Free Water

This is a sermon about the baptism of Jesus and what baptism means to those of us who are baptized.  Text is Matthew 3: 1-12

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

January 11, 2026

“Free Water”

Matthew 3: 1-12 – Common English Bible

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the desert of Judea announcing, 2 “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” 3 He was the one of whom Isaiah the prophet spoke when he said:

The voice of one shouting in the wilderness,
         “Prepare the way for the Lord;
         make his paths straight.”[a]

4 John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey.

5 People from Jerusalem, throughout Judea, and all around the Jordan River came to him. 6 As they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. 7 Many Pharisees and Sadducees came to be baptized by John. He said to them, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? 8 Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. 9 And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire. 11 I baptize with water those of you who have changed your hearts and lives. The one who is coming after me is stronger than I am. I’m not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.”

I enjoy going to December Nights in Balboa Park every year, although I don’t stay long. Just long enough to walk over the bridge, walk around for a while, and walk back, a time that is still shorter than most people spend trying to find a parking space. I can walk there and leave just as tens of thousands pour in. I’m not into crowds, but I am very much into the energy.

I like walking through the international houses and seeing what foods they are selling. I like the lights and watching the Christmas tree lighting on the organ pavilion. I like wandering around with my camera, looking for something interesting or particularly beautiful.

Last year, as I walked back home across the bridge, I saw a man holding a huge sign mounted on top of a tall pole. In my memory it almost glowed, as if it were lit by neon lights, though it probably wasn’t. But it made such an impression that it has grown outsized in my mind. The sign read, “Repent.”  There he stood while happy families with strollers pushed past, kids dressed in festive clothes, and adults wearing their ugly sweaters on a night meant to feel joyful and human.

And I remember thinking, are you really doing anything but turning people off. It’s possible that one person out of the tens of thousands saw that sign, felt a deep sense of conviction, and changed their life on the spot. But is it far more likely that hundreds more walked past and had their worst suspicions about religion confirmed – that it’s all about judgment, superiority, and shame, wrapped in spiritual language.

And it turns out, that’s precisely the crowd John the Baptist confronts in today’s passage.

“In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness.”

Not in the city. Not in the temple. He appeared in the desert, the place where people often go when they have run out of options, not a place of spiritual solitude so much as a refuge.

People came to him in droves.  Some for the spectacle of it.  But many more came because they were genuinely drawn by his message that you can “change your hearts and lives.”  It’s a true gift.  He is telling them they have the power to change their lives in a system in which they have no other power.  

The word is most often translated as repent, but like that sign in Balboa Park, it’s a word that’s been weaponized and abused, used to shrink people with shame.

But repentance in Scripture is not groveling or self-hatred, and it is certainly not begging to an angry God. John is not telling people that they are worthless. He has compassion for people living inside a broken world, encouraging them that they don’t have to be limited by it – or keep cooperating with it.

The word is metanoia, and it means a change in direction. You’re free to turn around. Free to stop walking one way and begin walking another.

But back in Jerusalem, this had a price tag. Before a pilgrim could enter the court of the faithful at the temple, they underwent a ritual purification, a full immersion in water known as a miqvah. And that miqvah came with a fee, often a hefty one.  The problem wasn’t the ritual but who controlled access to it. Religion had developed a paywall.

If you were wealthy, you not only could afford it, you could pay for an upgrade.  You could pay for a more private miqvah experience in the home of a priest, clean water with fresh towels, quiet and away from the crowds.  Holiness as a luxury.  Something like an exclusive airport lounge while everyone else sits on hard plastic chairs. 

If you were poor, you waited in line, and if you were among the poorest of the poor, you didn’t get in at all.  No water for you, no purification, not even a hard plastic chair in the court of the faithful. 

But out in the wilderness, John said, come on in. The water is free. The only price is honesty and the courage to say, “I want to turn.” That’s why people walked a full day from Jerusalem to the Jordan – widows and all who had been priced out.

John took a ritual designed to protect the purity of the system and turned it into a declaration that God’s mercy does not belong to the system at all. The religious authorities showed up too – because John was cutting into their profits.

That’s why in this passage he calls them out and says, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to run from the coming reckoning? Do not tell me who your ancestors are. Produce fruit that shows you have actually changed.”  How do you think that went over?!

Then one day, a man whose very birth had already unsettled the powerful quietly appeared. A man whose life as child began as a refugee fleeing a paranoid king.  Among that growing crowd, he too stepped into the water. John’s cousin Jesus. It’s his first recorded public appearance since he was 12 years old, in the Temple, when his parents went searching for him.

But at this time, no one would have known who this man was or who he would become.  John did.  He knew and hesitated.  Why me?  You should baptize me.  And it prompts the question:  if baptism was only about repentance, why would Jesus be baptized?  Is there more to it?

Scholar Richard Losch offers an answer that immediately makes sense in the context of this scene. Jesus is baptized in front of this crowd of regular people and religious authorities not because he needs to turn his life around, but because others have been excluded. He hasn’t failed.  Religion has failed them.  So Jesus steps into the water as an act of solidarity.

And therefore, his first public act is not a sermon or a miracle or a confrontation. Before Jesus ever says, “Blessed are the poor,” he stands with them, soaked in the same water, not in some private miqvah.  And when Jesus emerged from the water, a voice from heaven declared, “This is my Son, my beloved.”

Jesus made a public and unmistakable declaration, the meeting point of repentance and solidarity. To turn your life around meant a change that turns away from pricing people out of it and toward those it left behind.  

It’s not a call to shame strangers but to examine whether we are still walking the path of our vows, a path that has a direction.  Asking, is my life producing fruit that shows up in who I am willing to stand with? And if not, am I willing to change direction?

It’s the kind of examination that reaches deep into the stories we tell ourselves, deep into the fears that quietly shape our choices.  

Hard questions like these:

Am I letting fear guide my life, letting fear decide what I will risk, rather than letting faith lead me?

What stories am I telling myself that give me excuses for doing nothing about… whatever that “nothing” is?

Have I arranged my life so nothing has to change, so that I can care in theory without being changed in practice?

That’s why baptism isn’t about trying harder or becoming more loving in some vague, sentimental way. It isn’t a spiritual scorecard for moral self-improvement. Baptism is about alignment. A kind of alignment that asks something of us personally, before it asks anything of the world.

But then, underneath all those questions, is the invitation that has been there all along: to change your heart and life. You really can change your heart and life – even here and now.

And while baptism is a one-time event, it is never once and done. We return to it because religion keeps trying to put conditions and exclusions on God’s grace and sell it back to us. 

That’s why we return to our baptismal vows at the beginning of every new year. Not because we have failed. But because the stories we tell ourselves shape the systems we tolerate. And those systems are relentless. They keep pulling us off course. Sometimes violently.

As we enter a very nasty 2026, questions about who we stand with will keep coming at us faster than we can keep up.  Repentance doesn’t mean pointing fingers at others. It asks about our own participation in systems that crush people.  

• Including white supremacy.  
• An economy that leaves whole communities behind.  
• And our silence when neighbors are targeted by a system that leaves a neighbor dead on a snowy street, then erases her life through a propaganda campaign designed to justify the violence.

What happened in Minneapolis is not a misunderstanding or an isolated tragedy. The whole thing is a moral horror that demands repentance.

And metanoia looks like choosing a different way.  We can

• With our words.
• With our money.
• With our courage – to hope, even now.

Day by day, year by year, what does the Lord require of us?

• To do justice.
• To love mercy.
• To walk humbly with our God.

Our baptisms keep calling us back to that path.  And when we fail, not to see ourselves as failures, but to live with gratitude that we can change our hearts and lives once again.  And again.  To turn.  And to walk toward each other.

LITANY:  REMEMBERING OUR PROMISES

One:      Do you promise, by the grace of God, to be a disciple, to follow in the way of Jesus Christ, to resist oppression and hatred, to show love and justice, and to witness to the work and word of Jesus Christ, as best you are able?

One: And do you promise, according to the grace given to you, to grow in your faith and to be a faithful member of the church, celebrating Christ’s presence and furthering God’s mission in all the world.