Baptism: Jesus' and Ours

1 Epiphany C, January 12, 2025
Isaiah 43:1-7 Psalm 29  
Acts 8:14-17 Luke 3:15-17,21-22

Lectionary Link

Through birth we are unintentionally initiated into the communities of our births and these communities stamp intentional meanings upon our lives based upon the inherited traditions within the language of the cultures of such communities.

The practice of Christian baptism is an intentional community ritual process of stamping meaning upon a person's life within the community which practices such an intentional ritual as baptism.

Baptism as a ritual process has been given theological meaning, and it in turn becomes a communal ritual for stamping those theological, or supremely prized human values upon the life of the newly initiated.

The early church believed that Jesus of Nazareth was born into a family which practiced ritual behaviors, the ritual behaviors which forged the identities of Jews in Palestine of his time.

On this day when we observe the Baptism of Jesus, as well as baptize candidates for Holy Baptism, it behooves to ponder insights about this ritual practice of Christian Initiation.

Certainly baptism predates Jesus, and while the Matthean derivative church at some point understood that Jesus commanded his disciples to baptize in the name of the Trinity, baptism did not originate with Jesus, nor with his own baptizer, John the Baptist.

The Greek word baptizo is the regular word meaning to dip or immerse.  It is the Greek word used in the Greek translation of Hebrew Scriptures, called the Septuagint, for the Hebrew word meaning the same, taval.  In the practices derived from the Torah, mikvah is the name of the ritual bath, and tevilah is the act of immersion.

In Judaism a ritual immersion occurred when non-Jews converted to the faith, in a proselyte baptism.   Other immersion rituals accompanied the ceremonies to remove defined states of impurity.  Such immersions were to be done in "living waters," such as streams or springs or facsimiles of the same.

The desert man John the Baptist is sometimes regarded as one who was influenced by the semi-monastic desert communities of Qumran associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of whom were called the Essenes.  These communities practiced ritual immersions, even daily and repeated.  Ceremonial washings before prayer occur within Judaism as well as in the practice of Muslims to this day.

Certainly one can understand the universal use of water as a substance of cleansing of the body, and of the utensils of our lives.  Water as actual cleanser has incredible sign value as symbolizing the human quest for spiritual cleanliness as instantiated in the Psalmist plea for a clean heart and right spirit.  The words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman present the Spirit as being like an interior spring within the person making the interior cleansing a reality and fulfilling of the request for a clean heart.

What does the meaning of the baptism of Jesus mean then?  Did Jesus need to be cleansed from any impure state?  Did Jesus need to be received into Judaism?  The early church believed that a perfect Jesus did not need baptism for cleansing or for repentance.  They also believed that having been born a Jew and fulfilling the ritual requirements of Judaism, including circumcision, that Jesus did not have to be received into Judaism.

Following the Pauline Christology, Jesus was regarded to be the divine emptied into a mere human, but best human being, and this emptying meant being limited to particular events in time, human events in time.  This emptying of the divine into the merely human was a process of the divine being identified with the merely human such that events such as birth, circumcision, and baptism as expression of human solidarity in being included within the ministry, mission, and community of John the Baptist instantiated what God with us meant in human terms.

The baptism of Jesus might be expressed in a slightly different way but reflect a similar meaning as the ancient statement of Orthodox Church in the theology of theosis.  God became one with humanity so that humanity might become one or know union with God.  Jesus is God being baptized into the particular community setting of John the Baptist, so that we in the particular community settings of our baptisms might understand that we are baptized into God, in whose milieu we live and move and have our being as divine "off springs."

Indeed our baptisms are different directionally than the baptism of Jesus.  Jesus is the expression of God becoming known as one with humanity; our baptisms are the expression of us realizing the image of God upon our lives so as to live our lives as children of God, loving our divine parent, and loving our fellow children of God, by the practice of mutually influencing each other to best loving behaviors in this great wide family.

Let us be thankful about baptism as a celebration of a divine family event.  This is an event of living into our identity.  As the early church practiced this identity ritual, it was being buried or immersed into the death of Jesus as an inner power to counter the bondage of a past determined by habits of sin, and rising from the waters of death to become the new creation to which we are called.

Jesus our sibling, as Exemplar Human Being deigned complete family identity with us so that we might live up to our original identity, inheritance and blessing as those who bear the image of God.  Amen.