January 18, 2026 | Word Out!
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READINGS AND SERMON
First Reading: Isaiah 49:1-7
1 Listen to me, O coastlands;
pay attention, you peoples from far away!
The Lord called me before I was born;
while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.
2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
3 And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
4 But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my cause is with the Lord
and my reward with my God.”
5 And now the Lord says,
who formed me in the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him,
and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the sight of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
6 he says,
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
7 Thus says the Lord,
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations,
the slave of rulers,
“Kings shall see and stand up;
princes, and they shall prostrate themselves,
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, 5 for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind 6 just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you 7 so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8 He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the partnership of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Gospel: John 1:29-42
29 [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Chosen One.”
35 The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). 42 He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).
Sermon: He Abides with You and with Me
Grace to you, and peace, from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, who is the Christ. Amen.
The title again, of today's message: “He abides with you and with me.”
I'd like you to take out your hymnals and turn to hymn number 629; many of you recognize this song. It's titled, “Abide with Me.”
Now the word for abide in English can also be translated “dwell, remain or stay”. So when you sing this song, which I'm about to ask you to do, I want you to think of “stay” in place of “abide.” We'll sing verses one and four.
Now, as you can see from the text of this hymn, it seems to pertain exclusively to the reality of death, where the hymn writer asks God to abide, remain or stay with him as he faces his own mortality. We have evidence, of course, for this in verse four, which you sang. Line three, the third line says, “Where is death’s sting, where grave thy victory?”
That language, as you may know, comes from First Corinthians 15, where Paul offers us the most sustained account of resurrection in the New Testament. So it makes sense to think of this hymn in terms of facing courageously the reality of death. What I'd like to suggest this morning, however, is the hymn is not only about facing death, it's just as much about life, about the struggles and sorrows life brings to us, as well as its joys and celebrations.
Now the language for this hymn comes from John 15. This is where Jesus says to His disciples, “Abide in me as I abide in you.” Now remember that the word for abide here is better translated, I would argue, dwell, remain or stay. With that in mind, I'd like you to listen to a few of the verses from this text upon which the hymn is based.
[Jesus says,] “Abide in me.—that is, dwell, or remain in me—as I abide in you. I am the vine. You are the branches. Those who abide—again dwell or remain—in me, and I in them, bear much fruit, because apart from me, you can do nothing. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide—once again, dwell or stay—in my love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
As you can see, the original text from which the hymn comes is not talking about facing death. It's talking about living life with joy in service to others, because Jesus promises to dwell in us.
Now that's all well and good. You might be saying to yourselves, but why bring it up today? Why bring it up this morning? Yes, you might be thinking, I can see that Jesus abides in us and gives us love and courage accordingly to face the struggles and problems and difficulties of life. I can also see how Jesus accompanies us when it comes to the joys we experience, our courage and commitment, but our Gospel reading for today says nothing about Jesus abiding in us, nor does it say anything about us abiding in him! It talks instead about baptism, his baptism, after which we read about the call to discipleship, the call to follow him. None of this mentions abiding with him, or again, him with us.
It's in response to that that I'd like you to look a little closer with me this morning at the text itself. You would be right to say that the word “abide” does not appear here in English, but what I'm going to share with you in a few moments is that it does appear in the original language, that is, the original Greek, and it's quite significant. As is often the case here, many things are lost in translation.
Now in a second, I'm going to ask you to find the English equivalent for “abide” in our Gospel reading for today. But first I would like to say a few words about the baptism of Jesus. As you might guess, all four gospels talk about it, but they do so in significantly different ways. What I'd like to do is just take a couple minutes and look at each in turn by focusing on just one thing.
Let's start with the Gospel of Mark. Why? Because the gospel of Mark is the earliest of the four gospels to be written. Most scholars date it between 65 and 70 during the reign of Nero, the emperor who was famous for persecuting Christians. In fact, a minority of scholars believe that the author himself was martyred, which explains why the ending is so abrupt, in verse 8 of chapter 16. The text was written primarily for Greek Christians who were probably living in Rome.
This is what Mark says about Jesus's baptism. And I quote: “And just as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove toward him. The Spirit descending like a dove toward him.
Most English translations say “on him,” but the original language says “toward him.” So the Spirit “descending toward him” is important here. What's also important is the imagery God, as it were, tears apart the heavens and the Spirit descends.
This is a book end that Mark is providing at the beginning of the Gospel, which will be repeated as another book, and at the end of the Gospel, when something else is ripped apart or torn in two when Jesus dies, can you guess what that is? The temple curtain.
In both cases, God is overcoming the breach that exists between God and humanity.
If you go to the Gospel of Matthew, it too has bookends. At the beginning, Matthew says of Jesus at His birth that he is Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” And then at the end, the last words of Jesus in the text are “Lo, I am with you always until the end of the age.”
In short, these authors knew what they were doing. They provide all kinds of ways to understand the story of Jesus. For our purposes, again, it's important to note that for Mark, the heavens are torn open and God, as the Spirit descends like a dove toward him.
We turn next to the Gospel of Matthew. Now, Matthew is written at least 10 to 15 years after the gospel of Mark, to a community of Jewish Christians, probably living in the city of Antioch, which is Syria today. This is important to know, because Matthew consistently presents Jesus as a Moses figure, “Moses 2.0” who comes not to bring the law as Moses did, but to reinterpret it, which is exactly what he does in his Sermon on the Mount, which is exactly what Moses did when receiving the law.
So Matthew has written to a group of Jewish Christians. One of my mentors used to say that as Matthew was writing his Gospel, he had the Gospel of Mark opened, which was a source for him, but also his window open, such that he was looking through it at the synagogue.
So Matthew is partially reliant on Mark, and this is what Matthew says in retelling the story of Jesus's baptism. “And when,” and I quote here, “Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up out of the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.”
Now, what does the word alighting mean? It means like a bird, to land, to perch. The Greek in Matthew's Gospel says “coming upon.” So now, the Spirit is not only descending toward Jesus, it's landing on him. It's alighting on him.
Now, trust me, this is going somewhere.
Let's turn next briefly to the Gospel of Luke. Luke was also written at least 10 to 15 years after Mark, and was also like Matthew, partially dependent upon Mark. We don't know exactly where Luke was written, but it was clearly written in a Greek context, Luke being possibly the only Greek or Gentile writer of the New Testament.
Listen to what he says about Jesus's baptism. And I quote now “When all the people were baptized, and when Jesus had also been baptized and was praying the heavens, or rather the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form, like a dove.”
Now, do you hear any differences there? You'll note that the Spirit descends upon Him not as he's being baptized, but just after He's baptized, while he's doing what?
He's praying, like I was yesterday during the Seahawks game! Some prayers aren't answered.
The Heaven was open— so it's no longer in the plural, but, but it's in the singular. And Luke likes to emphasize the tangibility of God. So he says “the Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form, like a dove.” Now, the language that Luke uses is very similar to Matthew's. It simply means “to come upon him.” There's no language of perching or alighting, but there is this language of “coming upon him.”
Finally, we have the Gospel of John. John was the last of the four Gospels to be written to a Greek audience somewhere between 90 and 105, that is at least 20 years after Mark wrote. This is what John says about the baptism of Jesus. Telling it now from the point of view of John the Baptist, he writes, “And John testified, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. And I was told, he on whom you see the Spirit descending and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”
Now, do you hear the difference? Do you hear the difference? What we have here over the course of roughly 20 to 25 years is a progression. In each case, the Spirit is coming nearer to Jesus, and by implication, through him to us.
In Mark, the earliest of the four Gospels, the Spirit descends and comes toward him. In Matthew, dependent in part on Mark, the Spirit not only comes toward him, but alights, which means lands or perches on him. In Luke, written around the same time as Matthew also, also partially dependent on Mark the Spirit descends on Jesus in bodily form. And then finally, in John, the last of the four to be written, the Spirit does what? It descends on him. And then what does it do? It stays. It remains.
Now, earlier, I said there was an English equivalent for the word we've been discussing. What is another word for remains?
Abides. Now I share with this you with this today, not because I'm re incarnating my old life as a professor. I'm doing this because there's a point, and the point is simple: The Spirit remains with Jesus, and that is good news.
If the Spirit abides, dwells, stays or remains with Jesus, and if Jesus promises, as we heard in John 15, to abide, dwell, remain or stay in us or with us or among us, then where is the Spirit today, 2000 years later? Here with us; among us.
What does this mean? That, like Jesus, the Spirit never forsakes us. The Spirit is always with us. The Spirit always abides in us.
Now, I don't know about you, but it seems to me that exactly the good news we need right now is just this message, right? I mean, in cities like Minnesota at this moment, there are armed men and women on patrol who have killed an American citizen, who are deporting migrants, in some cases, to nations they're not even from. This is happening right now, in our country.
Do you know what else is happening right now? The USA, for the first time in 80 years, is threatening the NATO alliance with talk of taking over Greenland. The Lutheran Bishop of Greenland has written a letter, a missive to American Christians that begins with the words, “Help us.”
It feels like we're descending into total and absolute chaos, even authoritarianism.
Now, more than ever, we must count on the promise that the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus and remained with Him, just as in Him, it remains, it dwells, it abides with us. Now, more than ever, we need to count on the good news, that Jesus and the Spirit accompany us, even in the midst of a great uncertainties we face at this time.
The promise here is that they dwell among us, that they remain with us, and indeed, that they abide with us, and that nothing, now, to quote Paul from Romans 8, not even death, can separate us from Jesus and His love for us. The progression, in other words, is crucial. The Spirit has not only come toward us, has not even only alighted us in Jesus, but also dwells with us and promises to remain with us, no matter what.
And our hymns, as always, capture this so well, don't they? I mean, consider the Hymn of the Day we're about to sing. This text talks about “over the tumult of our lives, wild, restless sea.” Jesus not only says “Come and follow me”, as he does to the disciples at the end of our Gospel reading, he also implies “take comfort” knowing that he does not send us out there alone. He dwells with us. He remains with us. He stays with us, no matter what. He abides, in you and with me. Amen.