Every religious community has its customs and rituals, some of which may seem rather odd to outsiders. So our Muslim friends pray five times a day and try to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during their lives, our Hindu neighbours go to the Temple and offer gifts of food to their deities, Sikh men are bearded, wear a turban and carry a ceremonial knife – and so on. These practices all have their meanings although, over the years, they may have turned into habits or simply “the things we do” which don’t get thought about much from day to day. I’m sure the same is true in Christianity!

This church doesn’t go in for much ritual – some folk may think that our worship is the poorer for it, although it can be easy to get bogged down in the details of “what” to do “when”! We don’t have ornate ceremony, our services aren’t packed full of processions and chants, you won’t smell incense or see icons being venerated, we don’t even kneel or bow for prayer (which is probably a good thing for those with achey joints!). However we do get the place looking nice at Christmas and Harvest! And there are two things we still do: we observe the sacrament or ordinance of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion (which are different names for the same thing), and we perform Baptism. As two people will be baptised later in this service, and as one of the Bible characters we often focus on during this Advent season is John the Baptist, I thought it would be sensible to do some thinking around this subject, especially as our church tries to marry two different Christian traditions: the baptism (or christening) of children at the font, and what’s called believers’ baptism by immersion.

When Christians think about baptism in the Bible they almost inevitably think of John (and, by the way, it would be better to call him the “Baptiser” rather than “the Baptist”!) The basic story we read in St Mark’s Gospel tells us of John preaching repentance in the desert and pointing to the coming of the expected Messiah who, he says, will baptise with the Holy Spirit. But what did this mean, and where did it come from? Well, it’s clear that John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance, a word which means much more than lightly saying “sorry” to God for any wrong things we may have done. No; John is proclaiming a radical new start for those being baptised, even those who claim to be religious but who have lapsed into a somewhat superficial faith: on the one hand their old (and presumably) sinful way of living is being washed away; on the other hand these people are publicly embracing a new way of life that is dedicated to God. Full Christian baptism takes all these meanings and adds at least one more: we identify with Jesus in both his dying and his rising to life.

So that’s what John’s baptism meant. But where did it come from? Well, the honest answer is that we don’t really know. Of course the symbolism of being “washed” from sin is obvious; it’s also true that Gentile people who wanted to become members of the Jewish community had, among others things, to renounce their previous life and even their former nationality before being immersed in water. Another strand of thought suggests that John was brought up in the Essene community, a group of people who lived in the desert hills above the Dead Sea and who created the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. What’s significant about them is that they practiced a kind of baptism to symbolise their inner cleansing from sin by God. However they did that several times every day, which sounds more like the ablutions of Muslims before praying than John’s “once-off” baptisms in the Jordan.

A lot of what I’ve said obviously relates much more to adult or believers’ baptism today. Clearly a small child cannot “repent” of their sin or “dedicate” their life to God. Children’s baptism came into the Church through, I think, two routes. One was from the Jewish practice of circumcision in which parents gave thanks to God for the gift of their child and offered him or her to God. As the Church – which was largely Jewish at the start – grew beyond its first generation one can imagine parents wanting some parallel (but specifically Christian ritual) for their children. The other route comes from a story in the book of Acts, where a jailer was converted to Christianity because Paul the apostle had stopped his prisoners from escaping after an earthquake: we are told that, in the middle of the night, not only the jailer but his entire family were all baptised. That was quick work!

The climax of John the Baptist’s story comes, of course, when he baptises Jesus. John is reluctant to do this as he recognises Jesus as the Messiah or “Special One” sent from God, the perfect person who has no need to repent or turn from wrongdoing. Nevertheless Jesus insists that John baptise him as he perceives it as being something that God is asking him to do, a sign of obedience to his Father’s will. In other words Jesus is responding, in some deeply personal way, to a sense of divine compulsion. This is the first step of obedience that will take him through his ministry and, eventually, to his death on the Cross. It is also the first step in bringing into being a band of people, his followers, who will willingly accept God’s discipline and obey him.

As I’ve said, there are two different strands of baptism in this church. We baptise children and invite them into the church family; we also baptise adults upon profession of their own personal faith. And the theme of obedience is common to both these views. For a parent who brings their child is saying, “I am doing this because I think it is right and I want to be obey God”. Of course, they may also be saying, “I want to give thanks for the safe birth of this baby” or “I want to bring this child into the community of faith”. They may also be saying – in my view, mistakenly – “I want this child to be washed from sin so that, if anything happens to it, it will go straight to heaven”; or even, “I believe that baptism will help my child to thrive and do well”. Here we are entering the realms of folk-religion; nevertheless we must realise that parents are still responding to some gut-reaction that baptism is what God wants, and doing it will attract his blessing.

In believers’ baptism, too, a candidate may be saying far more than a simple declaration of their faith. They may be thinking, “I am identifying with Christ, going down into the water with him in death”; or, “This washing with water shows that Christ’s blood has made my spirit clean”; or else, “I am crossing a boundary, making a clean break from the past and starting a new life of discipleship”; or simply, “I want to be part of this church community”. For some people, especially those converting from other faiths, deciding to be baptised can be a huge decision; for others it is something blatantly obvious that Christians must do. But underlying everything is, I think, this concept that “baptism is something that God asks me to do. I want to do his will”.

Most of us here have been baptised at some stage on our Christian journey, probably a long time ago. I ask you to think if the obedience which characterised that event is still something which pervades your life; if you are still walking along the road of discipleship that baptism began. Anglican churches quite often have annual services in which people re-affirm their baptismal vows; we don’t do that, but it is quite a good idea, as it makes is ask ourselves, “Am I still obeying God as much as I once was – and as I still should be doing?”

Many years ago I had a trusted Christian friend who asked me, “Andrew, what is the most important thing in the Christian life?” I offered her several answers, such as “prayer” or “worship” or “learning what the Bible teaches”. But her responses to all my responses was, “No, that’s not it”. Eventually I ran out of things to say, and my friend said, “The most important thing in the Christian life is obedience”; and I think she was right. We are servants of the Master, subjects of the King of King, disciples of Christ. Following him through baptism is simply the initial step in a life of humble submission to his will.