Good News For A Fractured World

Cold water can wake you up, but grace wakes you for good. We start with a laugh about polar plunges and cinnamon-roll fishing, then wade into why Jesus’ baptism still matters when the world feels torn down the middle. I share what baptism means in our tradition—cleansing, commitment, initiation into community, and the public celebration of God’s unearned grace—and ask a harder question: what does it mean to take those vows in a culture pulled apart by outrage, algorithms, and fear?

Together we look at Jesus stepping into the water as God’s choice to be fully with us. That nearness changes everything. If God sees our shadow side and still beholds creation as a beloved community, then discipleship becomes training our eyes to notice abundance where fracture screams for our attention. I draw on voices like Richard Rohr and Diana Butler Bass to frame a practice of epiphany: stay alert to signs of mercy, follow the “stars” who point toward peace, and refuse to be discipled by division.

This conversation gets practical. I invite you to join me in a simple daily rhythm with the Center for Action and Contemplation’s devotion, “Good News for a Fractured World.” It’s a way to ground our attention, strengthen hopeful habits, and live our baptism in public—speaking gently, listening bravely, choosing repair over victory. If you’re longing for a faith that meets the moment with courage and tenderness, this one’s for you.

Subscribe, share with a friend who needs hope today, and leave a review to help others find the show. What star are you choosing to follow this year?

Transcript

Ice Baths And Baptism Humor

Pastor Darren 0:00

You know, I was over here thinking about the fishing for men or fishing for people. I kind of feel like if we were to get ourselves a little rod with some fishing line, and we were to put some cinnamon rolls on the end of that thing, I think we might be more successful than we're thinking, you know. We might catch some is what I'm saying. So uh we are in the season. The season of the polar plunge. Has anybody uh ventured into this polar plunge thing where uh you go and you find, well, hopefully the coldest body of water you are near, and you initiate the new year by jumping into this body of water. Anyone given that a go yet?

unknown 0:58

Yeah.

Pastor Darren 0:58

Yeah? Oh yeah, Dr. B has. Where? In the fjords? Yeah, how was it?

unknown 1:06

Brutally cold.

Pastor Darren 1:09

Were you born anew?

unknown 1:12

As fast as I could.

What Baptism Means

Why Jesus Is Baptized

Entering A Fractured World

Seeing With God’s Eyes

Following Signs And Stars

A Devotional For Hope

Pastor Darren 1:15

I got the heck out of there, is what I'm hearing. Yeah. Well, I mean, because that's sort of the the thought, right? Is that that there it's just sort of just such an invigoration and that people feel like, oh, they've been reawakened. And some people even say the body reacts well to it. Um I don't believe them. But they say that. And you've done it twice. Uh all right. What what's the uh what was Einstein's thing, doing the same thing over and expecting different results, that was it, right? Uh you know, it so the way my mind kind of works just a little bit, because some of our Methodist materials were talking about the polar plunge and relating it to baptism. And I just I get this image of John the Baptist in you know some Lake Michigan or something in January 1st, and he's rushing people through these baptisms because he's freezing in the water, and then she gets into some conversation with Jesus about whether or not this should really happen or not. And he's like, let's just do this. I gotta get out of the see, now you're you're in my mind now. I'm sorry. But as I tell my bosses, all the walls are padded, so you should be just fine in there. But it to me, it it it it is an interesting introduction to this Sunday on the Christian calendar. It's uh the baptism of Christ Sunday. And for us as as Christians, it's often a reaffirmation of our faith or an opportunity to reaffirm our faith by thinking about our baptism, right? What did what does that really mean? And and are we living up to what it is and a full understanding? Is there opportunity for some reawakening of our faith uh that is available to us because of the way the uh calendar runs? Um so just talking again about baptism itself and some of the different belief systems around it, Katie was giving us some of that. Uh there's definitely in baptism this sense of a cleansing, right? It it's it's it's sort of obvious, it's in some of the language in our scriptures, but you you bring in water, and then cleansing is not too far behind, right? So that part of the image and the understanding is pretty easy to come to. We've also got this sense of a commitment made to God, right? That's part of what baptism is as well. I'm going to make this commitment and I'm going to show God that I am part of this body. I want to be part of this body. We have with infant baptism a little bit of a nuance here. It's more of an understanding of, I'll call it the light word I would use would be an initiation. You know, that this is an official, we are moving into the body because of that commitment. And I say initiation as a light word. I think our Catholic brothers and sisters would say it's a little more substantial than that. But then I think another way for baptism to be understood, we United Methodists, probably the most important part is that that reality of grace as our core belief, that God's unending love for us in grace is what we're celebrating. And so because we're doing it that way, it's important that we are in a public place so that we can, all of us who witness that baptism, be able to make a commitment to it, not just our own baptism in reaffirmation, but the baptism of somebody else so that they can know God's grace because of the way we act, the way we behave. They're going to know God because I share God's love. All of those are components of baptism. But they do pose the question, each and every one of them, of so why is Jesus getting baptized? As we understand and know him, he's got all those bases covered. In fact, part of why we get baptized is that we might move into a sense of being known by him, sharing body with Christ. Where we land often when we talk about Christ's baptism is about the importance of Jesus' willingness to be amongst us. That willingness to come and be human and to know what that is, to know the highs, to know the lows, to know the realities of what our life is, that this is a core belief of we Christians that the God that we worship loves us with such a depth that that God sent God's Son to be amongst us, that we might know that He knows, that God knows what it's like to be a human being in this world, what it's like to feel hurt, what it's like to feel lost, what it's like to feel joy, what it's like to know love. That's a unique uh approach, especially given these the many of our scriptures are 2,000 years old. This idea that our God is somebody that loves us and loves us with such a depth that that was, I imagine, a lot of why people were drawn to it, a lot of why it resonated with people, a lot of why people uh felt this was truly how God was, and the God that they wanted to know. I like this idea personally too that we don't have a God that comes to rule the world and rule over us, but in fact wants us to flourish, wants us to grow amidst all of that has been offered to us in creation and in God's love. We can take comfort, we can take confidence that Jesus amidst all of this would know all the joys, all the pains, all the celebrations, and that we can know that he knows that, that God knows that. It's a big part of why we celebrate on this day of Jesus' baptism, maybe even why we uh uh um raise it to the heights that we raise it. It is the day that we celebrate God coming to earth and the love that's innate in the midst of that. But it does bring to me kind of a concern about our world. You know, as we enter into a new year and we're starting to think about, okay, what's this year going to be about? My being the pastor here, I kind of extend that to think, okay, what's this year going to be about for this church? And so it highlights this concern for me, this moment in which we're celebrating that Jesus is sharing that depth of love, getting baptized amongst us. What is this world that we are getting baptized into? I think about the world and how we've created it, how we've established it. And when I say we, we should acknowledge, I'm talking about uh in worldly sense, the United States. You know, we are a big influence on the rest of the world. When I say we, I'm talking about the Christian body. We are again a high influence on the world and have been for centuries. We have had as much influence on the movement of the world as any other religion. So when I talk about this world that we've created, that we've established, I'm talking about we as in we, it's us that have made this world. And this world that we are in the midst of, to me, is in a really strong place of fracturing. We are broken up and at odds with each other in ways that, well, you know, I'm 32 and I haven't seen this in my life. Low these 32 years. No, I mean you guys all know. 58 years. So some of you are like, oh, you're just a kid. Others of you are oh, you might as well cash it in. I know who's out here. I'm gonna count it as enough years to be able to go, holy, you know, this seems like a fractured time. This seems like a difficult time. It's hard not to go into these existential concerns about our nation, about the world. We are so fractured. We're fractured politically, almost on purpose. We are split at least in halves, but I bet you it's even more layers than that. And those fractures are strong. You know, we are not living in grace with each other. We are not living in disagreement, especially politically. I think the the technological world hasn't helped any of this either. This place where we can kind of live in a certain amount of anonymity, but also this world where we get sent the stuff we already agree with. Right? It it's it's problematic and it's enhancing this fracturing that I feel like the world is going through. And that's I get concerned. We baptized into this world. Well, shoot, how does God feel about that? I think about the fracturing of our churches. It's not just the non-Christians that are wrestling, it's the Christian world that are wrestling with each other with disagreement and not loving disagreement, not gracious disagreement, but strong disagreement. We walk that journey in this very church ourselves. And families. Maybe it's your family that is suffering some of that fracturing, or maybe you just know about some other families that are living through that, but the fracturing is all the way at that intimate, intimate level. And I have a concern about that. My heart is reaching out to uh um what lay in our future. I wonder if bapt the baptism of Christ, at being often a time to remember our own baptism, maybe even reaffirm our own baptism, we might ask ourselves, what does it mean to be baptized into this world, a world that is at odds with itself often? If we're to embrace this entering into the body of Christ, what does that look like amidst the fracturing that we've established in this world? I think I think our world in this passage comes with an invitation. This passage in which we see Jesus uh uh accept a role of being human and to model it for the rest of us, a model of the depth of God's love for us. I think that passage is also this invitation. It's an invitation for us to look at this world in the way God sees the world. I imagine that the age of Jesus' walking this earth was met with its own fracturing. So when Jesus got baptized, I imagine there were still some of these concerns, and yet God was willing to look to this world with godly eyes and send Jesus anyway. What does that mean to look at the world with godly eyes? Well, for sure, God sees the shadow sides of our world. Right? Richard Rohr, he says it fairly well in a daily devotion that I am working with. He writes, certainly God sees sin, sorrow, the shame, the pity, the terror, the sheer horror of it all, the pathos of the world. God does see our dark side, our shadow side, but also God also sees beyond the world. God is able to see the world as it truly is, as God intended for it to be created. Richard Rohr writes again, God sees beyond through and past the covering of the fig leaves, little Adam and Eve. Metaphor there. He sees past the fig leaves to our real selves. God sees creation without deceit. God beholds the world as it really is, a beloved community, a feast of abundance sparkling in the light and glory of love. I'm gonna say that part again. God sees the world, beholds the world as it really is, a beloved community, a feast of abundance, sparkling in the light and the glory of love. I wonder how good we are at looking with those godly eyes and looking for that godly presence, that godly reality of our existence. We're invited to live into that way of seeing. Richard Roorigan, and God invites us to see that goodness also with our own eyes, to see differently, looking beyond, under, through, and past the shadows. As we walk our days, how committed are we to seeing the world in this way? How willing are we to train ourselves to look for these parts of our world? There are visionaries among us, prophets, saints, heroes, people who describe and point us to the world that we can be, to the world that we are. But often it takes our commitment to see the world in that way, our commitment to following those visionaries, to listening to those visionaries, to be the magi who have their epiphany at the birth of Christ because they followed the star. Diana Butler Bass, Christian historian, also speaks to this following, which this sermon automatically became Nancy's favorite, because I did Richard Rohr and Diana Butler Bass. Am I right? All right. These are the ones we share. She writes, the wise men awaited a sign in the sky, a star to guide them on this journey. Revelations break in, signs appear in dreams, light shines forth, and glory hovers all around. Such things are from the realms of miracle, awe and wonder. They surprise and disrupt the normal course of existence. Epiphanies are not of our making. But it would be a mistake to believe that we are only passive recipients of Epiphanies. We need to be alert for their arrival. Revelations can be missed if one isn't attentive or attuned to the possibilities of sacred surprise. We need to be like those magi looking for and following those stars that lead us to that blessed part of our existence. Maybe a reaffirmation of our baptism should include this commitment to seeing the world as God sees it, as Jesus saw it and taught us how to see it. I imagine any one of us could name someone or some source that brings that wisdom to us, that helps us see the world differently, that balances ourselves and our lives, not through the lens of this fracturing with its quest for power, with its quest for money, with its quest for material things, driving anxiety amongst us, pitting us against each other, fracturing our community. The question is how much space are we giving to this other wisdom in our lives? The star that's been placed in our lives, are we following it? Are we even looking for it? Today, second Sunday of twenty twenty six, I bring to you an invitation. There is a star that I do my best to follow, wisdom that has nourished me, and it's in a daily devotion from the Center for Action and Contemplation. You've heard me quote Father Richard Rohr before, even today, and he has authored this devotion for years now, and I'm blessed for the daily centering that it offers me. And it's with real appreciation and enthusiasm, maybe even excitement, that I read that their theme for this year is good news for a fractured world. Good news for a fractured world. If you're like me, you are anxious for just such good news. You are anxious for that word. My invitation is I want you to join me in reading this devotion each day. Following this star, largely because of theme. I believe it's something that our society, our church, needs to embrace. We need to get a hold of ourselves and our view of the world. It's such a critical time, but also because we need to be people focused on God amidst all this other clatter. With the hope that we can be part of God's reign. God's reign in this world, because it is a reign of hope, it is a reign of justice, it is a reign of healing, of peace. It is a reign, in a word, of love. You poor people. You uh because I get to be the one that talks every week. You guys get subjected to the directions I feel like God is calling me, and then I push it on to you. But maybe, just maybe, God isn't just calling me. Amen.