The Spirit Given for the Sake of the World

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Sermon: The Spirit Given for the Sake of the World

The past year, and especially the past weeks, have felt heavy for many of us. Our common life has been marked by anxiety, anger, grief, and deep division. Communities and families feel strained. Even when we avoid the headlines, we carry the weight of it in our bodies and relationships. Many are asking where God is in all of this, and what faith looks like when the world feels so fractured.

The Christian tradition has never pretended that faith is lived in calm or uncomplicated times. Again and again, Scripture speaks into moments of darkness, uncertainty, and upheaval—not with easy answers, but with revelation. The season of Epiphany reminds us that God does not wait for the world to become stable or peaceful before showing up. God’s light comes precisely when darkness feels real, and that light is never meant to be hoarded or admired from a distance. It is given for the sake of the world.

This sermon reflects on the baptism of Jesus, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the covenant life we enter through our own baptism. It explores what it means to be shaped by the Spirit not for ourselves alone, but so that love, justice, and hope might take flesh again in ordinary lives and wounded places. It asks how faith moves from revelation to responsibility, from belovedness to sending.

As you read, you might pause to consider:

• Where do you see darkness pressing in right now: personally, communally, or nationally?

• What does it mean to believe that God’s light has already dawned, even here?

• If the Spirit is given for the sake of the world, how might your own baptism be calling you to show up differently in love, in courage, in presence?

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This is not a sermon about having all the answers. It is an invitation to notice where God is already at work, and how we might bear that light together.

With you on the way,Nicole +

Church of the Nativity

1st Sunday After Epiphany, Year A

January 11, 2026

Isaiah 42:1-9, Acts 10:34-43, Matthew 3:13-17

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Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you. For behold, darkness covers the land; deep gloom enshrouds the peoples. But over you the Lord will rise, and his glory will appear upon you…

These words of our Canticle today embody the spirit of Epiphany, a joyous season of light. After our Christmas celebrations, we turn to the feast that reminds us that God has come among us.

In the Western Church, the feast of Epiphany centers on the magi, those outsiders who follow a strange star and discover that God has entered the world not for a few, but for all. In Eastern Christianity, Epiphany centers on the baptism of Jesus, where Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are revealed together at the Jordan, the readings we see today. Both of these moments point to the same truth. God is not hidden but is being revealed. The light has come into the world, and so we rejoice.

The lectionary doesn’t let us stay long, basking at the manger with a baby and the wise men. It reminds us that Epiphany is God revealing not just who Jesus is as Immanuel, God with us, but how God acts in the world and how we are to respond to that revelation.

I want to take us on a brief journey through all the readings today because they have a thread that connects them that I think we cannot afford to miss. That connection is the extraordinary working of the Spirit of God and what these acts of the Spirit tell us about God. They show us that Epiphany is not just a spectacle, a moment to rejoice because the light has come. It is a commissioning.

The first movement of the Spirit we see is in Isaiah. The prophet gives us a vision of God’s chosen servant upon whom the Spirit comes: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”

Notice what the Spirit comes to do, to empower the Servant to bring justice and light to the world. The Spirit will allow him to open blind eyes and to free prisoners. The servant is not given power for his own sake. From the very beginning, we see the Spirit’s work is outward-facing. It is restorative and relational, for the sake of others.

The same Spirit appears again at the Jordan. Jesus comes to John to be baptized, and John resists. “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” he says. His question makes sense. Jesus is without sin, and John’s baptism is for repentance, but Jesus insists, saying it is proper to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus steps into the water not because he needs cleansing, but because we do. This is his first public act of solidarity with the human family in all its mess and brokenness.

And then the heavens open. The Spirit descends like a dove and rests on him and the voice of the Father declares, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Echoing back to the servant who Isaiah says will be a covenant for the people, Jesus’ baptism initiates a new work that is now unfolding through him. This divine commissioning of Jesus’ ministry identifies him as the one who was to come, beginning his work to bring God’s justice and salvation to the world.

Then, we turn to the book of Acts, which shows us what that beloved, Spirit-filled life looks like when it is lived. Peter stands before a household of Gentiles, people he never imagined himself addressing, and says something astonishing: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” This is a turning point for Peter, a life-changing epiphany, you could say.

Just a little bit earlier in this chapter, God sends a vision to both Peter and a Roman centurion, Cornelius, resulting in Peter going to Joppa, where we see this passage unfolding. Peter was resistant, as a devout Jew, to associate with Gentiles, but he followed the vision, and when he speaks, he picks up where the gospel left off, at the baptism of Jesus.

“That message spread throughout Judea,” he says, “beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” Right away, he associates the power of the Spirit with the life Jesus lived. This is how Peter defines the good news: healing and liberation for others.

And what happens next? The passage we read in Acts today stops before this, but it’s important for us to see. As Peter is still speaking, the Holy Spirit comes upon Cornelius and his household. The event in Acts 10 is sometimes called the Gentile Pentecost because it broke down barriers, opening the door for the universal expansion of the gospel. The Spirit falls on these outsiders, refusing to be penned in by Peter’s expectations, refusing to be controlled.

In verses 46 and 47, we read: “Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” What we are witnessing in Acts is not simply a dramatic moment of inclusion, nor is it only a lesson about openness. It is the unfolding of covenant. The same Spirit who descended on Jesus at the Jordan—marking him as God’s beloved Son and sending him into a life of self-giving love—is now being poured out on those Peter once believed stood outside the promises of God.

In other words, the baptism of Jesus is not an isolated event meant only to reveal who Jesus is. It is the beginning of a covenant life that the Spirit refuses to keep contained. What begins in the waters of the Jordan flows outward—into Judea, into Samaria, into the household of Cornelius, and eventually into the life of the Church itself.

And this is where the story turns toward us. Because the same Spirit who anointed Jesus and surprised Peter is the Spirit who meets us in the waters of baptism, drawing us into that same covenant life.

What happens at baptism? At baptism, we are marked and claimed. The sign of the cross is traced on our foreheads in holy oil, and we are claimed as Christ’s own forever. This is covenant language, language of belonging, not achievement.

In baptism, we are joined to Christ and become members of his body. And in the Christian tradition, the word member does not mean someone who signed up or fulfilled a requirement. We are not members of the Church because we took a class or filled out a form. We are members because we are joined, like a limb to a living body. Our life is bound up with Christ’s life.

To be baptized, then, is to be joined to Jesus—to share in his life, to receive his Spirit, and to participate in his mission. Baptism does not make us spectators of Christ’s life; it makes us participants in it. And that changes how we understand the Christian life altogether.

Just as Jesus’ baptism was not about him alone, just as it revealed who he was and marked the beginning of a life given in humility and solidarity with the world, our baptism is not simply personal. It is communal. It is vocational.

If baptism joins us to Christ, if it draws us into a covenant life shaped by the Spirit, then it also reshapes the direction of our spiritual lives. The Spirit does not come simply to deepen our interior lives, as important as that is. The Spirit comes to form us outwardly: in how we love, how we forgive, how we show up for one another, and how we live in the world God so loves.

Spiritual formation, in other words, is never meant to stop at the self. What the Spirit does within us is meant to spill outward, into lives marked by presence, compassion, and faithfulness.

I learned something essential about that years ago, far from here. When I lived in India and Bangladesh, one of the things that changed me most was realizing that faithfulness often looked like walking with people, not fixing things. There were so many needs, so much suffering that it felt overwhelming. There were so many systems larger than anything we could solve. And one place where that became painfully clear was in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Right before we moved there, the Rohingya people started pouring into southern Bangladesh, fleeing ethnic cleansing in neighboring Myanmar. The nonprofit we worked with ran primary schools in villages where education wasn’t easily accessible, and we wanted to see how we could help in the refugee camps.

So, we went down to Cox Bazar, where the largest refugee camp in the world was at the time. What we faced was unbelievable—families forced to flee as their villages burned, now living in overcrowded camps in a country not their own, uncertain of their future, and carrying unimaginable loss. There were no easy answers or quick solutions.

What we could do, what we were invited to do, was to sit. We were invited to listen, to share tea, to be present, and bear witness to unimaginable stories. I remember sitting with families in hastily constructed tin and plastic huts, hearing about homes they would never return to and loved ones they had lost. And what struck me was not that we had something to offer them, but that Christ was already there in their dignity, their resilience, and their humanity.

That experience taught me something I now see clearly in the life of the Chuch: the Spirit sends us not to stand above the world, but to stand within it as Jesus himself did—not as saviors or fixers, but as witnesses to a God who draws near.

The Christian life is not about individual holiness or private spirituality. It is about a people shaped together for the life of the world. And this matters deeply right now.

Many of us are coming into this space carrying a great deal today. This past year, and even this past week, has been heavy in our communities and in our nation. People are afraid. People are angry. Communities and families feel more divided than they used to. Trust feels fragile. I don’t need to name causes or take sides for us to recognize the weight of this. We feel it in our bodies. We carry it in our relationships.

And it is important to say this clearly: the Church does not exist apart from moments like this. It exists for precisely this kind of world. We are sent as witnesses—not to inflame division, but to practice presence. Not to win arguments, but to embody love. Not to withdraw in fear, but to remain rooted in hope.

In our baptismal vows, we promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons; we promise to strive for justice and peace; we promise to respect the dignity of every human being. When we take these vows, we are not agreeing to abstract ideals. What are we called to in them?

Isaiah calls it justice. Matthew calls it righteousness. Acts show it as peace and healing. Different words—the Same Spirit. And that Spirit continues to take flesh in the world through the Church, through people marked by baptism, formed in love, and sent in hope. Which brings us back to where we began: “Arise, shine, for your light has come.”

Epiphany is not only the celebration that the light has come into the world. It is the revelation of what that light is for. The light is not given so it can be admired. It is given so it can be shared. It is given for the sake of a world that still knows deep gloom, fear, division, and longing.

In Jesus’ baptism, the light is revealed. In the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts, that light refuses to stay contained. And in our baptism, that same light is entrusted to us—not as something we possess, but as something we bear.

This is what Epiphany reveals: that God’s glory rises not only over us, but through us; that nations are drawn not by our perfection, but by a people willing to stand within the world in humility, in compassion, and in faithfulness, bearing witness that the light of Christ continues to shine wherever the Spirit forms a people for the sake of others.

So let us remember the waters where we were named beloved, marked by the cross, and filled with the Spirit. And let us remember that from there, we are sent—not to stand above the world, but to walk within it, carrying the light that has already dawned.

Let us take what we have been given in Christ, and let us Arise and Shine. For the light is not only for us. It is for the world God so loves.

Amen.