Think about how most people try to begin something important. A career launch. A new venture. A public role. We’re taught to begin with a splash. Make an impression. Announce yourself. Prove you belong there. Start strong so no one doubts you later. The splash is supposed to establish credibility, confidence, momentum.
We see it everywhere.
The grand opening. The debut performance. The viral announcement. Even in quieter professions, there is pressure to signal competence right away. Don’t ease in. Don’t wait. Don’t stand back. Begin with a splash.
That’s what makes today’s gospel so surprising.
Jesus is about to begin his public ministry. This is the moment when everything could turn. If there were ever a time to make a splash, this would be it. He could arrive with authority already on display. He could speak first, act first, distinguish himself immediately from everyone else. Instead, he goes to the River Jordan and does the least splashy thing imaginable. He gets in line.
He steps into the same water as everyone else. He submits to the same baptism. He places himself among people who are there because they know they’re unfinished, repentant, in need. This is how Jesus chooses to begin. Not with a splash upward, but with a descent. Not with distance, but with closeness. Not by standing apart, but by standing with.
It’s still a splash, but not the one anyone expects.
His cousin John senses it immediately. “I need to be baptized by you,” he exclaims. In other words, this is backwards, loopdee loop, cockeyed. You’re supposed to begin above us, not among us. You’re supposed to be the exception. But Jesus insists. He refuses a beginning that separates him from ordinary, struggling people. He refuses a holiness that stays dry.
And here it helps to be precise about what John is doing and what Jesus is doing, because they’re not the same thing. John’s baptism, historically, is a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. It is preparatory. It gathers people at the river and says, honestly and clearly, something needs to be set right. It’s real, it’s serious, and it names the need for repentance—a complete reordering, turning around the other way. But it’s not yet the baptism we confess in the creed. There is, as we say, one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and that baptism is Jesus’s. His descent into the Jordan isn’t repentance for his own sake. It’s identification for our sake. He steps into the water to take our condition upon himself.
And when we’re baptized, we’re not repeating what Jesus did, as though his work needed reinforcement. We are participating in it. We are joined to him, united with him, caught up into his death and his life. John points forward. Jesus fulfills. And our baptism is not parallel to Christ’s, but anchored in it.
That tells us something deeply kind-hearted about God. God doesn’t require us to make a splash before he claims us. God doesn’t wait for impressive beginnings. God meets us in the water where we already are—amid the raging rivers, the rising floods, and thundering cataracts of our day-to-day lives.
When Jesus comes up from the Jordan, then the heavens open. The Spirit descends. And the voice speaks. But listen carefully to what the voice says. It doesn’t announce a résumé. It doesn’t outline a mission statement. It doesn’t give instructions. It names a relationship. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
This is a beginning, yes. But it’s not a performance-based beginning. Jesus begins not with proof, but with promise. Not with accomplishment, but with belonging.
That matters for us, because most of us feel pressure to keep beginning our lives over again with a splash. To justify ourselves. To show that we’re still useful, faithful, strong, worthy. We feel it when we fail. We feel it when life changes against our will. We feel it when faith feels thin and we wonder whether we still count—whether God cares or even exists at all.
Baptism quietly resists all of that.
In baptism, God gives us a beginning that doesn’t depend on how impressive we are. God gives us a starting point we don’t outgrow. We don’t graduate from baptism. We live from it. Again and again, when life pushes us to prove ourselves, baptism pulls us back to what is already true.
You are claimed.
You belong.
You are loved.
And because that is true, every single day becomes a place where something new can begin. Remembering your baptism is not about looking backward to a moment long ago. It’s about waking up to the truth that today is another fresh start. Each morning, before the news finds you, before your body reminds you of its limits, before your regrets have a chance to speak, you are already washed and dressed in Jesus’ own righteousness. You do not step into the day empty-handed. You step into it clothed, accompanied, named.
That can look very ordinary. It might mean beginning the day after decades of faithful work, now wondering who you are without the routines that once defined you, and hearing baptism whisper, you still matter, you are still useful, you are still held. It might mean juggling work, family, aging parents, and expectations that never seem to slow down, and discovering that baptism gives you permission to be human, to set boundaries, to begin again after a hard conversation or a long night. It might mean logging on to school or work or a screen-filled world where comparison is constant, and remembering that you are not your likes, your grades, or your follower count, but someone already claimed and loved. It might mean waking up with a body that moves more slowly now, or with memories that feel closer than yesterday, and trusting that baptism still speaks when energy fades, still names you beloved when the world grows quiet.
This is what daily baptism looks like. Not dramatic. Not loud. But steady and kind. A gentle reminder that today doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful, and you don’t have to earn the right to begin again—because Jesus gives you that right through his own righteousness fulfilled for our sake.
That promise comes before success and it survives failure. It holds when you are confident and when you are exhausted. It remains true when you feel close to God and when you feel nothing at all.
Jesus begins his ministry by entering the water with us, not to show us how to make a better splash, but to show us that God’s power is willing to be found in humility, solidarity, and mercy. The splash that matters isn’t how loudly we announce ourselves, but how deeply God has claimed us.
Today, as we remember the Baptism of our Lord, we also remember our own. Not as a dramatic moment we’re supposed to recreate, but as a quiet, steady beginning we are never asked to replace. A beginning that still speaks when everything else falls silent.
The world tells us to begin with a splash.
God begins with a promise.
And that promise is still spoken over us, even now. I don’t know about you, but to mean that’s a pretty good way to make a splash.
The Rev'd Daniel W. Spigelmyer, Jr. 