Doing something right, doing something new

All Saints by the Lake, Dorval

January 11, 2026

The feltboard on Friday

This is one of those rare weeks when I tell the same story at Messy Church that I then preach on Sunday.

On Friday evening, I used the felt board to tell the story of Jesus’ baptism. The script gives these words to John the Baptist:

I baptize you in readiness for God’s new kingdom! Prepare the way of the Lord! Remember God’s laws, and the words of the prophets. Do not lie, cheat, kill, or steal. Do justice, love mercy, and serve the one God. And get ready, because God is doing something new!

In each of our readings this morning, God is doing something new. Isaiah describes the servant whom God has chosen, who will bring forth justice to the nations, and says, in so many words, “See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”

In the reading from Acts, Peter is doing something he never imagined – preaching the gospel to the household of a Roman centurion. Up to this point, he has seen his calling as sharing the message of Jesus’ resurrection with his fellow Jews; now all his assumptions have been overturned by a vision and a request from fellow believers, who vouch that this man, part of the military force occupying their homeland, really is someone whose heart is open to change.

And in the gospel reading, Matthew concisely recounts the story I told on Friday, of Jesus being revealed as the new thing that John was foretelling, emerging out of nowhere to be baptized as he prepares to begin his ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing.

As I’ve said before, we have no idea how Jesus has spent the last eighteen years of his life, since Luke’s story of him giving his parents the slip on the way home from Passover and going to the Temple to sit at the feet of the teachers. (As far as Matthew is concerned, the writer of today’s gospel passage, we don’t know anything since he was a small child and returned with his family from Egypt.)

We don’t know how he came to the understanding that this was his calling. We don’t know what his relationship with his cousin the prophet has been like. We don’t know who his teachers and mentors have been. We don’t know what choices he’s had to make, what losses he’s had to accept, what hard conversations he’s had to have.

We do know that from this day forward, he is confronting both the tradition that formed and nurtured him, and the imperial power that occupies the place where he lives, and ultimately that confrontation will lead to his death.

Sometimes these turning points are hard. Sometimes God doing a new thing hurts. Sometimes there are a lot of pieces of your life that you have to leave behind, in order to be faithful to the one overriding commitment.

I have a friend who works in higher education administration and has been really struggling lately with the whiplash in that field over the past decade or so – from the embrace of “DEI” during the pandemic to its rejection in recent months. In addition to the professional stress and disappointment, she is part of a queer family herself and so this all feels personal.

She messaged me recently and said, “I want to read about Jesus’ rejection and alienation from his community of faith as he started his ministry and gained more attention.”

I realized I didn’t have much to offer, other than a suggestion that she meditate on the fourth chapter of Luke (the passage where Jesus reads in the synagogue in his hometown and ends up almost being thrown off a cliff).

But I think even the question is illuminating. How do we hold on to what we know to be right and true, when everything around us seems to be shifting faster and faster, and fewer and fewer people even seem to understand the concept of having values and commitments, let alone standing by those values and commitments when the going gets hard?

How do we tell when God is really calling us to something new, in the midst of the whiplash of constant change, much of it seemingly for the worse?

And how do we cope when either of those possibilities – holding on to our values or choosing to do something new – seems to bring so much backlash, including from those whom we thought we knew, loved, and trusted?

When Isaiah introduces God’s chosen servant; when Peter goes to the household of Cornelius to preach to and baptize those whom he had previously regarded as outside the circle of God’s concern; when Jesus comes to John for baptism before beginning his ministry – in all of these cases, someone is choosing to do something new, that is nevertheless very much rooted in their already existing experience, beliefs, hopes, and commitments about who God is and what God is calling them to do.

Almost inevitably, there are going to be those who object. There are going to be those who don’t like the new thing that God is doing, who want everything to stay the same or, if new things have to happen, want them to be according to their priorities rather than God’s. And there are going to be those who don’t actually believe in anything in particular, who go along with whatever happens in order to protect their own skins, and who are deeply offended by people who insist that actually, some things are wrong and some are right and we need to act accordingly, even when it hurts.

We don’t know the details of how Jesus felt as he faced the consequences of the new thing that he was doing, as he dealt with what happened when he lived by his deeply felt values rather than in accordance with self-preservation. But we do know what he did.

He was baptized, a public gesture of purification and commitment to God. He went into the desert and said “no” to Satan’s offers of earthly power. He collected a group of friends for support and accountability. He prayed a lot – like, a lot. He stayed true, in word and action, to the message he felt called to proclaim. And when he could no longer avoid arrest and execution, he accepted the fate that pure goodness inevitably encounters in a fallen world – and came out the other side.

Often, living by what we know to be good and right, and doing something new that God is calling us to do, are one and the same. It’s not an easy path, but it can be full of joy and exhilaration, as we know, deep down, that we are exactly where God calls us to be, doing what God has made us to do. And if we do feel fear and sorrow, we know that Jesus is right there with us and has gone through it himself; and that when he did so, he heard God’s voice from heaven telling him that he was God’s beloved son, in whom God was well pleased. May each of us, deep in our hearts, hear the same.

Amen.

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