Sermon transcript:
One of the unique challenges of our time is telling the real from the fake. Artificial Intelligence (ai) is making this increasingly difficult. Recently I read about Yanis Varoufakis, a former Greek politician and commentator for the Guardian newspaper. He begins the story of his experience with ai deep fakes this way: “It all started with a message from an esteemed colleague congratulating me on a video talk on some geopolitical theme. When I clicked on the attached YouTube link to recall what I had said, I began to worry that my memory is not what it used to be. When did I record said video?” He hadn’t recorded the video: using ai, someone had taken his image and his voice to make a video to bolster their own views on a political issue.1
It’s not just famous people. I’m hearing how scammers are taking voices from uploaded videos to social media sites and manipulating them to contact the families of these people saying they are in some kind of danger and need money immediately. It’s getting harder and harder to know that people are who they say they are. It’s a predicament that scholars believe leads to Jesus’ baptism story, a story to confirm his identity2 as the long-awaited Messiah of the Jewish people.3 This begs the question, why was there a need for Matthew’s community to prove Jesus’ identity and to whom?
The consensus among people who study these things is that Matthew’s gospel is written sometime shortly after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by Roman forces while brutally quelling a Jewish rebellion. The temple had been the centre of Jewish worship, literally believed to be the dwelling place of God on earth. There was great fear among Jewish leadership that with the destruction of the temple, Judaism itself faced possible extinction. In the face of this perceived threat, tolerance for diversity of belief within Judaism shrank drastically. If Judaism were to survive, the thinking went, it had to be unified in belief; it could not be fragmented.4 Without the temple, belief gained greater importance as the basis of Jewish unity. Matthew’s community, who were Jewish followers of Jesus, a sect of Judaism, were now perceived as a threat to Judaism’s survival. The baptism story and much of Matthew’s gospel is believed to be a response to this tension: Matthew felt a tremendous burden of proof to show that Jesus was part of the Jewish story, the long-awaited Messiah.
In recent years, there has been a shift in how some people within the United Church of Canada and some other denominations view Jesus. It used to be the case there was a consensus that Jesus’ uniqueness sprang from his divinity, the one and only literal son of God. Now there is another school of thought, one that I find life-giving and faithful. Namely, that Jesus’ uniqueness comes from his willingness to embrace totally and completely what God intends every person to be. The implications of this belief are profound: no longer is Jesus simply an object of worship; he is the hope for what all of us can be. Incarnation is possible in all of us: “We are all beloved children of God, in whom God is well pleased.” This blessing, as the basis for our identities, has tremendous potential to open new possibilities for us because all of us at various points struggle with questions of identity.
And quite often these struggles come because our identity questions are tied to our sense of worth and value. Often, we say that we are what we do, we are what others say about us, and we are what we have, or in other words: “We are our success, we are our popularity, we are our power.”5 It’s a burdensome way to live, though, isn’t it?
What if we took that blessing that Matthew has God give Jesus and give it to ourselves and one another? Do that, give yourself the blessing: “I, (blank), am a beloved child of God, in whom God is well pleased.” Now do that for some people you know, insert their name in the blessing: “(Blank), you are a beloved son/daughter of God in whom God is well pleased.” Now do that for someone you don’t particularly like. Wow! What if we actually lived from that belief? What if we held out that blessing as humanity’s core identity? What difference might that make in our lives and our world? What if we lived as if our identity was already secure and we had nothing to prove?
I want you to note that this blessing comes at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, not the end. This recognition of Jesus as God’s beloved child is not the result of anything he has done; rather, it becomes the pre-requisite for everything he will do. What the life of Jesus shows us is when you feel secure that you are a beloved child of God, when Christians hold up their baptism as their core identity, you have nothing to prove in this life, and you can live life simply from a sense of gratitude. Your life is lived as a response to a gift, or, as we say, grace. Because you have been so blessed, you want to share the joy and the bounty of your life.
Not only that; you want to share also because you recognize that those around you are also children of God. You are part of the community of the beloved. This realization becomes the reason for and the source of your empathy. You share a common heritage and lineage with the international student from India and the person asking for change at the highway off-ramp. This empathy becomes the basis for community; we realize that we are all connected to each other and to the Source of all that is. Therefore, no one can be written off or discarded, no life can be taken lightly. Others will no longer be obstacles to overcome or objects to use but rather companions on the journey that reveal to us the diversity of God’s creation.
Beloved child of God — it’s not an identity you can fake. Here is a great paradoxical truth: the moment we claim our identity as God’s children and stop identifying ourselves by our success, popularity, and power, our lives actually take on more significance. We are no longer centred on our egos and building ourselves up in competition with others, but are centred on forming loving, respectful relationships and being of service to others. When our doing flows from this place of being we become agents of God’s love, peace, and justice. You can’t fake that; no one can take that identity from you. This is grace and gift. Thanks be to God.
Rev. Joe Gaspar
1 Yanis Varoufakis, I’m watching myself on YouTube saying things I would never say. This is the deepfake menace we must confront, The Guardian, January 5, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/05/deepfakes-youtube-menace-yanis-varoufakis
2 William Loader, First Thoughts on Year A Gospel Passages from the Lectionary; Baptism of Jesus, http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtBaptismJesus.htm
3 Matthew 3: 11-12
4 Robert A. Spivey & D. Moody Smith, Anatomy of the New Testament, p. 98.
5 Henri Nouwen, Source Unknown.