Sunday, January 11, 2026: "Baptism in Mud"

Watch the Sermon here

 The First United Presbyterian Church

“Baptism in Mud”

Rev. Amy Morgan

January 11, 2026

Matthew 3:13-17

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?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” 

When we talk about baptism, it’s usually at this lovely font. A pretty bowl of clear, clean water. 

When we, in 21^st century America, contemplate the symbolism of water, thanks to modern plumbing and water treatment, we can imagine how water nourishes life and cleanses us from contamination. We can imagine a baptism that purifies and renews us. We can imagine a new life in Christ washed of sin and filled with goodness. 

This is the baptism we want for each little baby in a white gown edged with lace. This is the baptism we desire for each earnest young person ready to profess their faith in Jesus. This is the baptism we hope for each new believer who courageously stands here ready to begin a new way of life. 

And then, there’s life. 

Those babies grow up and struggle with behavioral challenges and get labeled “the bad kid” in class. They feel like nobody gets them and nobody loves them. They don’t remember a time when they were lovingly held and marked with clean, clear water and claimed as God’s beloved child. They just remember anger and punishment and shame. 

And those young people, earnest as they were, become jaded and cynical. They see all the broken promises made by adults they trusted. They see all the harm we cause in the world and don’t see anyone trying to do better. They don’t see what difference faith makes, and they can’t prove the existence of God like they can prove the existence of an atom. 

And that new believer and their new way of life? Well, it pretty quickly starts to seem like the old way of life. The excitement wanes. The new, loving community turna out to be made up of human beings who act pretty much like all other human beings in the world. And the struggles of relationships and work and health and happiness don’t get any easier with Jesus than they were without him. 

When we read the story of Jesus’s baptism, the question I always get is, “why did Jesus need to be baptized?” Wasn’t he already perfect and sinless? What did he need to be cleansed from? What refreshment did he require? 

It’s the same question his cousin John had when Jesus showed up at the Jordan river and waded in. “What are you doing here? Are you confused about who needs to be baptized?”

But it may not actually be the same question. 

Because, you see, people were not coming to John to be cleansed from sin and renewed by fresh water. The Jordan River today is a shallow, polluted sludge, but even in the first century, even hundreds of years before that, it was not a crystal-clear water source. The Hebrew scriptures tell the story of King Namaan, who came to Israel seeking healing for a skin disease. When the prophet Elisha told him to wash in the Jordan seven times to be cured, he took one look at the muddy river and refused.  Nobody dipped in the Jordan expecting to be cleansed, at least not in any literal sense of the word. 

The idea that being submerged in the Jordan would clean or refresh you would not have occurred to anyone coming to John to be baptized. 

So what were they coming for? What kind of baptism was John offering in these murky waters?

In Matthew’s gospel, John says that he is baptizing with “water for repentance.” Now, the word for repentance in Greek is metanoia, which literally means to change your mind. Now, typically, a nice, cleansing shower and a tall, refreshing glass of water do not motivate us to change our way of thinking, our perceptions and worldview. But there is something else that does.

Imagine this: you wade down to your neck in a muddy, marshy mess. You hold your breath and squeeze your eyes shut as you’re submerged in gloop. Your lungs begin to ache and you can feel the grit begin to collect around your eyes and pursed lips. And then you come up smelling like earth – like dirt and rot. That’s what fills your nostrils on your first new breath. A reminder that you are dirt.

This is not an experience of cleansing and renewal. It is a near-death experience. And that is what brings people to repentance. 

And that is what brings Jesus to the river. To fulfill all righteousness, as Jesus tells John, he must be baptized into the fullness of humanity, which means, into death. In his baptism, Jesus is not being cleansed from sin and renewed by refreshing water. He is demonstrating that he is one of us, fully human, fully mortal, a dirt-clod like the rest of us. He lowers himself all the way down into the muck and mire of the human experience. John isn’t confused because Jesus is coming to be baptized and cleansed of sins he’s never committed. He’s confused as to why Jesus, who is God incarnate, who is holy and pure, would want to sully himself in the sludge of the Jordan River. Jesus reminds John that righteousness does not mean purity. Righteousness means going all the way in. There are no half-measures in God’s incarnation. God dives all the way down to the bottom of creation and comes up covered in muck.

And it is only when Jesus emerges from those murky waters, soggy and soiled, that the love of God dive-bombs him and he hears that he is beloved. 

You see, Jesus isn’t clean and pure and perfect when God’s love is affirmed. He is messy and gross and totally human. He’s been through hell and back. He’s been buried by life’s ugliness and clawed his way back up to the surface. Then, and only then, can he really hear that he is loved beyond measure. 

This is what baptism really means. That God loves us, not when we’re all cleaned up and full of life and energy, but God loves us when we’re an absolute mess, when we’re completely human, when we’ve been soiled and pushed so far down we can’t even remember there is light. And when we’ve been pulled back up and wiped the mud out of our eyes and spit the dirty water out of our mouths, then, and only then, can we really hear that we are loved beyond measure. 

Because when we’re feeling clean and perfect and refreshed, we feel lovable. We feel worthy of love. And that’s great. We should always feel that way. God would love that for us. 

But when we inevitably experience shame and fear and anger and disappointment and all those other human feelings that come from human experiences, there’s not enough water in the world to make us feel pure and lovable again. The only way we can know that we are really and truly loved is to die to any sense of our own self-righteousness and to be raised as beloved while we are standing in the grime and mess that is a normal, human life. 

In baptism, we are buried with Christ, just as he was buried in the mud of the Jordan in his baptism. We are raised to a new life, not as perfect people, but as people who are claimed as beloved while covered in grime, looking and feeling our worst. 

So baptism is not that moment that makes us and our lives pure and perfect. It is that moment where we are promised that when we are judged and shamed, when we are cynical and despairing, when we are disappointed and exhausted, in other words, when we are at our most human, we are God’s beloved child, empowered by the Holy Spirit to live in and for love. 

At each funeral and memorial service, I begin with the proclamation that our baptism is only complete in death. Jesus’s baptism, at the beginning of his ministry, was only complete when he died for the love of the world. Baptism initiates a new life that remembers a near-death experience and can therefore live in the experiential hope that death is not the end. We live our baptism every day, with every breath we take. When the smell of earth fills our nostrils, we live our baptism. When we are caked in regret and grief and pain but know that we are endlessly loved, we live our baptism. When we go down in the murky waters of life with others to pull them back up out of the sludge, we live our baptism. 

And when that baptism is complete in death, well, that is just the beginning. As Paul assures us, “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Baptism is a near-death experience, and when it is complete in death, it is still only a near-death experience. There will come a day when the smell of earth will fill our nostrils and God’s love will echo in our ears and we will wipe the mud and the tears from our eyes and see that God dwells with us and has restored the whole creation to its original goodness. 

That is the hope we proclaim in baptism. It is so much bigger and so much more beautiful and meaningful than a life washed from sin and sustained by water. It is a life united to Christ, in his death and in his resurrection. It is a life that hopes for so much more than individual purity, but instead hopes for the restoration of all creation. It is a near-death experience that enables us to change our minds, to think again, to see the world in a new way. It empowers us to love – to love others and ourselves, even at our messiest moments. 

So maybe this is really the baptism we want for each little baby, each earnest young person, each new believer. Because this is the baptism given to each of us. A baptism of repentance, of dirty water, and of endless love.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

During the hymn, you are invited to come to the font to remember your baptism, being marked with the sign of the cross in mud.