If you hear enough Lutheran sermons, you *should* have some sense that Baptism is a cornerstone part of our understanding of faith. (I will have to talk with my pastor colleagues if they haven’t made clear that Baptism is pretty important). Martin Luther pushed for a renewal of the Christian understanding of Baptism as centrally important to how we understand our identity as people who belong to God and as members of the Body of Christ. 

This week we hear the story of the Baptism of Jesus, which is important to come back to each year. As we are implored regularly in the liturgy, remembering our Baptism is an important part of our worship. The irony is that most of us don’t remember our own Baptism. So what does remembering our Baptism look like? Well, it is something we do as we hear about and witness the Baptisms of others. 

In the story of Jesus going down into the waters of the Jordan to be baptized by John, God proclaims that Jesus is God’s Beloved Son. This proclamation is not just for that moment but the proclamation that God makes to all who are baptized. It was the proclamation made over Sutton who was baptized last Sunday at our church. And it is the proclamation made to each person we bring to the waters and who is washed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

But Baptism is still more than just a welcome for new babies and an entrance into the Church of Christ. The story of Jesus’ Baptism does not come to us in a vacuum. It comes to us in this season after Epiphany as we move toward Lent and Holy Week. The one who is baptized by John in the Jordan, whom God is well pleased with, will become the one who is crucified on Good Friday and who  rises again on Easter Sunday. 

St. Paul reminds us in Romans 6, “therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.”

In Baptism, God claims us as God’s own children. God names us beloved AND most importantly, God identifies us with the death and resurrection of Christ. God ties us to the in-breaking of God into the world with mercy and reconciliation. 

This essential part of Baptism is the beginning point of faith, that we die to sin and death in the baptismal waters with Christ and we are raised to new life by the resurrection of Christ. So when we gather together to witness a Baptism in our community, we are reminded that, just as this new Christian is now identified with Christ’s death and resurrection, so too are we, by virtue of the same Baptism with which we were baptized. 

As we hear this story of Christ’s Baptism this week, remember that it is the story of our Baptism, too.