One Sunday little Laurie's Sunday School room is decorated with a crèche. She hears the story of the Magi coming to visit the Christ child. The next week she flips open her lesson book and there is a picture of two men standing in water up to their waists. "Who's that?" Laurie asks her teacher. "Why, that's John, The Baptist and Jesus." Laurie shakes her head and says, "Jesus sure grew up fast."

We might feel a bit like Laurie. Last Sunday the Magi, representing strangers, foreigners, outsiders and "people not like us", arrived in Bethlehem to worship a child. A week later the poinsettias are gone, the crèche packed away, and the garland, wreaths and trees taken down. Jesus has aged roughly thirty years when we see him next, being baptized by John in the Jordan. We might like to hit the brakes and prolong the holiday season. The gospel doesn't linger at the manger.

Jesus' baptism marks the beginning of his work on earth. This was something of an embarrassment to early Christians. Why did the founder of their faith have to go to some other religious leader? How could Jesus need anything from John when John wasn't even fit to untie Jesus' sandals? If baptism is a sign of God's forgiveness, what did Jesus need forgiveness for anyway? The baptism of Jesus makes a muddy mess of our neat religious categories and ancient doctrines.

John baptized Jews, which was pretty outrageous to begin with. Baptism had always been reserved for new converts to Judaism. It was a ritual washing away of past stains so the person could begin a new life with a new faith. Now people who had always been Jews were getting baptized. It was a shocking admission that insiders, people who knew the law and could trace their ancestry back to Moses, were no better than the people they shunned. Pillars of the community, towers of virtue, brilliant scholars, ordinary laborers, lazy bums, devious crooks, hookers and thieves were all in the same boat. More accurately, they were all over their heads in the same river without a boat. A lot of time-honored distinctions got blurred in the muddy waters of the Jordan.

Jesus began his mission by being baptized alongside everyone else, the high and low and everyone in between, which would include you and me. Jesus began by identifying with you and me when we're up to our necks in the muddy waters of life. He identifies with us when we're going down for the third time. Some people dress up to go to church out of respect for the Lord. Jesus got down and dirty out of love for us.

Beginnings are important. They set the course and foreshadow things to come. Jesus began with baptism like everyone else who came to John. Later on we'll find him at dinner parties in the homes of the wealthy, hosting a huge picnic for common folk, touching the sick, chatting with people of questionable character, hugging children, listening to strangers, befriending outcasts, and so on. In our 'blue" periods when we get most down on ourselves; when our flaws and failures seem huge, we're all still in that mix. No matter how big a hole we dig for ourselves the Lord won't write us off.

There's also a challenge here. Who, then, shall we write off? Who shall we exclude? Who are we to turn our backs on anyone and walk away? That doesn't seem like much of a challenge - until you get down to cases. What about gays, lesbians, and transvestites? What about drug dealers, gang members, racists, and bigots? As open as we think we are, all of us draw the line somewhere. Telemarketers! Surely we draw the line at telemarketers! Religion has acted as a wedge between people for as long as there have been religions. Jesus allows us to write off another human being as soon as we can draw a line across the Jordan River.

Jesus plunges in with all of us in the most wonderful and ragged moments of our lives. Jesus joins us with all our strengths and weaknesses. That's what His baptism represents. But there's more. When he comes up out of the water Jesus hears a voice, as if from heaven. What he hears is, "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased." To a lot of people the idea of the voice of God coming down from heaven is hard to swallow. What kind of voice was it? Did others hear it? If we could go back in time could we get it on tape? If only Jesus heard the voice, well, you know what they say about people who "hear voices." All of which misses the point. Just as creation begins with a blessing - God declares it is good - so Jesus begins his work with a blessing.

"Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased." Think of it in very human terms because that's what we are. It's the expression of acceptance and love of a parent for a child. Jesus hasn't done anything special. He's just starting out. The voice does not say, "in your report card I am well pleased" or "in your jump shot I am well pleased" or "in your career, marriage, income, and life style I am well pleased." At the very beginning, before anything else happens, God is pleased. However it came to him, Jesus was aware God was pleased with him right from the beginning.

A great many sons and daughters yearn to hear exactly the same words from their very earthly fathers and mothers, "Beloved . . . in you I am well pleased." Oh, sure, many parents do all kinds of things for their children: work, worry, make sacrifices, guide and discipline them as best they can. Actions speak louder than words. But we need the words, too. God thought Jesus did. Could you and I and our children need the assurance of love any less than Jesus? I should think we would need it much more.

What if you never heard those words from your very human parents? What if you did but couldn't quite believe them? People are dying to hear, "Beloved . . . in you I am well pleased." Literally dying. People who don't recognize their own value, who haven't felt loved are killing each other on our nation's streets. Others deaden their pain with alcohol and drugs. Some take out their frustration on their spouses and their own children. Still others, with more than a little encouragement from society, work themselves to death trying to gain the respect and love they didn't receive as a gift. Not knowing we're blessed from the beginning can have painful - and sometimes terrible - consequences.

We are meant to hear what Jesus heard. We are supposed to eavesdrop. We are meant to know what Jesus knew from the beginning. "Beloved . . . in you I am well pleased." Not "in your prayers" or "in your good deeds" or "in your beliefs." In you God is pleased.

Once we realize God is already pleased with us everything else starts to fall into place. Mainly we're able to pass on the same blessing. One time that happens is when a baby is brought to be baptized. Attention in this Sanctuary is never so focused as when I take a baby in my arms. At that point nobody is paging through the hymnal or fishing around for a cough drop. Everybody pays attention. I think it's the suspense. You know what I'm going to do. Nobody knows what the baby will do. Will the baby grab me by the nose or squirm and squeal? Will I end up wearing the baby's lunch all down the front of my robe? You'd like that, wouldn't you? The unpredictability of the moment is exciting.

Yet there's one area of baptism that's totally predictable. It's all those "oohs" and "aahs" that well up out of you when a little baby is in our midst. It's completely irrational. Babies are demanding. They haven't accomplished anything. Babies don't care who they bother at three o'clock in the morning. All they care about is their own comfort. You can't make a good case for loving just any old baby that's dragged in here for baptism. But we do. That's a hint of how God feels about every single one of us from the very beginning. "Ooh, aah, in you I am well pleased."

So it is that, having been blessed at the beginning, we pass on the blessing to others. We bless babies with love. We bless homeless men with a hot meal and a safe place to spend the night. We bless hungry people with the means to feed themselves. We bless strangers with welcome and each other with companionship.

When Jesus was baptized with everyone else God came on equal terms to all humanity. God came to us. Who shall we exclude? In the beginning God blessed. Who shall we condemn? Having been blessed from the beginning with acceptance and love we can't keep it to ourselves any more than Jesus could. With Christ we live to bless.