The Baptism of Christ

9th January 2005

Matthew 3.13-17

The Bible readings for second Sunday of the new year always tell the story of the baptism of Jesus by his relative John the Baptist.
John the Baptist has always been one of my favourite characters from the New Testament. Matthew tells us earlier on in his Gospel that
"John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins."
When I was a young man I was one of nature’s scruffy people and John's wild clothing and wild life style had a very strong appeal for me. It seemed to exemplify a special sort of freedom and of course that is exactly what John was all about. John's message was a call to freedom.
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In the Gospel according to St Mark we read that John proclaimed "a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins". In other words that John was teaching people to come and be washed in the river Jordan as a sign that they would give up and turn away from the things in their lives which were not right. Josephus, who was a Jewish historian who was born around the time that Jesus died on the cross, tells us a little about John the Baptist. He makes it clear that the baptism John administered was symbolic. That what he was really calling for was a change of heart, and that the rite of baptism itself was an enacting by an outward washing of the washing of the heart which had already been achieved by repentance.
This means that baptism as practiced by John is different from Christian baptism. We know that the early Christians did not view baptism by John as being the same as being baptised as a Christian. In the book of the Acts of the Apostles we find at least two occasions when followers of Jesus come across people who have been baptised by John and tell them that, although John’s baptism is good, it is not the same as Christian baptism and that they need to be baptised again in the name of Jesus.
The difference between John’s baptism and Christian baptism seems to have been that John’s baptism was a sign of something that the person being baptised had done. They had repented, they had turned away from their sins and now they being washed outwardly to show that they were now inwardly clean.
Christian baptism, on the other hand, is nothing to do with what we have done. It is a sacrament, a sign of something God has done. There is a sense in which John had a much more optimistic view of human nature than Christianity does. John suggests that a human being can decide to turn around and can do it, can in effect save themselves. Christians would maintain that human beings can only turn around with God’s help. That they cannot save themselves but that they need a saviour.
This is why, as Christians, we baptise infants who are too young even to realise what is going on. If our view of baptism was that of John the Baptist then baptising a baby would make no sense at all. Firstly, the baby would not be able to come to a rational decision to turn around and change its life, and secondly, most of us would, I think, find it very hard to see what that baby would need to be turning away from – that at just a few weeks old it would not yet have had the opportunity to commit any sins to repent off.
But Christians don’t see baptism in the way that John did. For Christians baptism is about being incorporated into God’s people, becoming part of a community, the world wide community of God’s people which we call the Church.
So Christian baptism and John’s baptism are not the same things, and that leaves us then with one big question. Why was Jesus baptised by John? Christians maintain that Jesus alone lived a perfect life in which there was no sin or wrongdoing from which he needed to turn away. That Jesus alone had no need of repentance. So why did he seek John’s baptism? This seems to have been a question which was on Matthews mind when he wrote the passage we read as our gospel reading today. He tells us that John tries to stop Jesus from being baptised and says to him, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus reply is, ““Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”
I don’t claim to understand exactly what that enigmatic reply means but I think it means that Jesus was doing it out of obedience to God. That it was God’s will for him to identify himself in this way with those who did need to repent. So it is that as Jesus submits himself to be baptized by John, as he identifies himself with human beings who need to turn back to God, God proclaims his delight in Jesus “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
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I’ve said that John’s baptism and Christian baptism are not the same thing, and they are not but there is a connection between them. In being baptized by John Jesus was identifying with humanity, he was in a sense joining himself with us. In our baptism we are joined with Jesus. When we are baptized God says to each one of us “You are my child, whom I love and with whom I am well pleased.” Baptism is a sign of our acceptance by God. I believe in the practice of infant baptism but in many ways I count myself fortunate that I was baptized as an adult. I remember the service and it was a significant time for me. For those who have been baptized as infants it can seem a distant event rather disconnected from any present faith you might have, but it is not. Your baptism is sign that God has loved you accepted you from the moment of your conception and that he has been at work in your life from long before you knew. Value your baptism and celebrate it for by it God says to you, “You are my child, whom I love and with whom I am well pleased.”