[Sermon] Grounded in the Waters

Hector Garfias-Toledo, Lead Pastor

January 12, 2026 + Sunday of the Baptism of Our Lord

Jesus enters the Jordan carrying the weight of a hurting world and the expectations of a promised future. In baptism, God grounds him in identity—beloved, claimed, and sent. Baptism does not remove us from the realities of injustice and fear, but it roots us deeply enough to face them. It gives us clarity when the world is chaotic and courage when we are weary. As baptized people, we are called not simply to believe, but to embody God’s compassion in tangible ways. To be baptized is to be grounded and ready for action.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Grace to you and peace from God—aba, father, mother, creator—and the Lord Jesus Christ, our savior, our lord, the manifestation of the love of God, a God who is with us. And we said, amen. Amen.

Parents and godparents, I had prepared a sermon, but after celebrating the baptism, I just think that the baptism itself is the message for today. Once again, we see the miracle that God does in the midst of our lives that reminds us that no matter who we are and where we are, God takes us.

Godparents, you have made a promise to be with these children and their parents. You have been now with them for this specific purpose of baptism, but this is just the beginning of a life that is unfolding.

You know, when I think of life—when I think of, as I told our young worshipers, that we were talking about Jesus, baby Jesus, last Sunday, and today we are talking about a grown-up man—I just think, I was thinking of Mary and Joseph. And I don’t know how they felt, or maybe they felt like I do, and many of you feel, and probably like you will feel when I see my daughter at her 30 years of age, almost.

I feel that I’m looking at the little girl that I used to walk with. And I don’t know if Mary and Joseph felt that way when they saw Jesus. The Bible doesn’t tell us that. But I believe that, as parents, every day—even as Jesus was again a grown-up man—they thought, they remembered the days, and they saw him when he was baby Jesus, infant Jesus, toddler Jesus, teenager Jesus. Well, those years probably were one of the most difficult.

When I think of this story, I also think about the realities in life. And to be honest with you, last Sunday when we were here, I felt distracted. Honestly, inside me, I was mad and upset at everything that I had heard the day before that was happening in South America and other places. I thought that today I would have a different story and a different feeling.

But again, I come with a restless heart and mind in view of everything that is happening in our world.

You and I are dealing with many emotions and reactions, and we come with many questions about humanity, power, and the meaning of life. Many people—and many of us, perhaps—have this instinctive, impulsive attitude to come up with statements, sometimes with a sense of obligation to change things, but many times with the fear of being ostracized for not saying something, saying too little, or saying too much.

Jesus was 30 years old when he was baptized. He was living under the regime of an empire. During his time of growing up, he probably heard and experienced the social, political, and economic effects of the system in which he was living. And perhaps he heard about how this system had pulled, pushed, and crushed, in every direction, the people—his people.

So I wonder this morning, my siblings, what was in Jesus’ mind when he was walking toward the Jordan River, listening to John the Baptist preaching about repentance and baptism. Might he have thought, I need to do something about it. Nothing has changed. And I remember that the story that my parents told me is that the angel said and told them that things were going to change because I was born, and yet we are living in this mess.

What does it mean?

What does it mean that you and I are members of the body of Christ? Whether we were baptized as children, when we were baptized as adults, or we are thinking about being baptized or not—what does it mean for us today?

We have pushed that fast-forward button, and we move from Jesus, the baby Jesus, reflecting God’s glory in that manger, in that stable. And today we look at an adult man who is discerning his call and what it means to be who he is called to be.

Maybe, like us, Jesus needed the affirmation and confirmation, because you and I know that when we are affirmed and confirmed, it gives us direction—confidence to move on and to move forward in our lives. It fosters an understanding of who we are and whose we are.

In other words, it’s like you and I have an identification and an identity. Jesus had an identification—born in Bethlehem. Thank you, Michelle. Parents—who were his parents? Mary and Joseph. Job: carpenter, probably. Age, right? So he had an identification. His card had all this identification. He could say, “I’m Jesus, and I am like this. I was born, my parents, my age,” etc. And possibly he had a vision and understanding of what he wanted to do.

But an identity is different. An identity has to do with who we are, not what we do. Perhaps the distractions, the needs, the ideals of his human nature needed to be reentered, reoriented, and grounded in his true identity.

And how would that happen? Well, Jesus was baptized. And this baptism is an affirmation of his identity—who he is and whose he is. “You are my son, my beloved.” And that gives him a clear understanding of what his call is about.

In fact, Epiphany—the season of Epiphany that we see there—is a season in which you and I will see, like, the fast-forward life of Jesus. It’s a way for us to remember, to be reminded of the meaning of Jesus coming as a baby. Jesus didn’t come to stay a baby and to be this warm, nice idea. Jesus came here to show us the grace of love and how the world has rejected that grace and that love.

And it’s the same thing with Peter, who realizes through visions who he is and who God is in Jesus. Everything is put back together according to the passage that we read a moment ago. God has no partiality. We are to tell the story and to be ready for action. That’s what Peter tells the people.

So why was Jesus baptized? For repentance? Some say that it was just an example so that we follow and we just do it and check our box and say we are baptized. Others say it’s about solidarity—that Jesus says, “As a human being, I’m doing what God expects from us to do.”

But I believe that baptism is not an example for us to follow only. It is a commitment to the same identity that God has given us. “You are my child.” It’s an affirmation and a confirmation that our role in the world is to be church—to explode, as Peter says in the reading today, to explode with the good news and to tell the story that we know in word and in action.

As we read through the entire baptism liturgy, it is about living out our identity, to take a posture of being embraced and ready for action for others. As Stanley Hauerwas, who is a theologian, says, the church’s task, when it comes to responding to the current state of affairs in our world, is simple: it is just to be church.

It may sound irrelevant, or even self-serving, just to be church, but the truth is that it’s a high call. What makes the church be the church is God’s divine compassion incarnate in Jesus, who is the manifestation of the new order of healing, transformation, and wholeness.

The church is where these stories of Israel, the story of Jesus and his parents, are told, heard, enacted. And we are also reminded that we can get distracted and we will fall many times. But in church, we receive and we practice forgiveness.

It requires that we are a particular kind of people if we want the world to hear this story truthfully, because it requires our witness, our testimony, our authentic life as children of God. This means that the church must never cease being a community of peace and truth in a world of despair and fear. And it means that the church cannot let the world set the agenda for the church.

How? By having the patience amid injustice and violence to care for the widow, to care for the poor, to care for the orphan. And that may seem to contribute little to the cause of justice in a world like the one I was describing earlier. Yet unless you and I take the time for such care, neither we nor the world can know what God’s justice looks like.

Malachi, Atticus, Demetrius, Natalia, Maria, and Tristan: today, the Spirit reminds you of your identity through this congregation. We will tell the story we know. We will explode with the good news. And we will remind you that neither you nor we are alone in this journey.

And for that, we thank God. Amen.