Prayer:
Father, help us to follow Jesus' example.
We touched on this in one of the questions a few weeks back; why did Jesus get baptised?
The baptism of John was an act to show God that the baptisee was repentant, that they wanted to serve God, admitting that they had failed in the past and wanted forgiveness and the chance to start again.
Most of the above can't apply to Jesus, but it is a new start. The Gospel of St. John starts with "In the beginning was the Word...". It's fairly obvious that the 'Word' refers to Jesus Christ, Jesus even says "I am the Word". So the point of contention is the 'beginning'. Some people believe that it is talking about the creation, that Jesus was there then, but this does not follow with the teaching laid out in the Bible. Jesus was the son of God, born of Mary, and Mary was not around prior to the creation. (I don't want to get into the 'mother of god' discussion that many pagan, and even some Christian, religions teach.)
Here was a 'new beginning'. In life was have many new beginnings, for example I've only just begun to write these notes, and you've begun to read them. So that's one event that caused two new beginnings. The significant thing is that the baptism of Jesus marked a new beginning, a new birth even. He started out on a life to teach about God.
So how does this affect us? If we want to follow Jesus, we need to be baptised - for both of the above reasons; we need to show we are sorry for our failings and want to make a new start, and we need to show that we want to follow Jesus' example.
Baptism is very different to 'Christening'. Christening was unheard of before the 17th century. It came about as a result of the plagues of the late-middle ages. Parents were told that children could not be given a Christian burial unless there was some way of demonstrating that they were Christian. The answer was to pay a priest to perform a christening ceremony, to assign god-parents and to make sure that the child was baptised when they were responsible enough to do so. Later this became know as confirmation. The church at the time didn't object; they got payment twice and with infant mortality so high, at least they got the first down payment.
The other aspect of baptism that confused people was the way that the baptisms were carried out. River water in the middle ages served both as source of drinking water and sewage system so sending someone out into the middle of a river meant they contracted some spectacular illnesses (if they didn't die of hypothermia first). This was even worse for new born babies, so the idea of sprinkling a cup of clean water (from a well or spring) kept everyone happy. Going up-stream of the city was probably too much hassle!!
But was just sprinkling what God wanted? The Bible records of baptism show a 'full immersion', which is what the word 'batiso' means. Jesus came up out of the water, so did the Ethiopian Eunuch, so did Paul, etc. What is boils down to is - are we willing to make the effort, or is it just some convenience to act as some sort of life insurance? The answer to that question probably shows our commitment to God.
Was Jesus with God when the world was created?
Was does baptism signify?
How is baptism performed?
Why is confession an important prelude to baptism? (and can babies do that?)
Can you think of Naaman the Syrian's attitude to having to wash in the Jordan in order to be cleansed of leprosy?