The Beloveds

January 18, 2026March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“The Beloveds” based on Matthew 3:13-17 and The UMC Social Principle on Racism, Ethnocentrism, and Tribalism

Into a world obsessed with those who have power over others, comes this little story about John and Jesus. The story is a fight to the bottom of the power structure. It is clearly told by early Church to tell us things about Jesus, as it doesn’t really fit the realities of his life. But it is, nevertheless, a rich little story.

While Luke goes to great pains to set up John and Jesus as cousins, that doesn’t happen in Matthew. In Matthew, John is a prophet in the wilderness calling the people to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” and baptizing the people in the River Jordan. John was functioning as a prophet, and he acquired students who learned from him and taught his ways. Students are also known as disciples, and the way one became a disciple of a teacher or prophet was to be baptized by him.

Which is to say, that by the best guess of the best historical scholars, based on what we know, Jesus was a disciple of John. He was baptized by John and learned from him. Later on, when John is killed, Jesus continues the ministry of John INCLUDING taking on his theme “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come” as Jesus’s main theme. He does, eventually, make it is own.

So we have this historical detail that Jesus was baptized by John, adapted a bit by the early Jesus movement to make sure it is clear that the point of this story is JESUS and not JOHN. So they have John objecting to it, which probably didn’t happen. And they have the voice of God show up… and I have to say I’m less willing to fight about that one.

Why?

Because at every baptism I have ever been present to it has been as if God has been speaking saying, “this is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” So while I’m not about to claim that this voice of God was objectively heard by all present or anything, I think it is one of the fundamental truths of the universe that is especially noticeable at baptism and it seems feasible to me that people could have sensed it at the baptism of Jesus.

In Latin, the phrase is “imago dei” which translates to “in the image of God” and it is the church shorthand for “people are made in the image of God which means that each and every person is holy.” This is one of the most foundational truths of our faith. We share it with other faith traditions, it is a truth that cannot be easily contained.

Everyone is beloved by God. God wishes good for everyone.

And while I always I hear this truth reflected at baptism, let me state explicitly that it applies to people who are not baptized, people who are not Christian, and people who are not religious. Being beloved of God even applies to people who do great harm. That doesn’t mean God is in favor of people harming each other, God’s love for us is just so immense and foundational that it can’t be broken by human action.

(And, yes, sometimes we want to make lists of people who are JUST SO BAD that maybe they’re not included, but dear ones, EVERYONE means EVERYONE. And excluding people from God’s love is not how we practice our faith.)

This is one of the Sundays in the year where I think it is reasonable to engage in extended quotation, particularly of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In my favorite of his sermons, “Loving Your Enemies” he says:

I would like to have you think with me on a passage of scripture that has been a great influence in my life and a passage that I have sought to bring to bear on the whole struggle for racial justice, which is taking place in our nation. The words are found in the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew. And these words flow from the lips of our Lord and Master: “Ye have heard it said of old that thou shall love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”5

These are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries men have argued that the actual practice of this command just isn’t possible. Years ago the philosopher Nietzsche contended that this command illustrates that the Christian ethic is for weak men, not for strong men, and certainly not for the superman.6 And he went on to argue that it was just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth.

But we have come to see today that, far from being the practical, the impractical idealist, Jesus is the practical realist, and the words of this text stand before us with new urgency. And far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, love is the key to the solution of the problems of our world, love even for enemies. Since this is a basic Christian command and a basic Christian responsibility, it is both fitting and proper that we stop from time to time to analyze the meaning of these arresting words.

There are many things that we must do in order to love our enemies, but I would like to suggest just three. Seems to me that the first thing that the individual must do in order to love his enemy is to develop the capacity to forgive with a naturalness and ease. If one does not have the capacity to forgive, he doesn’t have the capacity to love. …

The second thing is this. In order to love the enemy neighbor we must recognize that the negative deed of the enemy does not represent all that the individual is. His evil deed does not represent his whole being. …

The other thing that we must do in order to love the enemy neighbor is this: we must seek at all times to win his friendship and understanding rather than to defeat him or humiliate him. …

Now for the moments left, let us turn from the practical “how” to the theoretical “why,” and ask the valid, the vital and valid question, Why should we love our enemies? …

I would say the first reason, and I’m sure Jesus had this in mind, we should love our enemies is this: to return evil for evil only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. And somewhere along the way of life, somebody must have sense enough, somebody must have morality enough, somebody must have religion enough, to cut off the chain of hate and evil. And this can only be done by meeting hate with love. For you see in a real sense, if we return hate for hate, violence for violence, and all of that, it just ends up destroying everybody. And nobody wins in the long run. And it is the strong man who stands up in the midst of violence and refuses to return it. It is the strong man, not the weak man, who stands up in the midst of hate and returns love.1

I commend the whole sermon to you, but I’m going to stop quoting now. While the evils of racism have never been defeated in our country, we are now – again – in a time when the “fierce urgency of now” is present. And, that means that as people of faith, we are once again called upon to reflect HOW we want to seek God’s work in the world. Are we people of love and of non-violence, who believe in the transformational power of love to change the world for the better? Are we willing to be people who practice forgiveness? Are we able to be people who believe in imago dei for those who are doing harm? Are we able to remember that people are more than their worst? Are we willing to reach out in love, over and over again, seeking the well being even of those who do us harm, even when they respond with hatred and violence? Are we willing to use our lives to show the power of meeting hatred with love? Are we strong enough to things God’s way?

There are people in this world, people with power, who don’t believe in imago dei. They believe that SOME people are more HUMAN than others, instead of believing that all people are sacred because all people are loved by God.

Beloveds, these are our “enemies.” And, they are people in need of transformation.

The work of responding to hatred with love changes everything. But it isn’t fast. This is the work of our whole lives. We are often going to be frustrated at backsliding and new incarnations of old evils. But we are people of God. We are people who believe in the power of love. We are people of HOPE. We are people who believe that God’s love is found in everyone and can be kindled into even the people most committed to wrongdoing.

We may not see visible progress right now, but I assure you God is at work. And every act of love matters.

We are called to love our neighbors, to love ourselves, and to love our enemies. Because it turns out all of those people are ones to whom God speaks saying “This is my child, my beloved.” Thanks be to God. Amen

1 https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-detroit-council-churches-noon-lenten

January 18. 2026

Rev. Sara E. Baron First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers http://fumcschenectady.org/ https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“A Do’” based on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-22

January 10, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

A
long time ago, before I had realized the wisdom of reading novellas
to children for Children’s Time, I had prepared a Children’s Time on
baptism. This was when I was serving the Morris United Methodist
Church, and it turned out we had a baptism that day. When Children’s
Time began there were two children present: an infant and a two year
old. This wasn’t going to make my work particularly easy.

At
the Morris United Methodist Church, they do baptisms in the back of
the sanctuary. The font is in the center of aisle right in the back,
against the wall. A baptismal banner hangs above it. They do this
on purpose. Their idea is that baptism is the entrance to the church
family, so it makes sense to have it in the area they enter from.
When the time in the service came to do baptisms everyone would stand
up and turn to watch. That is, everyone who could. There was one
man in the church who couldn’t stand: the pastor emeritus who was in
a wheelchair. The space where the pew had been cut out was all the
way in the back row, so he just got turned around in his wheelchair.
As time when on, we got smart, and when babies were being baptized I
would put them in his arms while I baptized them so we got to do it
together.

In
that church I was responsible for the creation of the bulletin (which
meant that there was a game entitled “who can find one of Sara’s
typos first”) and I would pick images for the font cover of the
bulletin. That week I’d taken a picture of the front doors of the
church and made it the image on the cover of the bulletin. As
planned, I asked the kids what was on the cover of the bulletin. The
two year old cheerfully responded, “a do’”. At this point, I was
in trouble. The response “a do’” was entirely correct, but I
couldn’t do much more with it. Somehow, and it felt as amazing then
as it does now in telling it, at that point a 10 year old showed up
and joined children’s time. So I asked, “why would I have a
picture of doors on the cover of the bulletin.” The 10 old rolled
his eyes at the stupidness of my question and responded, “Because
you are doing a baptism today, and those are the church doors, and
baptism is an entrance to the church family like the doors are the
entrance to the church.” The adults responded with an enthusiastic
“oh!” and accused me of prepping the kid ahead of time. (I
didn’t! I swear. He was just that smart. And he thought it was so
obvious as to be beneath him.)

I’ve
always appreciated the wisdom of the Morris United Methodist Church,
and their understanding of baptism as an entrance. There are many
good ways to think of baptism, and that’s certainly one of them.
Martin Luther King Jr. was known to speak of the Beloved Community,
an idea that sounds like another name for the kin-dom of God to me.
According to the King Center,

“For
Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal to be
confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which
lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved
Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be
attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the
philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

Dr.
King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people
can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community,
poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because
international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism
and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be
replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In
the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by
peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries,
instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and
hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military
conflict.”¹

Rev.
Dr. King’s wording is a smooth fit with the gospel lesson. In Luke
the Divine message doesn’t show up until after Jesus has been
baptized and is praying. The language is similar in each of the
gospels, the Divine message says, “You
are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.“ (Luke
3:22b, NRSV) Luke is one one of the gospel writers to suggest that
Jesus had to wait in line like the rest of the crowd to be baptized.
He was one of many.

It
has always seemed to me that the words of that came at Jesus’ baptism
are the words intended for every baptism. “This is my Child, the
Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” It suggests that each
baptized person has been named as God’s beloved in that experience,
and that the community of baptized people IS the Beloved Community.
Of course, to fit King’s vision we need more training in nonviolence
and peaceful conflict-resolution, but if you keep paying attention to
the Children’s Time novella, that may count!

Now,
baptism is a sacrament. Most people agree that a sacrament is an
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. Or, a
“sign-act” which is an action that also has words to go along
with it. The other sacrament that we acknowledge as United
Methodists is communion. I think it is important to note that God’s
love is available to us at all times in our lives. The sacraments
are simply times when it is easier for us to remember that! God
doesn’t change. We are more attentive to God in those moments.

We
accept baptism and communion as sacraments because the Bible tells us
that Jesus participated in them and instructed other to do so a well!
In baptism, the grace that is offered is the
initiating act of a covenant. Baptism is the covenantal act of
acknowledging the love of God and the way that it is expressed by
family, sponsors, clergy, and church community. The acceptance of
the covenant is an act of inclusion into the Church, the community
that is aware of God’s grace. The candidate for baptism has two
primary responsibilities. The first is to be open to the experience
of being loved, both in the ritual of baptism throughout the rest of
life. The second is to complete the covenant, to seek always to love
God and love neighbors as the response to God’s love.

God’s
grace is available at all times, and thus is available at baptism;
the ritual cannot exist without God’s grace. Baptism is a public
act of accepting God’s love, but God’s love exists for each
person with or without baptism. The
covenant is eternal, even if the person ignores it. God does not
stop loving. The water is symbolic, and as such its efficacy is not
based on its quantity. That is a baptism is real whether the water
is poured or sprinkled over a person OR they are dunked!

I
haven’t ever done a baptism where a person is dunked, although I was
trained in it in seminary. I suspect that symbolism of new life is
more tangible in those baptisms. When I was in college one of the
churches in town left the doors to its sanctuary open at all times.
I would often go there to pray, and to ponder. The entrance to that
sanctuary was though two sets of solid wooden doors. The first set
connected the church to outside. The second set connected the
entrance to the sanctuary. The space between them was pretty small,
and there were no windows or lights. (This was in New Hampshire, I’m
pretty sure the design was intended to keep the cold out.) I usually
paused in that space between the sets of doors. I didn’t yet know
the word “liminal,” but I knew that I liked the in-betweenness
of that space. Between the sets of doors I was not in the outside
world, nor was I in the sanctuary. I was in the middle, in nowhere.
Young adulthood often felt disorienting, and being in a physical
space that reflected that no-whereness brought it some peace.

I
suspect that for those who undergo full immersion baptism, the moment
under the water might be the the space between the doors. The person
is, symbolically, dead to their old life and yet not yet alive in
their new one. I’ve worried, at times, about the pressure a person
might feel under if they understood baptism that way. What happens
the first time that they are cranky, or tempted, or mean! Do they
worry that the baptism didn’t work? Do they feel unworthy?

I
hope that baptism is a reminder that we are Beloved, and that when we
participate in the baptisms of others we remember the covenant also
applies to us! God’s grace is exceptionally powerful stuff. It
counters any argument that suggests that we are not enough, that we
have to work harder or have more in order to be sufficient. It
reminds us that our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits are beloved
JUST AS THEY ARE, and that we need not earn our way into God’s favor.

It
does occur to me at times that believing in God’s grace is much more
radical than simply believing in God. As odds would have it, I
figure that God’s existence is a 50/50. It can’t be proven either
way. (Or, perhaps, the existence of God is equivalent to Schroeder’s
cat. On a strictly logical level, God both is and isn’t! Please
take that idea lightly.) On the other hand, the premise that the God
who exists is benevolent, that the One who Created cares, that the
Energy and Connector of All that Is is by nature Grace – all of
that is much less logical.

Anyone
looking at the injustices and evils of the world could easily
conclude that a Higher Power simply doesn’t care. Because, they
would conclude, if a Higher Power exists AND cares, then why are
there such awful realities? Therefore, a logical person might
conclude, one of 3 things must be true:

God
doesn’t exist.

God
doesn’t care.

God
doesn’t have the power to change things.

To
be fair, I’ve heard people suggest that there is a 4^th
option, that God’s ways are not like our ways and that what we see as
injustice is OK with God, but that’s such a lousy argument that I
refuse to work with it.

My
training has been in a theology that turns to #3, “God doesn’t have
the power to change things.” Process theology argues over whether
God CAN’T interfere with human will or simply WON’T, but admits that
if you want to understand God as existing and loving, you are forced
by logic to concede that God does not stop us from doing each other
harm. Instead, Process Theology says, God works with all of us all
the time. God “whispers” to us suggestions of how we might act
in the most loving of ways. God works with us where we are and
offers us the possibility of turning in good directions. However, we
are truly free to ignore God’s whispers, hopes, and suggestions and
do the opposite. Whether this is because God simply refuses to treat
us as slaves or because creation itself won’t allow the violation of
imposed will, we are free to do good and we are free to do harm, and
we do both.

And
yet, we are Beloved. We are Beloved when we live out God’s love to
the fullest and share love with all we meet. We are Beloved when we
are simply awful, and do profound and lasting damage to others.
God’s love comes from God’s nature, not from our earning it. It may
not be logical, the way we see things. God’s existence is fair game.
God’s GRACE, God’s LOVE, God’s desire for goodness isn’t something
we can derive from pure logic. We find it scripture. We hear about
in tradition and from those we know in the Body of Christ. We can
experience it in our bodies, and we can learn about it through a
variety of fields of research if we look with the right lenses. But
it is a matter of faith to believe in a God of love.

And
yet, the do’ is open to all.

Thanks
be to God. Amen

1 http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy#sub4