This sermon was preached on the 11th January 2026.
The lectionary readings were: Isaiah 42:1-9, Acts 10:34-42, Matthew 3:13-end
Opening Prayer
Heavenly Father, as we come now to open your word, would you reveal to us by your Spirit the image of your Son, that we may be transformed into his likeness. Amen.
New Year’s Resolutions: Are You One for Them?
I wonder, are you one for New Year’s resolutions? I remember growing up thinking that this time of year had some sort of special power—like January 1st arrived with a kind of moral electricity. This would be the moment I finally changed all the bits of me that I didn’t like and took up some shiny new habits. I used to take it quite seriously: join a gym, buy a new pair of running shoes, eat slightly less sugar. You can imagine the kinds of things I was focused on, having just indulged over Christmas.
These days though, I don’t hear much about New Year’s resolutions. Maybe that’s my age. Maybe it’s cynicism. Or maybe it’s simply that we’re tired. The difficulties that have faced this cathedral and the world leave us without the energy you’d need for a heroic self-improvement project. You turn on the news and you get the latest instalment of the omni-crisis—often coming out of the White House—and you just think: I don’t know if I’ve got it in me this year. I know personally I’ve found it hard to muster any enthusiasm for resolutions.
John the Baptist: “New Year, New Me”? Not Quite.
And that’s what I found myself noticing as I returned to Matthew’s Gospel this morning. Because you might think, at first blush, that John the Baptist is doing something like a “new year, new me” programme. You know the sort of thing: “Come on everyone—buck your ideas up. Fresh start. Let’s all go down to the Jordan and have a bath, shall we? Maybe that will fix things.”
But of course—you can probably hear it in my tone—I don’t think that’s what John is doing at all. In fact, I want to use the idea of New Year’s resolutions as a contrast, because it helps us see what is really happening in John’s renewal movement out in the wilderness.
Public Repentance, Not a Private Religious Cleanse
John isn’t particularly interested in what we might call a private religious cleanse for individuals, some personal spirituality programme to feel a bit better about yourself. What he is offering is a public and prophetic action. He is calling Israel back to be Israel again. It’s a summons to national repentance, because Israel’s story has hit a crisis point.
And as he does it, he joins himself to a very storied tradition in Israel: the prophets who don’t merely say things but do things. They enact their message. Ezekiel is famous for his strange street theatre; Hosea goes as far as his marriage, and even the naming of his children, becoming part of the sign. John’s baptism functions in that same key. It is a visible, communal sign that something has gone wrong and decisive action is required.
Why the Jordan? The Story John Is Retelling
And the place matters. The Jordan isn’t random. John is deliberately activating Israel’s memory, the great moments when God “immersed” his people and remade them. A quick reminder: the word baptism simply means immersion.
Israel had been “baptised,” if you like, as they came out of Egypt, passing through the Red Sea into the wilderness. God brought them out of slavery and through the waters into a new identity as his covenant people. And then Israel were “baptised” again as they came out of the wilderness, passing through the Jordan into the promised land.
So notice what John does: he calls the people out into the wilderness and baptises them in the Jordan. Symbolically, he is saying: return again to your beginning. Have a fresh Exodus. Have a fresh re-entry into the promised land. Pass again through the waters and become again God’s renewed people. It’s radical. It’s not “try a bit harder.” It’s: start again.
The Shadow of Exile
And there is a third “immersion” in the background too, one that haunts this whole moment: exile. You could describe exile in purely political terms—Babylon grew, wanted more territory, and so it took over Israel, stripped resources, carried people off. But the prophets don’t read it like that. They see exile as God’s judgement: Israel has not been who they were called to be, and so God judges them—even through a foreign king.
And even when the people return after exile, there’s this unresolved ache: God hasn’t finished with us; we’re still broken; we’re still dominated, now by the Romans; the nations still rule over us; the promised restoration hasn’t fully happened. That is the unfinished story humming in the background when John brings people back to the Jordan and says, in effect, “We must start again.”
Why Jesus Steps Into the Water
All of that is why John’s question to Jesus makes such sense: “Why do you need to be baptised?” Jesus responds, “Let it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.”
And I think what Jesus is doing is identifying himself with Israel in her story. He doesn’t stand on the riverbank watching. He doesn’t commentate from the sidelines. He steps into the waters—into the place of a people under judgement—and he shares their plight and their need for renewal.
In doing that, he takes Israel’s vocation onto his own shoulders. He is saying, “I will be the true Israelite. I will go with you through Exodus, and into the wilderness, and through the Jordan and into the promise. I will embody what it means to be God’s people.” That is why it is fitting. That is why it fulfils righteousness. This is what must happen at this moment in Israel’s history.
If John Preached in Blackburn at the Start of 2026
And then the question lands on us. What would John the Baptist say to us this morning if he were here in Blackburn at the start of our centenary year? What would he call us to repent of? That’s a big question—and if I’m honest, it makes me nervous. But I wonder if he would begin with something very basic.
He might remind us that church is not about performance; it’s about prayer. It’s not about maintaining an institution; it’s about getting on our knees and loving God and loving our neighbour. Perhaps he would warn us against being complicit in an institution that, time and again, puts the needs of the organisation ahead of the people and the relationships involved.
And perhaps he would call us, right at the start of this centenary year, back to the basics: to be again the people of God in Blackburn, a place where the fruit of the Spirit is not just language we like but a reality we live—love and joy, peace and patience, kindness and goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Perhaps John would say something like this: Blackburn Cathedral, you are being called again to become who you are supposed to be—a place of holiness and prayer, a place of love and Christian virtue, a community of faith and gentleness, a place of joy and peace and kindness and faithfulness.
Remember at the start of this year your baptismal vows. Do you reject rebellion against God? Do you renounce the corruption of evil? Do you repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour? Let us at the start of this year turn again to Christ as Saviour. Submit again to Christ as Lord. Come again to Christ the Way, the Truth, and the Life. That was John’s ministry in the first century, and I hope he is calling us again today.
Resolutions Are a Thin Parody of Repentance
And you can see now why John’s call to repentance is so different from the “new year, new me” attitude. New Year’s resolutions are, if we’re honest, a thin parody of repentance. That is why every gym is full in January and empty by February: a new date cannot give you a new heart.
So this year I’m not especially interested in resolutions. I want us to hear the deeper call: repent. As Martin Luther said, when our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “repent,” he intended for the entire life of the believer to be one of repentance.
Resolutions are not necessarily bad, but they’re thin. They promise renewal without confession, transformation without God’s intervention, skin-deep change that never really goes near the problem of the heart. What we do not need this year is merely a self-chosen project aimed at personal improvement—better habits, a nicer body, more productivity.
What we need is repentance, because God is at work in our midst. The goal is not self-enhancement; it is readiness for God’s divine intervention, so that we might belong to the renewed people of God as the kingdom draws near and is in our midst. So let there be less, “I’ll do this, I’ll try better, my plans are this, my goals are that,” and more: a public and communal turning that reconstitutes who we are, here in the middle of Blackburn, at the start of our centenary year, as the people God has called us to be.
Baptism: Death, Resurrection, and the Voice Over Us
And then we return to Jesus in the water. Jesus steps into the Jordan and becomes the true Israelite, journeying with his people through their story—from Exodus to exile, and through the Jordan and into the promised land. He joins us in the waters, in our humanity—born of the Virgin, experiencing the human condition completely.
As he goes under the water, he points forward to his burial just a few years later, laid in a tomb after the crucifixion, crushed under the weight of our sin. And as he comes up out of the water, he points forward to resurrection. Sin and death could not hold him. He bursts free from the tomb just as he bursts out of the water.
But notice this: as he is with us in the going down, so we are with him in the coming up. We cling to Christ—almost like holding onto his coat-tails—through death and into new life. And then we hear the words spoken over him as words spoken over us: “This is my child, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
God says that to you and to me at the start of this year. You are God’s child. You are his beloved. He is pleased with you. And only by hearing those words—really hearing them—do we find within us the spiritual power required to live the life of repentance that John calls us to.
So if earlier you felt like I was being a bit harsh—on you, or on us—hear this louder: God loves you. He has washed away your sin. And he invites you to live resurrection life. That is good news for us at the start of this year.
Amen.
Theology Considering Culture 