Sermon: January 18, 2026

Reading: John 1:29-42

According to Matthew’s Gospel, before Jesus preached a sermon, healed a body, or confronted unjust power, God named him aloud: “This is my Son, the Beloved.” Belovedness came first. Not obedience. Not worthiness. God’s love came first. And that same claim rests on every human life, whether the world honors it or not.

John’s Gospel reveals this truth not through a voice from heaven, but through a witness. John the Baptist points to Jesus and says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Not the sins of a few. Not the sins of the deserving. The sin of the world, a world that too often confuses cruelty with strength and fear with authority.

When fear is given power, human dignity is always at risk. We have seen that laid bare in Minneapolis with the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent. Her death is not an isolated tragedy; it is a revelation. It exposes how easily belovedness is denied when systems treat people as threats rather than as children of God.

This is precisely the kind of world the Lamb of God enters. John testifies that the Spirit did not merely visit Jesus, but remained with him. The Spirit abides, dwells, makes a home. God’s presence is not fleeting or conditional. And Jesus later extends that same life to us when he says, “Abide in me as I abide in you.”

To abide in Christ is not to escape the world’s pain or retreat into private faith. It is to live so deeply rooted in God’s love that silence in the face of injustice becomes impossible, and compassion becomes a public practice.

So when Jesus turns to his followers and asks, “What are you looking for?” the question reaches us here and now. Are we seeking comfort, or are we seeking truth? Safety for ourselves, or dignity for all? The way we answer shapes the kind of witnesses we become.

Jesus does not offer easy reassurance. He offers an invitation: “Come and see.” And having seen, we are sent; sent to speak when silence shields violence, sent to stand with those the world pushes aside, sent to live as witnesses to a love that refuses to be confined by fear.

Epiphany is not just about seeing the light of Christ. It is about letting that light expose the lies we have learned to live with, and choosing, again and again, to live as people who believe that love is stronger than hate, mercy wider than fear, and God’s justice still breaking into the world.