Service Sunday January 11, 2026
HIGHLAND HILLS UNITED CHURCH
Minden, Ontario
All are Welcome!
Baptism of the Lord
Worship Leader: Rev. Max Ward
Music Director: Melissa Stephens
watch a video recording of the whole service using YouTube below.
(For a Printer Friendly PDF version click this link)
The Gathering
WELCOME & ANNOUNCEMENTS:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF LAND:
We respectfully acknowledge that we are participating in this worship on the traditional territories of many different indigenous peoples. With gratitude to all of our First Nations, Metis, Inuit and all First Peoples across Canada, may we remember that we are not separate from the earth which sustains us. We respect the history, languages and cultures of the first peoples of Treaty 20, whose traditional territories we now share. We are grateful and open to the wisdom of the Elders and the teachings of those who are Two Spirit. May their wisdom inspire our actions in today’s world. May we be intentional in our journey to act as we can on the Calls to Action available to us from the Truth and Reconciliation Report.
THE APPROACH
CALL TO WORSHIP:
One: God calls you to ministry in the world.
ALL: We are truly thankful.
One: God calls you beloved, God’s own children.
ALL: We are truly thankful.
One: God calls you to worship here with your siblings in faith.
ALL: We are truly thankful.
One: In gratitude, let us worship.
Written by Robin Wardlaw, Toronto, Ont.
Gathering, Pentecost 2 2025, p.39. Used with permission
HYMN: “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry” VU #644
1 I was there to hear your borning cry,
I'll be there when you are old.
I rejoiced the day you were baptized,
to see your life unfold.
2 I was there when you were but a child,
with a faith to suit you well;
in a blaze of light you wandered off
to find where demons dwell.
3 When you heard the wonder of the word,
I was there to cheer you on;
you were raised to praise the living Lord,
to whom you now belong.
4 If you find someone to share your time
and you join your hearts as one,
I'll be there to make your verses rhyme
from dusk till rising sun.
5 In the middle ages of your life,
not too old, no longer young.
I'll be there to guide you through the night,
complete what I've begun.
6 When the evening gently closes in
and you shut your weary eyes,
I'll be there as I have always been
with just one more surprise.
7 I was there to hear your borning cry,
I'll be there when you are old.
I rejoiced the day you were baptized,
to see your life unfold.
OPENING PRAYER: Spoken in Unison
Come to the edge of the sea, the barrier between you and a new life, and pray for a path to freedom. Turn barriers into highways, Holy One! Come to the edge of a river, the obstacle between you and security in a new way of living. Turn obstacles into footpaths, Rock of Ages! Come to this time of worship and its challenge of meaning and belonging. Turn us into a people of the journey, taking the path, the highway to daring love. Amen
Written by Robin Wardlaw, Toronto, Ont.
Gathering, Pentecost 2 2025, p.39. Used with permission
MINISTRY OF MUSIC
THE WORD
Scripture: Matthew 3:13-17
Leader: Hear and listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church.
ALL: Thanks be to God.
MESSAGE:
“The Baptism of Jesus”
Listen to an audio recording of the message below or read it at the bottom of this page.
OUR RESPONSE
NEW HYMN: When the Wind of Winter Blows” MV #71
1. When the wind of winter blows,
bringing times of solitude,
fill the silent icy night;
be our hearts’ compassion.
Refrain:
Holy Light, warm our night;
warm the time of winter.
Holy Light, warm our night;
warm the time of winter.
2. When we shiver in despair,
when the chill of death comes near,
hold us, Spirit, calm our fear,
while the evening deepens. Refrain:
3. When in days of fallen snow,
change confounds or love burns low,
from the ashes may there rise
phoenix of our growing. Refrain:
Candle Lighting Liturgy
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE and
THE LORD’S PRAYER: spoken VU#921
HYMN: “When Jesus Comes to Be Baptized” VU #100
1 When Jesus comes to be baptized,
he leaves the hidden years behind,
the years of safety and of peace,
to bear the sins of humankind.
2 The Spirit of the Lord comes down,
anoints the Christ to suffering,
to preach the word, to free the bound,
and to the mourner, comfort bring.
3 He will not quench the dying flame,
and what is bruised he will not break,
but heal the wound injustice dealt,
and out of death his triumph make.
4 O Spirit help us be like Christ:
to live in love and charity,
to walk in truth and justice now,
and grow in Christian dignity.
5 We praise you, God, source of all life,
we praise you, Christ, eternal Word,
we praise you, Spirit, gracious gift;
your triune presence fills our world.
PRESENTATION OF OUR OFFERINGS
OFFERTORY PRAYER: In Unison
Mysterious, Calling God, you reach out to us and call us to use the gifts we have been given, as your beloved children, for the good of others and as blessing in this world. We are called to love others: with acts of kindness, with time spent together, with acts of generosity, with listening and welcoming spirits. We are called to love others, not considering whether we like them or not. We are called to do this because you are love, O God. Help us to be one of your expressions of love in the world. Amen.
Written by Beth W Johnston, Bridging Waters, P.C., Nipawin, Sask.
Gathering, Pentecost 2 2025, p.41. Used with permission
SUNG BLESSING: (VU #87 vs 3)
Refrain 'I am the light of the world!
You people come and follow me!'
If you follow and love you'll learn the mystery
of what you were meant to do and be.
3 To free the prisoner from all chains,
to make the powerful care,
to rebuild the nations with strength of good will,
to see God's children everywhere! Refrain ©
SENDING FORTH:
A Time of Fellowship
© Music Reproduced with permission under License number A-605748, Valid for: 26/10/2025 - 25/10/2026; One License - Copyright Cleared Music for Churches.
Sermon 11 January 2026
“The Baptism of Jesus”
Matthew 3:13-17
Gracious God, be with us today in this place, in the Scriptures and in our words.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts praise your Holy name. Amen.
John the Baptist came fulfilling the prophetic witness, he was ‘one in the wilderness.’
He came bringing ritual, a baptism of repentance.
John’s baptism is a challenge to the ingrained sacrificial system of the Temple and its ideology of sacrifice.
For with John’s baptism, apart from Temple and sacrifice, one could turn to God and be accepted.
The only requisite was that one ‘change one’s way of thinking’ and submit to the waters.
In each of the four gospels Jesus’ baptism stands at the head of his story.
Why? Why is Jesus baptized and what makes this baptism so important?
Was this not a baptism of repentance?
From what did Jesus need to repent?
Wasn’t Jesus sinless?
To err is human, right?
Right from the start in all four gospels we are faced with a major stumbling block.
We all tend to get caught up on the word SIN when we talk about baptism.
Most of us were baptized as infants or small children.
That is our tradition in the United Church.
Baptism is a form of welcoming and acceptance.
This welcoming and acceptance is initially extended primarily to the parents of the youngster as well as the child.
Therefore, especially with little babies, it is really hard for me to even imagine that baptism has anything to do with SIN while looking into the eyes of an innocent child.
How do we practice the movements of baptism?
From the early church to the most contemporary scholars, the two part movement of Jesus’ baptism has been noted.
He goes under the water and when he comes up the Spirit of Holiness descends upon him.
This two part movement is so important it carries right through into the Christian ritual of baptism.
At the beginning of all things new there is a going under and a coming up, or as Paul would say, “a dying and a rising.”
This is most evident in total immersion baptism.
Something dies in baptism.
That something is not just ‘us’ in the abstract, it is how we think and perceive of God, ourselves, others and the creation.
It is the death of ‘deathly thinking’,
death dealing thinking, the thought processes of the logic of sacrifice.
In baptism, the primordial waters of chaos swallow up our chaos, our chaotic ways of conceptualizing and from those waters we rise, new, cleansed, whole, with an entirely new vision of God:
God present to us as our Father or Daddy.
In short, baptism doesn’t cleanse us from sins in some abstract mechanical manner, it washes away the filth and infection of our distorted theologies.
The waters of baptism are the end of sacrificial thinking and action and the beginning of a new way of relating, as a child to a nurturing parent.
So Jesus submits to this baptism of John’s pointing the way, his way out of the sacrificial process.
It is in these waters that Jesus will drop any last vestige of his perception of God as one who authorizes force, violence and power to dominate.
It is from these waters that the right of sonship/daughtership is established.
In these waters, the old passes away and the new comes.
Some in the ancient church thus could refer to baptism as ‘the tomb and the womb’, the death of death and the birth of life.
In these waters, part of John’s theology will also die.
John the Baptist still seeks an ancient deliverer full of power and might, riding a powerful steed, coming with wrath and vengeance.
We know this from the articulation of the apocalyptic side of John’s message and later from his puzzlement:
Was Jesus the One who was to come or should John pin his hopes on another?
So from John’s side too, there is a clear death, the death of his vision, his way of seeing things, his way of perceiving how God acts.
And later what is Jesus’ message?
That his Father heals, binds up wounds, sets captives free and opens the eyes of the blind, yes, even the spiritually blind.
This is the Father of the baptism, the lover of the beloved.
This theology carries through the entirety of Luke’s gospel too.
Note again that John offered a ‘baptism of repentance.’
It is not a baptism for a change in the way we behave first, it is first a change in our way of thinking.
Why is this so?
Because as Einstein reminded us “everything has changed but our way of thinking.”
If we think of baptism as the forgiveness of our individual sins we prove to ourselves that we are still mired in the self-centered self, or as Luther would say, “the heart turned in on itself.”
As long as we think of salvation and baptism as primarily individual,
As long as we continue to concern ourselves with how “I shall get to heaven”, we have yet to undergo the baptism that Jesus underwent.
To change our way of thinking, to repent, is to return to the Lord.
A return, a coming back to the land, the earth and thus the maker of heaven and earth.
It is a submission to the waters of creation and recreation.
To change our way of thinking as Jesus acknowledged we must do, it is incumbent upon us to go into these waters ourselves and to let go of all we hold near and dear in our outdated doctrines, dogmas, rituals and theologies.
If we do this, we will find that upon rising from these waters that the only thing we need we already have, the Love of the Father, the maker of all life, the maker of water.
Upon rising, we can share these gifts of life and love; refreshed and renewed once again.
Thanks be to God.
