Epiphany 1, 2026

 7 years ago when my husband was applying for a job in Seattle, and I was anticipating leaving a church I served for 14 years, I started swimming as a way to stay healthy, both physically and emotionally. It seemed there was a pretty big chance he would get the job and I needed to calm my anxiety about the uncertainty of the future. So I started going to the pool. The pool is a quiet place that I can be alone with my thoughts. It is a calming place when I am anxious. It is a place of centering, a place of keeping myself in shape, and of prayer. Although the pandemic closed the pools for a time, I have returned there. I swim about 4 days a week for about 45 minutes. It comes to about ¾ of a mile. I often organize my thoughts for sermons there and feel buoyed up on many levels.

Water is powerful. We are made mostly of water. We depend on the flowing of water to give us life. Several of you experienced flooded basements last month. Water can be traumatizing, especially when you just get it cleaned up and it comes gushing in again. My home congregation when I was growing up had a baptismal font that spilled over into a pool and there was a pump that kept it flowing. One year when several members had basement flooding we had to turn off the pump because the sound of trickling water was making them anxious.

Water is responsible for so much good. Here in Oregon we are so blessed by water to keep this half of our state green, to provide water for livestock, to provide recreation and refreshment. We are blessed with an abundance of water from the Columbia River to Johnson Creek, to blue lake. How exciting that God chooses something plentiful and available to bless, that God comes to us through something every day and common

Jesus came to the Jordan to be baptized by John. Water is powerful. The Jordan River marked the place where the Israelites entered into the land after wandering for 40 years in the wilderness. They started at a body of water, the Red Sea, which was a powerful barrier keeping them trapped until God made a way through the waters. Then after all that wilderness wandering there is another body of water to cross to end the journey, the Jordan River. So Jesus comes here to this powerful place: A place of barrier, of boundary, of crossing, of ending one phase and entering another.

At the River Jordan, Jesus encounters a barrier—John not being worthy to baptize him. We are always putting up barriers. Sometimes it holds us back from our own power. Sometimes it is about others. We put up barriers saying that some are in our group and some are out. Let’s examine this barrier in the story of Cornelius and his family. There was a barrier about what people could eat and what people couldn’t, a law. Maybe it was to keep people safe and healthy. Maybe it was about prejudice and fear. It was a barrier that worked for a while, but Peter had a vision that broke down that barrier and he was told that things he had been forbidden to eat, were actually permitted, and people he was told to keep separate from he was to embrace into God’s family.

We’re planning to vote on a welcome statement at our annual meeting at the end of the month that has the potential to break down a barrier. It is one the church and church people put up trying to be faithful to God’s teaching and to the way we have been raised. It’s a barrier meant to protect people and guide people. And yet through study of scripture many of us are saying we see this barrier being more hurtful than helpful, maybe more constructed by humans than by God. At Trinity, we’re considering a welcome that includes people of all different sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions because we feel led by God’s love and grace to do so.

Trinity Lutheran Church, I want you to take special notice here in this story of the presence of the Trinity. We have Jesus at the Jordan, the Son. We have the voice of God over the waters. We have the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. Let’s notice this moment is all about the power of God the Trinity through the waters. Jesus seeks out water to illustrate his entrance into ministry as the Israelites used this place as an entrance to the new life God was leading them to. Jesus in the flesh, made of water, coming to the waters for cleansing, naming, and anointing as the Son of God, the Messiah at the waters. The voice of God over the waters as at Creation making something new, order out of chaos, in blessing Jesus the word made flesh. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, like the dove that Noah sent out after the flood to signal when it was safe to walk on solid ground again, a sign of the healing of creation, of wholeness of restoration and starting again. It is all about the power of water to set apart, cleanse, remove barriers, or mark a new beginning.

This moment is all about the breaking down of barriers. The barrier between Jesus and John is breaking down. God always works through imperfect people to accomplish God’s purposes and John is one of those people. The barrier between humankind and God is being broken down. Here is Jesus, God in the flesh. That’s the word “incarnate” we’ve been hearing a lot in the Christmas story and hymns. Carne is flesh, so God is in the flesh. The barrier between the wilderness and the gathering of the people, the activity of the people is being broken down. Even the concept of the Trinity shows that although we have one God, God is relational within God’s self-breaking down barriers, but also God is relational with us and with water, with all creation. Baptism is a breaking down of barriers, washing away the sin that divides us, breaking down the separation of unworthiness and bringing us into God’s family. Baptism breaks down the barriers between people—there is no insiders and outsiders. When God welcomes you into the family of God, no one can take that away from you. A barrier has been taken down between us, and now you are my brother or sister, you are my responsibility and we belong to each other.

We’re invited this day to come to the waters of baptism and renew that relationship, be cleansed again, and sent out to do ministry. We are invited to encounter the power of water. Water can carve through stone, it finds its way through to nourish the plants and animals. Water evaporates and floats through the sky only to be pushed up to condense to rain and bless the land. Water comes down as snow and waits to melt on the mountains, giving us water all through the summer until the cycle starts again. Water respects no boundaries, it breaks them down and comes to us despite any unworthiness.

In our baptism we are called and driven by the Holy Spirit to experience a changed life. We make and renew commitments as a community to proclaim Christ through word and deed, to care for others and the world God made, and to work for Justice and peace. So we emerge from the waters with a blessing, a reminder of who we are as God’s children, a reminder that we belong to this great story of liberation and new life, a reminder that we are part of the body of Christ, the community working together, and a motivation, a drive to do God’s Kingdom work of releasing the prisoners, feeding the hungry, standing up for justice and peace, and loving the world. God does God’s work through us, the body of Christ, marked and anointed and claimed and reminded.

Lately, when I go to the pool I have started to mark my baptism. I always wet my hair before I put on my swim cap. That’s when I am giving thanks to God for my baptism. Thanks be to God for the morning. Thanks be to God for the waters. Thanks be to God for quiet places to float and weigh all the troubles of this world. Thanks be to God for cleansing us. Thanks be to God for breaking down our barriers. Thanks be to God for new life in the desert. Thanks be to God for Jesus who came to show us God’s love. Thanks be to God for the voice that claims us and blesses us. Thanks be to God for the Holy Spirit that drives us—out in the wilderness and back again, toward each other, on new paths of justice and hope. I invite you to find your renewal of baptism ritual. Maybe it’s when you step into the shower or wash your face in the morning, or maybe when you step out in the rain or wash the dishes. Maybe it is when you bathe your child or your ailing parent. Notice the water, notice the blessing, notice the hope and let it move you toward a more just and peaceful world.