God gets into the water!

Isaiah 42:1–9  Psalm 29                   Acts 10:34–43          Matthew 3:13–17

One of the most terrifying things I’ve heard about the Australian education system is this concept of Beach Safe. From what I can work out, a whole year group of children arrives at their local beach with a couple of teachers, learns how to be safe … and then they go into the water on their own, while those teachers watch from the sand.

It reminds me of every child who learned to swim in my hometown in the 1970s or 80s. We would don our swimming caps — crying, if you were me — and make our way down to the overly chlorinated, freezing-cold pool. We would get in, while this ageless woman named Mrs Lee barked instructions from the poolside. The intention was to teach every child to swim. Some swam. Some sank. I was firmly in the latter category.

It wasn’t until my favourite auntie got right into the pool with me — supporting my stomach, placing a hand under my chin, making all the encouraging noises — that I ever learned to swim.

And that’s what came back to me as I read the Bible readings this week.

I learned to swim because someone got into the water with me — not because someone shouted instructions from a distance, no matter how skilled a swimmer they might have been.

And isn’t that what our Old Testament reading and our gospel are telling us too?

God isn’t found standing safely on the shore calling out advice — be braver, have more faith, try harder, don’t be afraid — while we flail in deep, unfamiliar water. God gets right into the water with us. That, surely, is the heart of the incarnation. The God who could have remained distant, or silent, or safely above it all, chose instead to put on humanity and come close — right beside us — doing life the way the rest of humanity does.

Isaiah speaks to a people who are exhausted, displaced, traumatised by loss. They are not coping well. And God does not say, You should have known better. God says instead — in the very next chapter — When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.

Not if. When.

And not I will tell you what to do, but I will be with you — in the fear, in the crossing, in the unknown. And in this extraordinary moment from Matthew’s gospel, we see that promise take flesh and bones.

Jesus comes to the Jordan not because he needs repentance, but because this is what God is like. God does not ask us to go anywhere God is unwilling to go. Jesus steps into the same water as everyone else. He lines up with sinners, with the confused, with the weary, with those who don’t quite know how to stay afloat. He doesn’t hover above it. He doesn’t exempt himself. He wades right in.

And it is there — not on the shore, not in the temple, not after some great achievement — but there, in the water, that the voice comes:

You are my beloved. With you I am well pleased.

Before he heals anyone. Before he preaches a sermon. Before he does anything impressive at all. Beloved first. Affirmed first. Held first.

And I don’t know how that makes you feel, but I find it a bit unsettling — because most of life works the other way. We belong once we’ve proven ourselves. We are loved once we’ve achieved something. We are accepted once we’ve shown we can cope. Why wouldn’t we project that onto God?

But baptism tells the truth:

You are not loved because you are strong.
You are loved while you are still learning to float.

And baptism doesn’t only tell us God gets into the water with us — it also trains us, calls us, and requires us to stay there. At school we didn’t just learn to keep ourselves afloat. We learned life-saving skills. We swam in our pyjamas, heavy and awkward. We dived down to retrieve bricks from the bottom. We learned what it feels like to move against resistance, to stay calm when everything feels wrong. It was training for emergencies. For the moment when someone else is in trouble.

And the world we are living in now is not a calm, supervised pool. It’s open water. It’s rough. People are tired. Many are sinking quietly, right alongside us.

In Christ’s baptism we are given a comfort and a calling. God in Christ gets into the water with us, and in doing so, shows us that we must be willing to get wet for the sake of others.

To move toward the struggling person rather than away. To resist the instinct to stay dry, safe, and distant.

And so the questions write themselves: Where are we needed right now?
Who are we pretending not to see?
And where, if we’re honest, are we avoiding the water altogether?

It’s one thing to admire Jesus standing in the Jordan. It’s another thing to wade in ourselves — into grief that unsettles us, into injustice that costs us something, into relationships that don’t come with neat boundaries.

Baptism names us as beloved — yes. But it also names us as participants in God’s life-saving work. Not as heroes or experts. But as people who know what it is to be held — and therefore dare to hold others.

Sometimes that will look dramatic. More often it will look small, costly, and unseen: staying longer than is convenient, standing with someone others step away from, refusing to look away when someone is struggling. And the grace in all of this is that the same God who got into the water with us is already ahead of us, beside us, between us and the deep.

We don’t save the world by our strength. But we do show up and get wet. We do stay present. And as we finish today, the water is still here. The font is still full of last week’s baptism. As you come forward for communion, or as you leave today, you’re invited to dip your fingers into the water — simply to remember you are held.

You are not alone in life’s waters. God has already gone into the water with you.

And you are sent — gently, bravely — to stay in the water with and for others.

Because the gospel is not shouted from the shore.
It is lived, again and again, alongside one another, in the water.

Amen.