Epiphany 1A 2026

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​ I think there’s an obvious question missing from today’s Gospel. Matthew gives us a more detailed conversation between Jesus and John than the other Gospels. So, when Jesus tells John that he’s presenting himself for baptism “to fulfill all righteousness,” instead of the implication that John says, “oh, okay then,” I think he should have said, “What does that mean?” The answer would have made things a lot easier for preachers who follow them. 

The word “righteousness” has several meanings, one of the most prevalent being “living in right relationship.” It has ministry undertones in other meanings such as justice and charity. However, all of these include the meaning of the festival we just finished celebrating. They are incarnational and require being in relationship with other living things, and not just an individual imputation of what can appropriately be called “self-righteousness.” That is actually just selfishness. 

John’s work, and his chosen location, take an ancient Jewish tradition and expand it beyond the boundaries of Judaism. You may have heard of a mikvah, a pool of water that was part of many homes. A person would enter the pool, walking down steps and through the water and back up steps, usually on the opposite side. Men would bathe in preparation for the Sabbath, women as a rite of purification after their monthly menstrual cycle. Those who for any reason were ritually unclean would enter the mikvah, say, if they came into contact with blood, recovering from illness, or tended to the dead. 

John moves another purpose for the mikvah into the Jordan River. Converts to Judaism, or those whose way of life separated them from the faithful, would enter the mikvah as a sign of ritual cleansing as they joined or returned to the faithful community. 

Jesus was born to a Jewish mother and was circumcized eight days later, keeping the law. He doesn’t need to join that which he was born into, and unless the Gospels are omitting details of a life spent in “riotous living” up until now, doesn’t really need a ritual cleansing. Mind you, a bath every now and then isn’t such a bad thing for communal living, but it’s not the same as cleansing from sin. 

Jesus, Matthew tells us, is here to save his people from sin. His very name, you’ll remember (I hope) means just that. He is on earth to redeem humanity, and to do that, becomes human. What better way to show love and charity toward another than to become one with them? 

Jesus entered the waters of baptism to more fully become just like those he came to save. He shows the definition of righteousness, meaning justice, by submitting to the same ritual as others must also submit themselves. Jesus doesn’t ask anything more of us than that which he expects for himself. Actually, he doesn’t mention baptism again until he challenges religious leaders when they question him. Then there’s what is probably a later addition to Matthew’s Gospel which we call the “Great Commission,” but that includes the Trinitarian formula we use today, and which exists nowhere else in Matthew.

Baptism is our entrance into the community of faith. We bring children to the waters of Holy Baptism as we pledge to love and nurture them as they grow and learn what it means to be faithful. We baptize older children and adults who have pledged to live a life in a different way than before even as we make the same pledge to them as we do to cute babies.

Baptism isn’t so much a quick assurance into heaven as it is a pledge to live together in ways that prevent everything and everyone going literally into hell, whatever form that may take. Like Jesus’ entrance into the fulness of humanity as he came out of the Jordan River, our baptism is a call to live more fully in the community of the faithful, and not as a single individual keeping ourselves more pure than Ivory soap until the trumpet sounds.

When we baptize, we take a person created in God’s image, one whom I believe is already a child of God, and pledge to live together in community in ways that reveal the life of the Incarnate and risen Christ. What that means will take the rest of our lives to discover, no matter where we go. It’s what I call one of the bookends of the church.

The other bookend is what we do when life has ended for one of us and we gather to commend them back to God for safe-keeping for all eternity. We commit remains back to the earth from which we are formed, and which baptism calls us to remember that God loves the earth, too.
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You see, baptism isn’t about getting into heaven. It’s about being in right relationship, living in ways of justice in loving community. Our lives are the revelation of what it means to fulfill all righteousness. Or not.