The Baptism of Christ
Sermon — January 11, 2026
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Lectionary Readings
“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?’” (Matthew 3:13-14)
On Thursday, Douglas and Priscilla and I took a field trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where there’s currently an exhibit of work by Allan Crite. Crite was a Boston artist who documented the life of the Black communities of the South End and Roxbury. He was also a devout Episcopalian, who not only painted scenes of church life around Boston but also painted items for church life—including the illuminated text of our baptismal prayer over there, which St. John’s commissioned him to paint in 1954. It’s a great exhibit. It’s still open for a couple days, and if you’re curious, you can check out the book on the counter at Coffee Hour.
After the Crite exhibit we wandered through the rest of the museum for a bit. At one point, I stumbled upon a scene that’s familiar in any collection of Renaissance paintings: a toddler playgroup! There was a group of women dressed in 15th-century Italian garb, and running around on the floor and on their mothers’ laps were a bunch of babies. Most of them were naked, but one of them was wearing a weird kind of furry tunic or vest; and I thought—aha! It’s John the Baptist! (The camel-hair shirt he wore as an adult prophet serving to identify him for us, even as a child.)
You can see in this painting that John is just a bit older than Jesus. Jesus is shown as an infant lying in Mary’s lap; John is standing up like a wobbly toddler, holding onto her legs. It’s just about plausible that Jesus is six months old or so, and John just turned one and is starting to cruise around.
And this was always the relationship between Jesus and his cousin John. John was just that little bit ahead of Jesus at every stage. Luke tells us that John was born just six months before Jesus. We can assume, as the painting does, that John began to talk first, and to walk first. And all the Gospels tells us that when the two boys grew up, John’s ministry began first, and his movement was in fact more prominent while they were both alive. But after John’s death, and after the death and resurrection of Jesus, most of John’s followers became part of the fast-growing movement of the followers of Christ.
John didn’t think that he was the Messiah; he thought of himself as a prophet, preparing the way for the Messiah. And he’s often shown this way in Christian art: a typical Renaissance painting of John will show him with one finger pointing the way to Jesus.
And yet there’s an uncomfortable truth about the story we read today. While we might expect that John, the “less important” figure, would be baptized by Jesus, the “more important” one, in fact the story unfolds the other way around: it’s Jesus who comes to his older cousin John, to be baptized in the river Jordan.
We’re accustomed to their being some hierarchy in this sort of initiation ritual. Parents and godparents bring children forward, and make promises on their behalf. We, the older, more experienced members of the church, welcome the baby in. And even when we baptize an adult, the same is true: The new Christian comes to the priest to be baptized, and not the other way around.
Sure, John’s older by six months. But Jesus is the Beloved Son of God. John is the leader of a religious movement, preparing the way for the Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah himself. And yet Jesus comes to John as if he needs to be baptized by him. It’s clear that this was somewhat embarrassing for the early church. The Gospel writers all try to explain the fact. John himself expresses his discomfort with the reversal of roles: “I need to be baptized by you,” he says, “and do you come to me?” It’s as if I went with Teddy to the font, in a few minutes, and leaned my head down to be baptized by him.
But there’s a powerful truth in this reversal of roles.
We often think that it’s the job of parents to help a child learn: not only how to walk, but how to act; not only how to speak, but how to love. When we baptize children, their parents and godparents take vows to see that the child they present “is brought up in the Christian faith and life,” and to “help this child grow into the full stature of Christ.” (BCP p. 302) Parents and godparents and grandparents; uncles and aunts and cousins; family friends and fellow church members all play a huge role in the lives of children. We are all responsible for helping them to grow.
But this also works the other way around. Parents teach children how to be good citizens of the world, sure. But children teach their parents at least as much about what it means to love. Sunday School teachers and pastors try to teach children what we can about our faith; but any of us who work with kids would tell you that they often inspire deeper faith in us. Jesus told his disciples that “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven,” (Matt. 18:3) and it’s true. In baptism, we express our intention to put our whole trust in God’s grace and love—but the only way to do that is to recover some of that child-like state in which we can and do put our whole trust in the people we love, the people who love us.
In baptism, we take on some of the work of Christ and we receive some of the promises of Christ. We take on the work that Peter describes in the Book of Acts today, of preaching peace to the world. In baptism, the same mission that began with Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, and was given to the apostles after his death, continues on with us: to proclaim God’s love to the people around us, in word and in deed, and to work and to pray for a more peaceful world.
And in baptism, each one of us becomes part of the one Body of Christ, and the same words that God spoke to Jesus at his baptism, God speaks to each one of us. God looks at each one of us, and says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delights.” (Isaiah 42:1) God looks at each one of us, and says, “This is my Beloved Child, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matt. 3:17)
Because it turns out that however we come here today—as parents or children, teenagers or seniors, long-term church members or first-time visitors—we stand before God as children, still somewhere in the process of learning and growth. In God’s eternal eyes, none of us is more than about six months older than any of the others. The wisest and most experienced among us are like that toddler John the Baptist, standing up while Jesus lies down—but still holding on to Mary’s knees for help.
Life in Christ isn’t about having all the answers. It isn’t about doing everything right. God doesn’t need us to be perfect. But God wants us to be curious. God wants us to be willing to learn. This is what it means to say that unless we become like little children, we cannot inherit the kingdom of God. It means to admit that we are works in progress, who still have something to learn. It means to set our egos aside, as Jesus did when he accepted baptism from John. It means to let ourselves learn from the people we think we are supposed to teach; to let ourselves be changed by the love we see around us—the love that we see in our neighbors, and in our friends, in our mentors, and in our saints—but more than anything else, to let ourselves be changed by the love we see in the children who live among us, and in curiosity they show as they continue to grow into the full stature of Christ.
