Baptisms are all about beginning. In the Catholic tradition baptism became associated with babies – so a beginning of life in many senses. That was not always so. The earliest accounts of church life are completely focused on adults, and baptism had nothing to do with the start of human life, as in a baby, but everything to do with the start of a spiritual life.
The idea of baptism, at its simplest a ceremony of washing, didn’t start with Christianity. It was already well established in Jewish tradition, which was why people understood exactly what John was doing when he called them to be baptized in the Jordan river.
The reasons why the church moved towards infant baptism are readily understandable in the context of the times (and, incidentally, a good illustration of how the church has always adapted to the social context in which it is proclaiming good news). In recent years we have seen a revived focus on baptism for adults, both for those joining the church in later life, and in the more frequent recitation of baptismal promises by the entire congregation.
Recognizing how baptism has played out in different ways over the long history of the church may also help us appreciate how Jesus’s baptism was both ordinary and special. Ordinary because to the people around he was just another guy showing up in recognition of what John was doing – calling people to change, to lead different lives. John of course understood that was ridiculous for him to baptize Jesus, but Jesus insisted – because he wanted to show himself as one of us, just like us, even though he didn’t “need” to be baptized.
But then Jesus’s baptism was also different. Each of the gospels includes an account of Jesus’s baptism – one of the few places where there is a very close alignment between the events which all the evangelists chose to include in their attempt to demonstrate the significance of Jesus. With slight variations they all describe God speaking directly. In the version we hear today, from Matthew, it’s in the form of a proclamation (Mt 3:13-17). In Mark’s version the words are spoken to Jesus (Mk 1:11). The important point however is that this is one of only two places in the gospels where God speaks directly. The other is at the Transfiguration.
All this speaks to how baptism is at the foundation of our Christian life. It was the starting point for the revelation of God through his son. It is the starting point for our relationship with God, his process of revelation to each of us individually. There is nothing more important in our lives.