The humble queuing God: A reflection and homily for the 1st Sunday of Epiphany and the baptism of Jesus for 11th January 2026.

A Personal Reflection by Ian J Mobsby

So I am sharing this compiled reflection in advance of my preaching this text in the Christ’s Church Cathedral on the biblical texts for Jesus’s baptism. I really do not mind people using this content, although I will be using it myself on Sunday 11th January at the 10.30am Eucharist Service.

[As I have now preached this, you can watch this through YouTube here]

It is a strange thing, to be preaching on the Baptism of Christ in a cathedral context.

It is not easy because I am sure if you are like me, you may be thinking to yourself right now, is there anything else to be said about this very familiar text that has not already been said many times? What else is there to add to the Water. Dove. And deeply resonant almost Barry White type deep voice from heaven. What is there to notice here that we have missed? On this day of Epiphany when we traditionally consider our own baptism – is there really anything I can say that brings new or even renewed interest?

But after saying all of that – it is true to recognise that the familiarity of the text creates a problem. There is the very real danger that the baptism of Jesus becomes a kind of familiar liturgical wallpaper: reverent, beautiful, and almost invisible.

I confess that as I have been praying over this text for the last 2 weeks, seeking to be inspired, I came to the conviction that perhaps the problem is not that there is nothing left to say about this Gospel text, but that it is so holy we have stopped really seeing the depth of what it is really in plain-sight.

I also want to say emotionally, that this homily has been inspired be the conversation with a dear Christian Anglican Priest who died far too young last night. So Charlie I honour you in this homily today.

The subtle element is in the story – that the God-Man, Emmanuel, God with us and Messiah who was as we know from the opening chapter of John quoting the prophecy of Isaiah, that He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him

Well this Jesus shows up in the scene and quietly joined an ordinary queue of people patiently waiting for John the Baptist at the edge of the river Jordan to baptise them.

So just think about that for a minute – not a stained-glass window or ikon of a classic ‘da-da’ moment – no, instead, the incarnation of God, the fulfilment of God in human form waited for, for thousands of years quietly joins an ordinary human queue. I imagine the Son of God standing in that queue. No halo. No soundtrack. No Primadonna moment - Just a very human seeking God, the visible expression of the invisible God, or the ikon of God, waiting his turn in an ordinary queue, and in so doing, expresses deep humility.

Luke is very careful with his wording. He does not say, “When the holy people were being baptised,” or “When those with their lives in order were being baptised.” He says, “When all the people were being baptised, Jesus also was baptised.” The Son of God does not step out from the crowd. He does not receive a private appointment. He does not get a discreet spiritually superior fast-track special moment. He waits. He stands among the restless, the ashamed, the confused, the half-hopeful, the half-despairing, the ill, the angry, the disappointed, the desperate, and all in that moment, ankle-deep in the muddy waters of the river Jordan.

And this, I think, is the scandal we have missed. The first public act of Jesus’ ministry is not a sermon, not a miracle, not a clever piece of theological teaching, no A-ha moment. No. It is an act of silent solidarity. God joins a very ordinary human queue as an expression of God’s love for all humanity.

I find this very moment in scripture – profoundly moving and awe-inspiring, and in my prep time moved me to tears.

This is important, because research suggests that many Christians feel more comfortable with a type of Jesus being more God like, like so many of the TV shows I have seen about the life of Jesus, where he is fully divine, but for many they struggle with the idea that Jesus was an ordinary looking, fully human man.

Actually this is the real problem of Christian fundamentalism and indeed Christian nationalism – it’s all about a top down powerful God, calling people to account for their sins in what is called redemptive theology, and very little awareness of the bottom up Jesus, who comes to express love and to establish a renewed relationship with humanity, and opens up that love to the many who are excluded, undervalued, unseen and oppressed as Jesus comes as a humble man to begin God’s salvific purposes through a profound presence which is called Incarnational theology. Without this balance between Jesus being fully God and importantly today being fully human, then we distort Christianity – so it is vital that we recognise and hear that Jesus is a thoroughly ordinary human being in this scene is waiting to get baptised in a very human queue.

But then the paradox presses in on us, because we are trained to ask the sensible question. If Jesus is fully God, if he is without sin, if he does not need repentance, then why on earth does he need to queue to get baptised? Why does God the Emmanuel need to be baptised? Surely this is the one moment when it would have made sense for him to stand on the bank and supervise John the baptist. As we know, even John the Baptist, when he realises that there’s something about Jesus that is about the Messiah, he is at first reluctant, when Jesus reaches the front of the queue he insists on an ordinary baptism.

May be an answer to this paradox, is not that Jesus needed baptism. It is that we needed Jesus to be baptised. This is not about ritual correctness. It is about the way God chooses to love. The bottom up focus of Jesus the fully human man. The Jordan is not a place of achievement. It is a place of admission. It is not a place of judgement, but a place of presence. People are there because their lives are not what they should be. They are there because something is broken, or painful, or unfinished. And instead of offering commentary from above, God steps down into the water with them. Jesus is expressing that he is deeply committed to full relational participation with humanity where he is practicing being fully human, as he is committed to the way of bottom up mission of God’s unconditional love.

This somewhat ordinariness is also inherently present in Isaiah 43. Isaiah does not describe salvation in heroic or religious language. There is no triumphal escape from the world. Instead, everything is framed in the grammar of ordinary vulnerability:

When you pass through the waters…
when you walk through fire…

Not if.
Not in case.
But when.

This is not a promise of exemption from human difficulty, but a promise of accompaniment within it. The people addressed here are not spiritual elites. They are traumatised exiles who have lost home, temple, and identity. And God does not say, “I will lift you out of your circumstances.” God says, I will be with you in them.

That is exactly what Jesus is enacting in his baptism. So Isaiah is not simply some background poetry for the baptism of Christ. It is its inner meaning. Isaiah gives us the theology; Jesus gives us the flesh and water of it. The prophet says God will be with us in the waters. The Son shows us what that actually looks like: standing in line, quietly, with ordinary people, letting divine love take the form of waiting, getting wet, and choosing not to stand apart.

What Isaiah states matters enormously today. God does not say, “When you pass through the waters, I will make sure you don’t get wet.” God says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.” Not I will rescue you from them, not I will fix everything before you get there, but I will be there in the middle of it, soaked through with you.

This is the incarnation of God, the human being, at its most unsettling. God does not redeem humanity from a safe distance. God redeems humanity from inside its mess by being deeply present. The Jordan is not clean water. It is not a spa. It is the river of ordinary lives - grief, regret, addiction, longing, confusion - and Jesus wades in without comment.

And then, only after this, only after the waiting and the getting wet, the heavens open and the deep voice speaks. And we usually hear that voice as a commissioning: where it is commonly understood, that this is where Jesus receives his job description. But listen carefully. At this point in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has done nothing. No healings. No teaching. No disciples. No miracles. He has simply stood where we stand.

And the voice does not say, “You are my Son, and I will be pleased with you once you prove yourself.” It says, “You are my beloved. With you I am well pleased.” Before achievement. Before usefulness. Before productivity. The delight of God is not in Jesus’ ministry. It is in Jesus’ belonging. The love is about being before doing – something that many Christians have forgotten.

Which means, uncomfortably, that the baptism of Jesus dismantles one of our deepest assumptions about faith: that God will be pleased with us once we get ourselves sorted out. The gospel says the opposite. God is pleased with us before we begin.

The early Church, as we hear in Acts, barely seems to know what it is doing with baptism. People are baptised, then the Spirit turns up later. The order is muddled. The theology is half-formed. But what they seem to grasp instinctively is this: baptism is not for people who have arrived. It is for people who are willing to begin the spiritual journey.

And here, standing in this cathedral - in all its stone and polish and years of prayer - this day, this feast day becomes quietly dangerous. Sorry, but sometimes cathedrals are very good at making God feel dry. Elevated. Contained. Contolled. Safely impressive. The Jordan was none of those things.

The Baptism of Jesus the God-Man is God’s refusal to be worshipped at a distance. It is God’s determination to be found not in the places we have perfected, but in the places we are still trying to survive, still stumbling, still in pain, still incomplete.

So perhaps today is not really about remembering our baptism at all. Perhaps it is about noticing where God is standing right now in allegiance with us. The season of Christmas that leads into the season of Epiphany is about God not waiting for us to improve. God is not holding out for better behaviour. God is already in the water - muddy, crowded, unresolved - saying to every human being before they have proved anything at all: you are my beloved. Jesus is living out the commitment of God to be the Emmanuel – the God with us, where Jesus is part of God’s bottom up plan to restore all things back into right relationship with God.

And the miracle, which we are still trying to take in, is that God still chooses to get wet, still comes close, still loves us, waiting for us to respond to this offer of life changing and transformative relationship.

So in this season of Epiphany, particularly if you struggle with the importance of Jesus’ humanity, can I invite you to spend some time in prayerful encounter with this very human Jesus, who loves you in this moment for everything that you are, in the hope of the healing and restoration of all things. And boy does the world need to hear about this intention of God’s purposes that begins with Jesus, fully human, who waits with ordinary people, in a very human queue.

Photo by Wendi Wells on Unsplash