Lent 1
22 February 2026
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
LIVING OUR BAPTISM: ON BEING THE BELOVED
Isaiah 43.1-3a. Mark 1.1-11
If you had been given the opportunity to pick the name on your birth certificate, what name would you have chosen? Is there some name you think would have fit you better than the one you got? Most of us don’t get to choose the names that other people call us. Our parents give us a name, and that’s what we go by, or some variation of it. Along the way, we pick up other names, too. Some of them not so kind: Smelly Ellie. Fatty Patty. Pope the Dope. Schoolmates can think themselves so clever in their cruelty. But names matter.
The first pages of Scripture teach us that to name something or someone is an act of creation. People in our lives say things to us or about us – both good and bad – and those things help create our sense of identity. People call us other names like: Stupid. Ugly. Deviant. Lazy. Failure. Sinner. We don’t choose these names. But if we’re shackled with them long enough, we begin to believe the truth implied within them. We begin to see ourselves through those lens. It’s hard to throw off our old names, isn’t it? In part because those names have sunk down into our hearts and we have let them claim us.
Others of us have gone to great lengths to build our identities into something rock solid and unassailable, wanting others to name us: Hard worker. Successful. Brilliant. Attractive. Loyal. We’ve put an awful lot of stock into our self-made identities. And we can do just fine with them for a while – until something like illness or aging or disaster does something to shake them or even shatter them.
Jesus had a mighty big name to live up to. His name meant “God saves.” In this morning’s gospel story, he gets another name, a new and deeper name. It doesn’t replace his old name. It simply clarifies it.
This Lenten season we are asking what it means to live our baptism. We learn some of what it means by looking at the baptism of Jesus. He comes to the River Jordan where John is baptizing. He enters the water to be baptized by John he comes up out of the water, the heavens are opened, the Spirit descends like a dove, and a Voice says: “You are my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased”, or as I like to translate it, “in whom I take delight.”
I believe the words Jesus hears at his baptism are words God speaks to us at our baptism. Can you hear them? Can you believe them? “You are my daughter, my son, the Beloved. In you I take delight.” One reason I believe God speaks these words to us is because its how Jesus treated everyone he met, and its what he tried to teach the crowds everywhere he went, and we are called to be like him. Jesus wants you to know that God takes pleasure in you, delights in you.
Why does God take delight in us? When you look at the baptism of Jesus, have you ever noticed what Jesus does before God pronounces him “beloved”? Nothing. God loves Jesus before he does anything. God loves us before we do anything. Baptism is not first a call to do. Baptism is first a call to be to be God’s beloved child, to hear God say to you: “Your name is Beloved.”
The great theologian Mr. Rogers used to sing a song on his show with the lyrics: It’s you I like. It’s not the things you wear. It’s not the way you do your hair. But it’s you I like. The way you are right now. The way down deep inside you. Not the things that hide you. Not your toys – they’re just beside you. But it’s you I like. Every part of you – your skin, your eyes, your feelings, whether old or new. I hope that you’ll remember even when you’re feeling blue, that it’s you yourself I like.
When I baptize someone, as they come up from the water, I say to them: “As God said to Jesus, hear these same words spoken to you this day: ‘You are my daughter, my son, the Beloved, in whom I take delight’.
I also say them every Sunday in the benediction. As your pastor I want these words to resound in the deepest part of your being: You are God’s Beloved. My prayer is that you will let these words replace all the negative things you have been told about yourself, and what you often tell yourself. This is your truth! You are the Beloved.
The names that God pronounced over Jesus would ultimately undo the mocking claims that others would make about him. He was freed from having to prove himself or defend himself. He didn’t have to exercise any power or control – only love. And he could live like that because he knew who he was. In his baptism Jesus claimed his identity.
And just as in his baptism Jesus claimed his identity and identified with us, so in our baptism we take on his identity and identify with him. The Bible says that we have been baptized into Christ.
Most likely, no words came down audibly from heaven when we were raised from the baptismal waters, but the truth is still the same. God speaks over our lives with the same words of identity: “You are my child, the Beloved, in you I take delight.” These words are spoken into our lives not because we are so good, but because we are so loved. They are not an approval of our success but the ground of our being, the core of our identity. We are named by God’s grace, and the power in that cannot be undone by any other name or claim. Paul tells the Ephesians this is already so whether we are living into it or not. We have been named “child of God” since before the foundation of the world. God says: “You are mine.”
And before God said it to Jesus, God said it to Israel through the prophet Isaiah: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name, you are mine. You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you,
It baptism we claim our new name: God’s Beloved. And the hard part is not earning that name, but accepting it. Some of us spend our whole lives looking for evidence that we are okay, that we are accepted, that we are loved. We seek, we grasp, we clutch at things or experiences or people that will make us feel like we matter. It is from this gnawing neediness that we make some of our worst decisions.
But what if we knew who we really were? What would our lives look like if we, like Jesus, were free from having to prove ourselves or defend ourselves? What if we, too, didn’t have to exercise any power or control, but only love? What if we already knew we had what we needed,
so that we didn’t have to work so hard to try to get it from other people or from things? What kind of life would you live if you had that kind of freedom? The reality has already been written over our lives. The name has already been spoken as truth: “You are mine, God says. I have called you by name. You’re My Beloved.” The naming has already been done.
So how do we go about claiming it? We find help in claiming our identity by recognizing our place in a whole family of beloved children. Not only does Paul say that we have been baptized into Christ. He says we have been baptized into Christ’s body, the church.
Jane Wolf is a United Methodist pastor. She tells the story of Fayette, a homeless, mentally ill woman who joined the new member class at her Methodist church. Fayette was captivated by what the pastor had to say about baptism. Pastor Wolf spoke of baptism as “this holy moment when we are named by God’s grace with such power it won’t come undone.” During the new member class, Fayette would repeatedly ask, “And when I’m baptized, I am …?” And the class learned to respond, “Beloved. Precious child of God. And beautiful to behold.” And Fayette would respond, “Oh, yes!” And then the class would get back to their discussion.
On the day of Fayette’s baptism, she came up from the water sputtering, and cried out, “And now I am …?” And the whole congregation responded together: “Beloved! Precious child of God! And beautiful to behold!” “Oh, yes!” she shouted back. And after worship at the celebratory luncheon she danced around the fellowship hall.1 Fayette claimed the power of her baptismal identity. And she did it, in part, by relying on other people to remind her of it.
We do not claim our God-given identity alone. We claim our identity together. As the church we come here to remind each other who we are: Beloved. Pleasing. Children of God. We struggle like crazy to believe it on our own. But we come here, together, to be reminded that we are more than our shortcomings, more than our pettiness, more than our anxieties, more than our mistakes. We come here together to be reminded we are not some of the things we have been told: Ugly. Failure. Mistake. We are more than what we have done, and we are more than what has been done to us. We are the Beloved, entirely loved, entirely claimed, and so so precious in an ultimate and irrevocable way.
If we can receive that reality, if we can give ourselves to its truth, we can be set free for a whole new kind of living. A way of living marked by joy, service, embrace, giving, goodness, kindness, and fearlessness. If we can live into our real names, we can go out from this place, apart and together, to help others know themselves as beloved too.
All of us have a lot of names. Most of them are ones we did not choose for ourselves. Some of them are names that need to be thrown off like a worn-out coat. But there is a name that still holds, and always will. A long time ago, God spoke it over Jesus. And because of that, God speaks it over your life and mine.
Every day is an opportunity to immerse ourselves again in the reality of our baptism. You are mine, God says. You are my child. You are the beloved. And Martin Luther’s great Reformation Hymn “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” can help us claim it. There is one verse about our spiritual battle with the powers of evil in the world. He sings: The Prince of Darkness grim, We tremble not for him. His rage we can endure, For lo, his doom is sure. One little word shall fell him. Some Luther scholars say that for Luther that one little word was “Baptizo” – “I am baptized.” When Martin Luther was going through hard times, he would sit in his study and recite, almost as a mantra, “I am baptized. I am baptized. I am baptized.”Another way of saying
“I am loved.”
If you are not happy with yourself, do not assume that God shares your opinion. God says “You are Beloved.”
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- Janet Wolf’s story comes from The Upper Room Disciplines, 1999. I found it quoted in The Painted Prayerbook at www.paintedprayerbook.com