January 11, 2026 | Word Out!
Download the Bulletin from January 11, 2026
READINGS AND SERMON
First Reading: Isaiah 42:1-9
1 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.
2 He will not cry out or lift up his voice
or make it heard in the street;
3 a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
4 He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth,
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
5 Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it:
6 I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
7 to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
8 I am the Lord; that is my name;
my glory I give to no other,
nor my praise to idols.
9 See, the former things have come to pass,
and new things I now declare;
before they spring forth,
I tell you of them.
Second Reading: Acts 10:34-43
34 Peter began to speak to [Cornelius and his household]: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. 36 You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. 37 That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38 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. 39 We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Gospel: Matthew 3:13-17
13 Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Sermon
Grace to you, and peace, from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, who is the Christ. Amen.
Who am I?
That is a complicated question.
Who am I? A notoriously difficult question to ask.
In answering it, where do I start? Do I look within myself and ponder the depths of my being? Do I reflect on myself and my particular personality traits? Or do I consult others? Do I ask, as Jesus did to his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”
Who am I? Do I consult tests like the Myers Briggs Personality Inventory, or the Enneagram, or like Martin Luther’s right-hand man, Philip Melanchthon, do I look to the stars for my identity? Do I consult astrological charts? Do I seek in constellations the answer to the mystery of who I am?
Who am I?
Years ago, I attended a conference internationally, and I remember at each session, we were asked, before asking questions of the presenters, to stand up and introduce ourselves by saying our name and where we were from. Well, me, being quite nervous at the time, stood up, but forgot to say my name and where I was from, at which point, in unison, those around me said, “Who are you?”
To which I replied, “That’s a question I’ve been asking for a very long time.”
Who am I, indeed? Well, at a risk of oversimplification, I think we can break down the question of who I am in terms of four categories. In other words, there are four ways to answer the question, Who am I?
First, we can think of it in terms of our personality, our traits, our talents, our aptitudes, our habits, our likes, our various ways of self-expression, how we show up in the world, our abilities, our proclivities. When I do memorial or funeral speeches, for example, when I’m asked about who a person was, or when I ponder it, I often think about personality traits. This person was “kind,” or dare I say, in some cases, this person was “stubborn.” Personality, then becomes one way of answering the question of who I am.
Another way to answer the question of who I am is to think about relationships. In my case, I am the first-born son of a loving mother and a wonderful father with a younger brother. I am also a friend. I am a nephew. I am a pastor. In case you haven’t heard, one of the reasons why I prefer being called Pastor Dan, incidentally, and not just Dan, is because it reminds me of my relationship to you and why I’m in your life. So, who am I can be understood in terms of relationships. I am your pastor. I am my father’s son. I am my brother’s brother. I am a friend. I am many things based upon the relationships that I have.
A third way to answer the question of who I am can be thought of in terms of how I spend my time, not only how I show up in the world in terms of my self-expression or personality, but where I spend my time or what I do. What is my job? What are my hobbies? What are my special interests? Where do I volunteer? Where do I spend my time?
Fourth, and finally, I can think about my identity in terms of my affiliations. Our former Vice President Mike Pence, for example, spoke of himself, “first as a Christian, second as an American, and third as a Republican.” That’s a great example of how one constructs one’s identity, in terms of affiliation.
The Apostle Paul does the same thing. He talks about being a member of Israel, belonging to the tribe of. Benjamin; A Pharisee among Pharisees.
These are different ways of articulating one’s identity by way of affiliation. We have a gentleman in the back of the room, for example, who is Super Fan Number 99 of the Seattle Seahawks. He wears the Seattle Seahawks hat even out of season; he is a Seahawks fan, that is his affiliation…and we all know and hope and trust that the 49ers will beat the Seahawks sometime in the near future. (I had to get that in there. I know they’re not going to; it is what it is. I know, I love that, how I get boos and hisses on that one. Oh my gosh!)
Who am I? I can answer the question then, in terms of personality traits—the way I show up in the world; my relationships, whether it’s my being a son, a friend or a pastor; how I spend my time, what I do for a living, my hobbies; and finally, my affiliations, whether I am a vice president, an apostle or a Seahawks fan.
Now, what faith does, and Scripture does for us, it expands and in some cases, pushes back against the way that we construct our identities when it comes to answering the question of who I am. For example, consumer capitalist culture tells me that “I am my consumer preferences,” that I like to have it my way, which is why I eat at burger king, or that I’m like PEMCO insurance, a little different. These are all different ways that our consumer preferences are placed or used to identify a much more profound question of who we are.
But Scripture does more than just push back on some of the identities that are imposed upon us by a consumerist culture. It also expands how we understand our relationships, such that, for example, my neighbor is not simply somebody who lives across the street, my neighbor is every person in this world, to whom I’m called to love and serve out of gratitude for God’s grace. Or beyond that, “I’m a child of God.” That’s my identity from a faith perspective. Or, again, “I’m your sibling in Christ.”
Some of you know Shirley Flory an amazing person. She talks about how Queen Anne Lutheran is her family of faith, and that’s language that I heard this morning as well from another person. So what faith does, is it expands our understanding of who we are, not simply thinking about our literal neighbor across the street, or our brother and sister in our family, but seeing one another as siblings, seeing one another as neighbors, and seeing those around us outside the church as neighbors as well.
Faith also gives us particular values that can expand our sense of self identity, that is what’s important to us, or who God calls us to be in relationship to others. Some of you may recall a couple months ago, or a little less than that, actually, my Christian New Year’s resolutions during the season of [Advent], to be more charitable, to be more grateful, to be more hopeful. These are things I hope to integrate into who I am.
Or consider our Second Reading, to be a “preacher of peace,” as Peter says, or go to
2 Corinthians 5 where Paul says that as Christians, we are called to be ministers of reconciliation, something we practice every Sunday when we share the peace. Or people who do good following Jesus Christ, again, in reference to our second reading. Or go to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, where Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful,” the pure in heart, that is, those who live by integrity, the peacemakers. These things, all because of faith, can become and should become, part of who we are.
This may explain why many of you, myself included, feel outrage over what has happened in Minnesota this last week. How a woman was violently shot to death, and then was assaulted with regard to her identity, by being called without all the evidence in a “domestic terrorist and a left wing radical.”
Is that really who she was?
[“Yes”—a comment from a congregant]
“Yes,” you say…
That is not what we know in terms of the facts. What we should say is, first and foremost, as Christians: She was a child of God, just as everybody else is, irrespective of their political views, whether far left or far right. That person, first and foremost, in Jesus Christ, is a child of God. Just as Mike Pence said, he is first a Christian, he is second an American, he is third a Republican.
We’ve got our identities mixed up. And from what I just heard, it sounds like there’s some division even in this church. And we need to acknowledge that. When you’re at this railing, you are not a conservative or a Republican, you are not a liberal or a Democrat. You are a child of God. Period, full stop. End of story.
Now it may come out that this person was guilty; it may come out that the person who shot her was the one who was ultimately at fault. But for now, all we know is that somebody was killed. And that person first should be thought of as a child of God. That is her identity; as one, just like you and me, who is made in the image of God: a neighbor, a fellow human being, not to be dehumanized by whatever we read online hear on the radio or watch on the news.
The best answer then, to the question of “who are you?” and “who am I?” from a Christian perspective, is simply this: a child of God, the status of which is confirmed by our baptism.
Like marriage, baptism makes God’s love for us explicit. It doesn’t create God’s love for us, but it names it. It honors it, and it reflects God’s commitment to each of us as God’s children. It’s when God answers the question of who Jesus is the first time in the Gospel of Matthew and Mark when he’s baptized.
Listen again to our Gospel Reading:
“And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly, the heavens were opened to him (In Greek, they were “torn apart”), and he saw God’s Spirit descending on him like a dove and alighting on him, and a voice from the heaven said, ‘This is my son, the Beloved, with [whom] I am well pleased.’”
His identity was not given to him by the world. It was not given to him by pop culture. It was not given to him by digital media. It was given to him by God in the waters of baptism, and that is the identity that you and I have, and every person otherwise has, before God.
As Paul says in Acts 17, we are God’s offspring. In God, we live, move and have our being.
Who am I?
That is a complicated question that can be answered in terms of our personality, in terms of our relationships, in terms of our affiliations, and in terms of our values, but from a Christian perspective, it’s an easy question to answer. You and I are children of God, first and foremost. We are children of God, and our baptism, just like the baptism of Jesus, confirms it.
Let us pray.
Kind and loving God, we live in a very ugly period of American history, where we have been turned against each other, by the media that we consume, by the consumerism that threatens to overshadow our lives, and by the irreconciliation that is fostered by isolation, and often loneliness.
We ask this morning that you help us rethink our answer to the question of who we are and who other people are around us when it comes to the question of identity.
May you remind us, myself included, that we are all, first and foremost, children of God, and that we are called to treat others accordingly. Help us remember our baptism, and help us love even those with whom we disagree. In Jesus’s name we pray.
Amen.