Epiphany 1A
January 11, 2026
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
One of the things that I learned in seminary many years ago is that in the Episcopal Church baptism is a one-time event. It doesn’t matter if you were baptized as an infant or an adult. It doesn’t matter what church or denomination you were in. It doesn’t matter whether you were dunked in a river or had water sprinkled on your head.
Baptism is baptism. If you’ve done it once, you’re good. We believe that baptism anywhere is good everywhere.
Not all churches have that teaching. A change in life circumstances, a rededication to following Jesus, joining a new congregation, can lead someone to be baptized multiple times. Baptism symbolizes a new beginning, a new declaration of faith
Today we hear evidence that Jesus was definitely not an Episcopalian. Every year, on the first Sunday after Epiphany, Jesus is baptized. Again. And again. And again.
Even though we are only baptized once, we reaffirm our baptismal covenant throughout the year. I believe that our baptismal covenant is one of the most important things in our prayer book. It outlines in question and answer form exactly what it means to be a baptized Christian, what our responsibilities are, how we are to live in the world.
In a few moments we will renew those promises.
We will attest that we believe in God as Father or Creator; as Jesus, the son of God; and as the Holy Spirit, the spirit of God among us today.
We promise that we will be regular in worship and prayer, that we will study scripture, and be part of a community of believers.
We acknowledge that we will fall short of these responsibilities, and that when we do, we will ask for forgiveness and amend our ways.
The last three questions address how we are to live in the world – proclaiming by word and deed the good news of the Gospel, seeking the image of God in all people, and striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of every human being.
This is an excellent outline of what it means to believe and live as Christians. But like anything we read or say often, our answers to these questions can become rote at times.
Yesterday I had an opportunity to see the questions in a new light.
Later this spring I will be a part of a group of about 20 people from this diocese to go on pilgrimage to the Ivory Coast in Ghana, which is our companion diocese.
Our guiding principles for this pilgrimage come from the baptismal covenant. Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright, one of our leaders, has written what each of these questions might mean for us as individuals and a group. Our reflections on her writings began in a meeting yesterday.
What immediately jumped out at me was her answer to what it means to believe in Jesus.
“We affirm Christ as our model of love, justice, reconciliation, and hope,” it says.
Jesus as a model of love, justice, reconciliation, and hope. When is the last time you have seen our culture and media hold Jesus up as a model of those characteristics?
Her commentary on how we are to live that out is equally powerful. “We will follow the way of Jesus, entering hard truths with courage, meeting suffering with compassion, and seeking resurrection hope wherever we stand.”
Listen to those words again:
Love. Compassion. Courage. Justice. Reconciliation. Hope.
That is what we as Christians have to offer in a world where cruelty, violence, hatred, lies, and greed seem to reign supreme, even among those who claim to be following Jesus.
I especially needed to hear those words this week when it seemed as if every news cycle brought a new horror.
We’ve all heard about Renee Good, a Minnesota resident who was killed, some say murdered, in her car by a masked ICE agent. I don’t know what religion Good was, if any. But she was showing courage and compassion, trying to help notify neighbors that ICE agents with their Gestapo tactics were in the area.
That’s not the only ICE related incident in Minneapolis that day. That afternoon agents went to Roosevelt High School just as classes were ending for the day. In the ensuing chaos multiple people were arrested, teachers and staff members were thrown to the ground. Students on school property were pepper sprayed.
Public schools in Minneapolis were closed Thursday and Friday, and students who do not feel safe going to school will be allowed to take classes online.
Also that day ICE agents pointed a gun at a pastor and detained him for hours for standing up for his congregation and honoring the call to welcome the stranger, Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan said.
Of course those kinds of events are not limited to Minnesota. On a clergy call last week one of our colleagues, Fabio Sotelo, the rector of St. Edwards in Lawrenceville, said that four of his parishioners are detained.
“People are terrified,” he said. “We are afraid. Are we going to survive? People are not coming to church because they are afraid to drive.
“I’m terrified,” he added “Even though I’m a U.S. citizen I don’t feel safe.
“Please pray for us.”
I want to end with a statement from Minnesota bishop Craig Loya about the events happening in his diocese, noting the similarities between the murderous King Herod of Jesus’ day, and the violent powers that be of our own day.
“The Herods of the world, and their fear-driven campaigns of terror, are ever with us,” he said. “Today in Minneapolis, after deploying thousands of federal immigration agents in recent days, an individual was shot and killed by those agents.
“The news is crushing, to be sure, but we ought not be shocked.
“The federal government has been making good for a full year on its promise to enforce immigration policy through a racially narrow lens and with a cruel delight.
“And incident like the one today in Minneapolis was inevitable, and such violence is likely to remain a feature of our common life as long as federal agents are being deployed to cities that are seen as opposing the current administration for the sole purpose of provocation and intimidation.”
As Christians, he added “our call is to stand in the midst of a world where Herod continues to flex and posture, not with reciprocal violence, but gazing in wonder and expectation for the manifestation of Jesus wherever the poor, the outsider, the weak, and the oppressed are to be found.
“In the midst of a world where cruelty tries to pose as power, we continue to rejoice in the assurance that absolute and final power resides in poor and crucified Jesus… Our joy is not some naïve and shallow notion that everything will be ok, when everything is so obviously not ok.
“Our joy is the deep defiant, revolutionary hope we have in the assurance that love is the most powerful force in the universe.
“Like the wise men searching for Bethlehem, we wait, we watch, we follow where love leads, knowing that only God’s action in the world can finally and fully heal all that the lust for a false and hollow power has broken down.”
Amen.