January 11, 2026; Matthew 3:13-17; Baptism of the Lord
I don’t know whether you have ever had the experience at a party or a social gathering to be introduced to someone new who immediately begins to talk about him or herself. No matter how you try to steer the conversation, it always comes back to what degree they have, what expensive neighborhood they live in, how many important people they know, or how many followers they have on social media. I don’t know how you react when cornered by such blowhards, but I just want to get away. Their effort to impress me fails miserably. As I walk away, I do not believe that they are important. I am even tempted to question whether they believe that they are important—otherwise, why are they trying so hard to convince me of their value? People who are confident in their own worth have no need to impress others with it.
I think Jesus shows us this in today’s Gospel. The first event of his public life was to be baptized in the Jordan and to hear the heavenly voice proclaim, “You are my beloved Son.” At Jesus’s baptism, he recognizes his true identity. Before he preached any sermon, before he performed any miracle, before he accomplished any part of our salvation, he claimed who he truly was. He grounded himself in the conviction that he was beloved by God. That gave him the confidence, the courage, and the freedom to do God’s will. What Jesus is trying to show us is that who we are comes before what we do. God does not love us because of what we have accomplished or will accomplish but only because God freely chooses us to be beloved daughters and sons. Our value does not derive from our beauty or our power but only from God’s delight.
Now I know it can be challenging to believe that God loves us in this unconditional way. We can slip into thinking that God is disappointed in us because we fail to be the people we should be or that God has forgotten us as we face a difficulty or trial. But God knew our failures and our sins before we were born and still chose us as daughters and sons. God understood the type of trials that we would have to face before we took our first breath and committed to be with us and help us in our needs. We were loved before we were successful. We are embraced despite our sins. We had value before we performed our first action of love or service.
We have no need to impress others with our importance. Our value comes from God’s love. When we embrace that God-given identity, we will be able to live our lives in confidence, in courage and in freedom—just like Jesus.