This week, the first week of the Season of Epiphany, we celebrate the Feast of Our Lord’s Baptism and hear how, when Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordon, he was fully revealed as God’s beloved Son. It is not just the full revelation of his identity to the world, but it is the revelation of God as it’s one of the only accounts in which all three persons of the Trinity are present and manifest to Creation simultaneously.

We keep this celebration at the end of a week which has seen a riot of insurrection at the United States Capital in Washington DC on the actual date of the Feast of the Epiphany. The people attacking the Capital Building didn’t just bring weapons and tools of violence, they carried religious symbols as well, particularly flags with the name of Jesus and Crosses. It’s the conflation of the cross and violence, made manifest many times in American History that I find so troubling – because it tells a lie about who Jesus is and what it means to be a Christian.