Baptism of the Lord – Sunday 11 January 2026
The Irish writer, Seamus Heaney observes that there are moments in life when we stand at the edge of what we know, and the crossing asks something of us. He wrote in his sequence of poems, “Crossings”:
Running water never disappointed.
Crossing water always furthered something.
Stepping stones were stations of the soul.[1]
He was reflecting on how, from time to time, we find ourselves at thresholds in our life. The past gives way and we cross over to something new, and of our need to be active in that novelty, not merely passive observers.
Our liturgy brings us to such a moment on this weekend. The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord which we commemorate today brings the Christmas season to its close and opens the short green stretch of Ordinary Time until we come to the Season of Lent in the middle of February. The crib gives way to the river; the infant in swaddling clothes steps into the waters of the Jordan. It is a moment of transition, of crossing over.
We, too, are in a moment of transition and crossing over as a community, as a nation, as a world. We recognise the transition of history in which we have discovered ourselves. Internationally, political tensions unsettle economies, alliances, and the fragile sense of a shared moral horizon. As Pope Leo commented in his address to the Vatican diplomatic corps only last Friday, “War is back in vogue and the zeal for war is spreading.”[2] Anxiety travels fast across borders. Fear has a way of narrowing our vision, of tempting nations and individuals alike to turn inward, to harden hearts, to seek safety at the expense of others, to promote the illusion of a peace founded on force. More locally, we commence the new year with a Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion. The very fact that such a Commission is needed tells us something sobering: that social trust in our own nation is fraying, that communities feel unheard or threatened, that difference is too easily weaponised. And even these last days of extreme heat and the fires in Victoria have, once again, reminded us that creation itself is groaning. Communities are threatened, firefighters are stretched, families are anxious, and the land bears the scars.
All of this occurs, as we cross over from Christmas into Ordinary Time. There are no angels singing now, no star in the sky. What remains, however, is the demanding work of discipleship—living baptism day by day when faith is tested in the heat of daily life, when it must take flesh in decisions, priorities, and courage.
We celebrate today the threshold in Jesus’ own life: his transition from obscurity to public ministry. And his own threshold teaches us about ours.
At the Jordan, Jesus stands in line with sinners, with seekers, with the overlooked. He does not separate himself from them. Thus, we recognise that the social cohesion for which we long, in the Christian vision, is not about sameness or enforced harmony; it is about standing together in the truth of our shared humanity, especially with those who are vulnerable or marginalised. In this, Jesus’ Baptism proclaims, yet again, that God does not save us from afar. God enters the places of risk, fear, and uncertainty. The waters into which Jesus steps are the same waters that can drown, that can destroy, that can overwhelm. Yet it is precisely there that the Spirit descends. The God revealed at the Jordan is not distant from burning earth or exhausted bodies. He is Emmanuel—God with us—entering the waters of a wounded world, sanctifying them not by magic, but by presence. “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
And yet, as the Christmas Season ends, the question before us is not really whether God is still with us—for the past several weeks we have proclaimed he is—but whether we will live as baptised people in a burning world, an anxious world, a divided world. The waters of the Jordan still flow through our lives. They call us to care for creation when it is threatened, to resist fear when it dominates public discourse, to work patiently for social cohesion when fracture seems easier, and to trust that the Spirit is still at work, even when the future feels uncertain. Our baptism is not a private comfort. It is a public calling. When we were baptised, we were plunged into Jesus’ mission—to be, as Isaiah says in today’s first reading, servants who bring justice gently but persistently, who do not break the bruised reed or snuff out the wavering flame. That is the kind of leadership our world needs now: leadership shaped not by volume or outrage, but by faithfulness, restraint, and hope.
We stand at a threshold. Behind us lies the familiarity of Christmas; before us stretches the demanding road of Ordinary Time. Like Jesus at the Jordan, we are not spared the waters of uncertainty or the heat of trial, but we are not abandoned to them either. In baptism we have already crossed from fear into belonging, from isolation into communion. A threshold, then, is not a place to linger, but a place from which to be sent. As the heavens once opened over Jesus, so they open over us again in this Eucharist, reminding us that every crossing—into responsibility, into care for one another, into hope for a wounded world—is made in the confidence that we are God’s beloved, and that the Spirit goes before us.
[1] Seamus Heaney, “Crossings” in Seeing Things, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)
[2] Pope Leo, “Address to Members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See,” (9 January 2026), https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2026/january/documents/20260109-corpo-diplomatico.html
