matthew tells us, “the heavens were opened”.

It is important how we hear that phrase. The gospel is not inviting us to imagine a physical sky splitting open, as if heaven were a place just above the clouds, briefly exposed like a hidden ceiling panel. That way of reading misses the depth of what Matthew is saying. This language is metaphorical, poetic, relational. It tells us something not about the physical structure of the universe, but about God.

The opening of heaven is not about God intervening from a distance. It is about God refusing distance altogether. The question is not what happened in the sky, but what kind of God is being revealed

And the answer is this: a God who chooses presence over separation, nearness over control, accompaniment over command.

When Matthew says the heavens are opened, he is not describing a movement “up there”. He is naming a change in relationship here, on earth. The opening of heaven is the gospel’s way of saying that there is no longer a sealed boundary between God and ordinary human life. God is not elsewhere, watching from afar. God is not holding back until humanity proves itself worthy. God is already here – in the water, in the crowd, in vulnerability, in shared human experience.

Nothing changes about who Jesus is. What changes is what becomes visible. The heavens open not to let God escape heaven, but to reveal that God has already crossed every imagined divide.

This is why the moment matters so much. Jesus has not yet done anything impressive. There are no miracles to point to, no teachings to admire, no sacrifices to commend. The opening of heaven comes before achievement. It comes before usefulness. It comes before faithfulness can be tested. The heavens open not because something is earned, but because God has already decided to be with us.

That is the heart of baptism.

Many people carry an unspoken assumption that God is fundamentally distant: closer to the strong than the weak, closer to the faithful than the doubting, closer to the successful than the struggling. We imagine God as someone we must somehow reach, convince, or impress. The baptism of Jesus quietly dismantles that assumption.

The heavens opening is not about access being temporarily granted. It is about the illusion of separation being exposed. God has never been absent. What opens is not heaven, but our understanding of where God has always been.

This is deeply liberating for us . It means that prayer is not about trying to break through a barrier. Faith is not about climbing upwards. Holiness is not about leaving humanity behind. God meets us precisely where life is most real: in bodies, in water, in shared vulnerability, in public belonging.

At the beginning of a new year, many of us may feel uncertain, tired, or quietly anxious about what lies ahead. Remembering Jesus’ baptism offers reassurance. There is no closed ceiling above our  life. God is not waiting elsewhere. God is already present in the questions, the fragility, the our unfinished stories.

Matthew’s gospel  then tells us that the Spirit of God descends like a dove. Again, this is not about something travelling from above to below. It is about how God’s presence is experienced. The dove speaks of gentleness, patience, peace. The Spirit of God  does not arrive as force or domination, but as something that rests. This is presence that accompanies rather than overwhelms.

In our baptism, we were  not promised certainty, success, or spiritual heroism. We were promised companionship. The Spirit of God comes not to make us exceptional, but to make us attentive –  to God, to one another, to the world we inhabit. Faith, as many of us know, is often tentative, mixed, evolving. The Spirit of God does not wait for clarity before arriving. The Spirit meets us in ambiguity, in partial understanding, in lives that are faithful and fearful at the same time.

As a new year begins, the Spirit of God  invites us to notice small signs of life: acts of kindness, resilience that persists quietly, love that shows up without fanfare. God’s presence does not hurry us forward. It stays.

Then comes the next part of the story of Jesus’ baptism …. the voice: “This is my Son, the Beloved.”

This is not a reward speech. It is not an evaluation. It is a naming. Before Jesus does anything, he is called beloved. This is the most radical claim of baptism. Our worth is not conditional. It is not measured by productivity, certainty, obedience, or religious success. Belonging precedes behaviour.

For us today  this matters enormously – for those of us  who feel that we  have failed, for those whose faith feels thin, for those carrying grief, shame, or exhaustion into another year. Baptism says: you do not begin by proving yourself. We begin by being claimed.

A gentle echo of this idea appears in the children’s book,  The Velveteen Rabbit. The rabbit does not become “Real” by being perfect or impressive. He becomes real because he is loved — worn down, held, stayed with. “It doesn’t happen all at once,” says the Skin Horse. “It takes a long time.” The rabbit does not prove himself into reality; he is loved into it. So it is with us. Belovedness makes us real.

The same idea resonates in the song “Fix you” ,  a 2005 song by the British rock band Coldplay. “Lights will guide you home… and I will try to fix you.” The power of the song lies not in resolution, but in accompaniment. Someone stays. Someone refuses abandonment. This is not about being fixed before being loved, but about being loved through brokenness. That is the Spirit who rests rather than pushes. That is God who stays.

So the baptism of Jesus is not about a moment long ago when the sky opened. It is about a truth that continues to shape how we live. The heavens are open because God is with us. The Spirit rests because God stays. And belovedness is spoken because relationship comes first.

As we step into this new year, the account of Jesus’ baptism invites us to begin not with striving, but with trust. Not with distance, but with nearness. Not with fear of exclusion, but with the confidence of belonging.

Before anything else is said about our  life, this has already been spoken to each of us by God  :

You are my beloved.

And that promise will carry us through the year ahead.

Photo Credit: Mishal Ibrahim (Unsplash.com)