Why did Jesus need to be baptised?
It's a tricky question, isn't it? And it's perplexed theologians for centuries. It's clear in our gospel reading. It certainly puzzled John the Baptist himself. Amongst the many things that baptism is about, the church has always taught that being baptised involves forgiveness of our sins. In fact, it seems to be the reason why large numbers of people were going out to John the Baptist to be baptised as a sign of repentance.
So why did Jesus need to be baptised if he was without sin? Surely it would not be necessary. Well, one of the things we have to remember is that the baptism we receive as Christians is not the same as that which people received at the hands of John.
The baptism of John was a very important symbolic washing. But it was only that, an outward ritual. At the time of Jesus, many strands of Jewish religious practice involved ritual washings and baptisms as a sign of purity, personal examination, and spiritual preparedness.
So Jesus probably underwent John's baptism as a public declaration of preparation for the ministry that he was about to enter into. A symbol of humility, readiness, and obedience.
But the difference between those baptisms of John and ours is that you could experience the various washing rituals of the Jewish faith repeatedly many times. I have called you by name you are mine or as God says to Jesus Thou Art my beloved Son with thee I am well pleased in St Luke's gospel Jesus is baptised by John that is the historical fact in all the gospels but behind the fact of the story we are invited by Luke to see a change a transition from the prophetic Ministry of John the Baptist to the Messianic Ministry of Jesus but this is a change which we see not only in history but in our lives the world is changed God's intervention becomes clearer.
What this story of the baptism of Christ reveals to us is a work of love the Revelation to us of a way of Love which we can follow too this is my beloved Son with thee I am well pleased and the word for I am well pleased implies affection and Delight as well as choosing for you and for me this is not so much a conversion as an awakening to reality to the kingdom to what is eternal.
Christian baptism, however, can only be received once. So what do we believe happens when we are baptised as Christians? Well, one of the most important things is that our sins are forgiven. But unlike John's baptism, which was merely an outward sign, the external washing of Christian baptism actually brings about the thing that it signifies.
The physical water we are washed in cleanses our inner lives from sin by the power of the Holy Spirit. All of us when we come to Christ are aware of things that we have done which we shouldn't have. There will be specific actions we can remember, things we said and wished we hadn't, relationships we've neglected or harmed through our own actions.
But there are also those regular deep seated parts of our character which call us cause us to fail time and time again which we can't seem to overcome envy of others, ambition or greed. Those things we seem to share with the whole human family and which lie at the heart of the world's greatest heartbreak and trauma.
A sort of built in sinfulness, if you like, that's part of our condition that we can't seem to get away from. the kind of thing that the Christian tradition has called original sin. A sense of alienation from God and a conviction that all is not quite right with us when left to our own devices.
Well, when we come to Christ for baptism and place our trust in him, all those things which we can't overcome by our own strength are forgiven by Christ as a result of his saving death. We die with him in order to be reborn into a new life. Christ takes away all the things which separate us from him and he restores a new relationship within us so that we can grow in his image.
But something more happens in baptism and that is that it joins us to Christ through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Baptism makes us part of Christ's mystical body. We become the brothers and sisters of every Christian who has ever lived. We are linked through a wonderful communion with those who rejoice already in heaven.
We are no longer citizens of this world, but citizens of the kingdom of heaven. As members of the body of Christ, we become part of the church. The church not understood as a collection of buildings or an institution, but as a living entity enlivened by God's Holy Spirit, a pilgrim people making God's love present in the world, which worships and serves, helping the human family to be reconciled to God.
The most important thing to remember is that baptism is about what God does for us. It's not about any worthiness or strength of our own that we bring. It is about God reaching out and saving us, strengthening us on our journey of faith and grafting us into Christ so that we can know him better and grow in grace.
And that I think is something that every one of us today can give thanks for. We know by our own strong egoism what we want or do we consciously see seek our destiny beyond ourselves in God and if we decide on the latter as Jesus did then we must start to learn to follow a way of life his way of life which was one of sacrifice it's the only way to escape a life of self fixation and a dominant ego our challenge is not to reject the world not to reject ourselves but to learn to sacrifice offering all to
God and this self transcendence for that is what it is arises we shall discover from the cycle of the death and resurrection of Jesus in which we share and so we die to fear and rise to the joy of life.
