Sermon Notes — January 11, 2026
Matthew 3:13-17
“Beloved”
January 11, 2026
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
I can’t explain why, but I am fascinated by names. As we’re getting to know each other, I might ask you why your parents chose your name, or what your middle name is. I might ask you to spell your name, so that I can picture it in my head, because that helps me remember it. I believe that names are important and that knowing someone’s name and calling them by name is an act of hospitality and care. When I call you by name I want it to be a sign that you are important to me. And I’m not always going to remember your name, and I might forget it at the most inconvenient and embarrassing time, but I will always try my best.
I have a colleague, she’s another United Methodist pastor, who believes that names are as important as I do, but she approaches names in a different way. She calls everyone, no matter what their parents named them, Beloved. If she sees you in person she will offer a hug and say Hello, Beloved If she addresses a room full of people, she will address the group as Beloved. She starts texts and emails with Beloved, comma. As the conversation continues, she will use people’s given names, but she always begins with Beloved.
And every time she does this, she reminds us of God’s name for us –
Beloved.
Will you pray with me and for me?
All four gospels tell a story about Jesus’s baptism, but only Matthew tells us about the conversation between Jesus and John the Baptist. To get a fuller picture of the conversation we go back to the beginning of Matthew chapter 3. Matthew tells us that John the Baptist shows up one day in the wilderness around Judea and begins to call people to change their hearts and lives because the Kingdom of Heaven is coming near. And the people of Jerusalem and the larger region of Judea hear John’s call and they journey out into the wilderness to be with him. As they confess their sins to him, he baptizes them in the Jordan River.
Now we can’t get John’s baptism mixed up with Christian baptism because that is not what John’s baptism is. John’s baptism is more like a ritual cleansing, a sign of a person’s desire to change their life. Some scholars believe that it was a way for people to physically demonstrate that they were ready for the Messiah to come.
Some of the religious leaders came out as well, but John doesn’t have anything nice to say to them.
And then, Matthew tells us, Jesus appears in the wilderness, having traveled all the way from the Region of Galilee.
You can see Jerusalem on the map here, just west of the north end of the Dead Sea. You can also see Bethany beyond the Jordan, just north of the Dead Sea. That is where tradition tells us John the Baptist preached his message of repentance and offered baptism. You can see what an effort it was for Jesus to get to John all the way from the region of Galilee, especially compared to people who lived in and around Jerusalem.
When Jesus gets there, John refuses to baptize him. John knows his place. He knows his role. His job was to point people to Jesus so that they would recognize him, and recognize that in him – in Jesus – the Kingdom of God had come near.
But Jesus insists.
Allow me to be baptized now. This is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.
The question that we all want the answer to is this: If John is calling people to change their hearts and lives, and baptism is a sign of their desire to change their hearts and lives, then why does Jesus insist on being baptized. He doesn’t need to change his heart or his life.
Without getting too far into the weeds, here are a couple of thoughts about why Jesus insists on being baptized by John.
First, Jesus goes out to the wilderness with all these people because he understands that his place is with sinners. Not because he himself is a sinner, but because we sinners are the people that he came to save.
Second, Jesus’s baptism – like your baptism and my baptism and the baptisms of the people in the wilderness – Jesus’s baptism is a sign. It is a sign that he chooses to listen to God’s voice and God’s voice alone to tell him who he is and what he is called to do. It is a sign that he trusts God and God alone to lead him through his life, all the way to his death.
And as soon as he comes up out of the Jordan River, he hears the voice of God telling him – and telling everyone out there in the wilderness – exactly who he is.
This is my Son whom I dearly love; I find happiness in him.
More familiar translations say this:
This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.
God’s voice affirms what has been true since the beginning of all things. Jesus is God’s beloved child.
There will be moments all throughout Jesus’s life when it will be easy for him to question God’s love for him. It would be easy for him to question God’s love for him when he is tempted in the wilderness. It would be easy for him to question God’s love for him when he is being beaten and tortured and executed on the cross.
Throughout the hardships and temptations of his life, when it would be easy to give in to despair, when it would be easy to believe that God has abandoned him, turned his back on him, or even forgotten about him, these words will remain as true as ever.
This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.
There are moments throughout our lives when we are vulnerable to the same temptations – to believe that God has forgotten about us or abandoned us, to believe that God is angry with us, or that we have done something beyond God’s ability to forgive.
That is why we set aside time to remember that we have been baptized and that God has named us – we are God’s Beloved. We remember once again that only God gets to tell us who we are, and that we can trust God with our whole lives because God loves us. We are God’s children.
Our young people have spent this whole weekend discovering – and for some of them it was a rediscovey – discovering the love of God and discovering Jesus’s invitation into friendship with him. They have learned – or perhaps remembered – that God is trustworthy and kind, that God forgives them, and that God is the only one who can heal their hurts.
It’s one thing for Alison or me or Terry or Jen to teach all these things to our young people, but these deep spiritual truths take on whole new meaning when our young people actually see God’s love in the flesh through your love and care for them. Thirty-one of you signed up to pray for our young people by name while they were here over the weekend, and your names were posted on the wall next to the time slot that you signed up for so that the youth would know who was praying for them. Even if they couldn’t pick you out of a crowd, they saw your name there as a person who cares enough to pray.
Last night about 50 of you came out in the nasty weather to pray in person for our young people. Max and Bryce, Lindsey and Ashleigh led these young people in small group conversations all weekend, and last night many of you stayed up way past your bedtime to karaoke.
When these young people were baptized, either here or in another congregation, you made a covenant with them and with their families. You promised to surround them with a community of love and forgiveness, and you promised to pray for them as they grow in their discipleship. You made these vows because you know that we don’t experience God’s love and forgiveness in a vacuum. We don’t grow as disciples in isolation. Disciples are formed in communities where people know the deep forgiving, reconciliation, transforming love of God and share that forgiveness, reconciliation, and transformation with each other. If we are not that community for our young people then they will not have that community present and active in their lives.
At the beginning of the baptismal covenant we say these things. We say that, with God’s help, we will turn away from the power of sin and death. We say that we will turn toward Jesus and seek to live as he would live. We commit ourselves to living lives that preach the good news – the good news that death has been defeated forever by the love of God, and that abundant life is available to anyone who wants it.
These aren’t things that we just figure out on our own. These are things that we learn, in large part, by example – by watching people who are really good at being disciples of Jesus Christ. And so we rely on the Holy Spirit’s guidance and the community we have together to live out this covenant.
In just a few moments we will invite you to renew the vows made at your baptism – to turn away from the power of sin and death, to be prophets to the powers that be, to live as disciples of Jesus, and to be living witnesses to the gospel. And then we will invite you to remember that you are baptized, to remember that you are a child of God, to remember your name – the name that God gave you.
Beloved.