Baptism of Jesus
Sunday 12 January 2025
Marion Chatterley, Vice Provost
Prayer can take us to a place of stillness and openness, a place of grace.

The Baptism of Jesus is one of those points on the narrative of our faith story where it seems right to stop and pause for breath. It’s a real way marker, the moment when we turn from looking at the baby in the manger and wondering about what the future might hold, and find our attention turning towards the appearance of the man whose ministry on this earth is about to begin. And, in this morning’s narrative, we see that man emerge from the waters of Baptism ready to fulfil the promise for which he has been born. Jesus goes down into the water, down into the depths and when he comes back up he has been changed. He no doubt looked pretty much the same as he had, but the way the story is told, we are left in no doubt that something has happened, we are given confirmation that the Messiah has arrived. Nothing will ever be quite as it was.
Jesus went to where John was in the Jordan and, along with many others, he was baptised. Baptism is something that we know about. Something that we do. That we have experienced. An event that we recognise as having deep significance in the life of a child or adult who is seeking to make a commitment to follow Christ.
So what is baptism about? What do we think we’re doing beyond performing a ritualistic act that signifies membership of this particular club. People used to talk about having the bairn ‘done’. And the danger with that, of course, is that it becomes an act of superstition, a kind of talisman to ward off anything bad that might be on the horizon. Baptism isn’t a lucky charm, it’s at the heart of who we are and what we believe – perhaps at the heart of why we come to church at all.
In our church we define Baptism as a sacrament, an outward sign of a spiritual reality. We do something that is tangible, that can be observed and, at least in part understood, and that is the visible side of something that is also happening spiritually, something that can’t be seen, but, for us, is just as real.
Let’s go back to our Scripture. There wasn’t an abracadabra moment. There was a process. Jesus went down into the water and came back out; he then went down internally into a place of prayer. And then, and only then – when the physical movement and the spiritual movement had both occurred – then the Holy Spirit descended and the people heard God’s voice.
John baptised, Jesus prayed and God responded.
The visual narrative is about going down, going under perhaps and then emerging to evidence that something has changed. So let’s think a bit more about what it means for us to go deeper, to take ourselves into a place where we are immersed. Immersed not in the demands and challenges of our day to day lives, but immersed in a place of prayer where we just might find ourselves being changed.
We’re often told in the Gospels that Jesus went away to pray. It’s one of the important reminders of his full humanity. He needed to pray. He modelled what it is to put prayer front and centre of who and how we are. It seems that Jesus didn’t use lots of words when he prayed. There are very few examples of him speaking directly to God. When he was asked about prayer, he gave his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. But alongside that, time and again we are told that he went to a quiet place, he went off on his own, and stopped and prayed. I always assume that those are prayers without words, or certainly without spoken words.
I imagine Jesus settling himself, moving internally from the distractions of the world around and into a place of stillness, of openness, a place of grace.
We can use words in our prayers – and of course there are lots of times when words are helpful. In a few minutes a member of the congregation will lead us in our corporate intercessory prayer and that, clearly, is an occasion for words. An occasion for one person, on behalf of the gathered worshipping community, to express some of the longings of our hearts, to gather our collective prayers in a way that honours them and offers them.
But what about the times when we are engaged in personal prayer? Could we vary how we do that and what we hope to achieve? Could we find ways to set the words aside, to go into that quiet place where the distractions of the world are laid down, just for a few minutes, and to allow ourselves to go deeper, to let go and find our own place of stillness and openness and grace? If that sounds hard, I want to suggest that it shouldn’t be. It’s hard because we try too hard; it’s hard because we are not very good at letting go and just allowing ourselves to be.
We want to be in control and this is about letting go. It’s fundamentally about sitting with God without any expectation that something dramatic will happen, about getting ourselves out of the way. Going deeper in prayer is exactly that – getting ourselves out of the way and creating an opportunity for God to actively engage with us.
So what has this to do with Baptism, which I said a few minutes ago is something to do with who we are as a faith community and why we come to church at all. Baptism is what marks us out as those who have made a commitment, or had a commitment made on our behalf, to follow Christ, to live and pray as he did.
In Baptism, we name ourselves as Disciples. As those who are looking to find ways to follow, however hesitantly, in the footsteps of Jesus who showed us what it means to live with and for God. The fully human Jesus is the one who lived as we aspire to live. The one whose life made a difference both to people he met and to those he never met. In our baptismal vows, we make a commitment to living the best lives we can, to making a difference for the people we meet and those whom we will never meet.
And the example Jesus gave us shows us that the firmest support for living our best lives is to live them on a foundation of prayer. Prayer that isn’t obscured by lots of words, but a foundation of prayer that comes from a place of depth. Perhaps it’s a place from where our cry to God is visceral – a place beyond words, but not beyond our ken.
We might know that place only fleetingly. But the more often we can take ourselves there, the easier it is to visit. This is one of those situations where practice really does make a difference.
We pray because we can. We pray in response to God’s promises to us. We pray as a way of keeping our promises to God. We pray because we want to make a difference and to become different, to become the people God longs for us to be. We pray because we too are God’s beloved children and there is no other way to honour the gift that has been bestowed upon us. We pray because we hope that one day God will name us amongst those with whom God is well pleased.