Last week, in celebration of Epiphany, we all had the opportunity to receive a star word. For those of you who missed it, star words are just that. Words on stars.

We had a chance to prayerfully choose one at random and were invited to think of it as a word from God to guide us into the new year in honor of the magi who used a star to guide them to Jesus.

And let me just say, if you’re sitting out there right now thinking, “dang it, I knew I should have come to church last week.” You’re right.

Just kidding. If you missed last week and you’re disappointed because you didn't get a star word, or didn’t actually take a star last week because you thought it was silly, but now kind of wish you had; don’t worry. I got you. The year is young and there are are still stars for the taking right here in this basket. You can come up after the sermon and take your pick.

But if you were here last week, I’m curious; how many of you chose a star and then immediately felt judged?

Who here picked up a word like enthusiasm or courage or generosity and thought, “Oof, I guess I’m going to need to be a little more enthusiastic, courageous, or generous this year”?

If so, please hear me when I say that you are not alone. I, for one, am totally wired this way. Last year my word was “grace,” which is a perfectly nice word, right? Who doesn’t want more grace in their life.

But I have to tell you that my first reaction was, ouch!

“You don’t think I extend enough grace to others, do you God?

This must be what’s wrong with me.

I wouldn’t have drawn this star if grace weren’t lacking in me.

I should be more full of grace.

I probably even need to extend more grace to myself…just, you know, not too much, or I’ll get complacent and not show enough grace to others and end up drawing this word again next year.

Oh, if only I had more grace!”

That’s a bit much, isn't it? Yes it is. Especially coming from me since I know full well that these stars are meant to be gifts, not indictments. But my mind went there anyway and it went there first.

I’m happy to share that as I continued to think about grace throughout the year I realized that receiving that word as a judgment from God or a task I needed to fulfill in order to please God… was as much a choice as it was a reflex.

I could just as easily have received my star word as an invitation to explore the idea of grace or really and truly extend grace to myself without reservation. I could have received grace as God’s gift to me - God saying, "hey Sarah, honey, relax. It’s all going to be ok. You’re covered. You’re doing your best and my grace is sufficient to make up the difference.”

I could have received the word grace as a gift God wanted to give to me rather than something I had to give more of in order to please God. But I didn’t. At least not at first.

In the end, I think I got to that place, and it was good. But seriously, that tendency to be hard on ourselves no matter what is real, isn't it?

That tendency to look at every affirmation or accomplishment as a new bar we now need to live up to, is a thing.

The tendency to focus more on what we are not rather than what we are, the tendency to assume that there is something fundamentally wrong with us that needs correcting, rather than something fundamentally good in us that just needs encouraging….

I’m not the only one who struggles with this, right?  Because let me tell you: if kicking yourself from behind was an olympic sport, I’d be a champion.

You can blame it on capitalism, meritocracy, or the protestant work ethic, old theologies that distort our worth or new age wisdom that exaggerates our power, but I think a lot of us struggle with the very real fear that we are not enough -

not good enough, spiritual enough, doing enough, growing enough, making enough, giving enough -

to be worthy of God’s love or anyone else’s, because, for whatever reason, we’re just not trying hard enough. But we need to keep trying anyway..or else…

And not for nothing, but scripture doesn’t always help. I mean who needs Jiminy Cricket when you’ve got John the Baptist calling you to repentance twice in December and once in January?

John the Baptist would eat Jimmy for breakfast! Actually he did, like, literally. But that’s another story.

Ol’ Cricket Breath gets three whole Sundays in the lectionary, so he’s really impossible to avoid with all his talk of vipers and axes, repentance and the wrath to come.

And if you think he’s a bit much, “just you wait” says John. “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

It sounds bad, I know. But, remember how I managed to read judgment into my star word? Remember how I - a trained theologian -  chose to read judgment into the very word, “grace.” Well, believe it or not, we can choose to read grace into these words of judgment.

Actually, this image of Jesus showing up with a winnowing fork to clear the threshing floor, gather the wheat into his barn and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire, can be read as one of the most grace filled passages in all of scripture.

We just need to remember that every grain of wheat is composed of a good kernel covered by a husk called, “chaff.” To this day, farmers still employ winnowing forks to toss the grains into the air to separate the husk from the kernel, the wheat from the chaff. When they do, the wind carries all the useless chaff away leaving the farmer with nothing but a good kernel of wheat.

If we are like wheat, then we all have a kernel of goodness at our center and some chaff, better known as sin, to burn.

Jesus then, at least according to John, isn’t coming to separate the righteous from the unrighteous.

Jesus is coming to separate the righteous from their unrighteousness, coming for every last one of us to free us from the sins that weigh us down and obscure the goodness at our core.

No one is getting thrown in the fire for not being good enough! No one. Because everyone is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done. We all make mistakes, to paraphrase Brene Brown, but that doesn’t mean we are mistakes.

God doesn’t make mistakes. God makes people… gloriously beloved imperfect people whom God refuses to give up on. So much so that God took on human flesh and became, in the person of Jesus, a gloriously beloved, dare I say, imperfect person too?

I know that’s not an orthodox view of the incarnation, but the very fact that Jesus shows up the way he does in this story, really does seem to put the emphasis on his full and therefore imperfect humanity.

Jesus could have shown up in a tricked out chariot, robed in glory, sporting bedazzled Birkenstocks and a flaming triton. He could have struck fear into the hearts of all and called them to repentance while he looked down on everyone.

But instead Jesus got in line to repent and be baptized right alongside everyone else in solidarity with us all. I think maybe Jesus joined in on the whole thing to show us that repentance is part and parcel of what it is to be -not a perfect human- but a good one.

And then God proclaimed him beloved in all his humanness, to show us that no human is perfect and we are all beloved too…It’s one of the deep paradoxes at the heart of our faith: we don’t have to be worthy of God’s love to be worth loving. I don’t get it, but I’m grateful for it.

It would seem that God doesn’t need us to be perfect. It would seem that all God needs is for us to be human and ever more honest with God and ourselves about what that entails.

Friends, to be human is to be limited, fallible, finite. To be human is to be prone to wander, doubt, falter, and sin. But to be a beloved child of God also means that there is always and ever something at our core that God refuses to give up on, longs to cleanse, and came to set free.

To be a beloved child of God means that there is always grace for the asking and in this story Jesus shows us just how beautiful and affirming the ask can be. Acknowledging our limits, humbly repenting when we mess up, and allowing God to take away our sins is a holy and beautiful act that pleases God and releases us from that which does not serve us or anyone else.

Jesus shows us that our sinfulness doesn’t negate our preciousness, our sacredness, our belovedness. It can obscure it. It can interrupt it. It can get in the way of it. But our sin does not get the last word. God does. And God has already named and claimed us as God’s own. In the words of Isaiah:

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you, you are mine....Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth. Bring everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and whom I made.” 

Bring everyone.

Isaiah and Jesus go to great lengths to remind us that we are all God’s children, each and everyone beloved, be we brimming and bright or bruised and broken. I think this message is at the heart of Jesus desire to be baptized and his desire that we baptize one another.

I think he wants us all to know that the sins that separate us from God are not permanent. There is nothing we could do that is so bad that it can’t be washed or winnowed, blown or burned away. But God’s love for us is permanent and nothin can shake it.

So when we are baptized here in the church, yes there is the symbolism of dying and rising, the symbolism of washing away sin and standing refreshed and clean in the light of God, but there is also a sense in which baptism is not so much an act that accomplishes something, as it is an opportunity for us to acknowledge something that is already and always true. 

In church circles we say that baptism, like all sacraments, is an outward sign of inward grace.  It’s a nice turn of phrase that simply means that from the moment you were born you were a beloved child of God. 

Baptism doesn’t make that happen.  Baptism doesn’t make that official.  Baptism doesn’t change that by somehow kicking it up a notch, because the truth is, nothing on earth can change that, not even you.

Baptism simply affirms for us what God already knows… and longs for you to know as well: that you are God’s child, that you are God’s beloved, and that with you and you and you, God is well pleased.

Which is why, on this day when we remember and celebrate Jesus’ baptism and Jesus’ belovedness, it is common in churches to remember and celebrate our own.  Today I want to invite you to renew your baptism vows - vows you may have said in some form as an adult or vows that may have been spoken over you when you were just a child- and then you are all invited to come forward to be blessed.

If you have never been baptized, but want to follow Jesus and be baptized someday, you can still come forward. I pray that this water would be a sign to you on your journey and we can speak to one another soon.  If you are not a believer, you can still come forward and I pray that this water would be a sign to you that you are loved by God already and always.

Listen closely now, and if it feels right, all you need to do is respond: “we do.” Friends, in the waters of Baptism, you were made new, born again in the spirit, forgiven of sin, saved from death, and given new life in Christ.  In the waters of baptism, you were named and claimed as beloved, a precious child of God, beautiful to behold. And so today, in honor of Christ’s baptism, I would ask: do you promise, by the grace of God, to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ, to follow in his way, to do justice, practice kindness, and walk humbly with God? If so please say: “We do.”

Then receive this gift freely.

These are the waters of baptism….

Out of this water we rise with new life,

forgiven and free, one in Christ, members of Christ’s body,

beloved children with whom God is well pleased.

You may come forward, just like we do for communion, to be blessed. And if you didn’t get a star last week, please take one from this basket on the altar before you go back to you seat.

God bless you…Name…beloved child of God.

Know that with you, God is well pleased.