Read Luke 3:15-15, 21-22 with your family.

Do you remember your baptism? Have you been baptized? What even is baptism?

For Christians, baptism is the time we officially join the family of Jesus followers. It is a ceremony that can either have water sprinkled over our head, or our full body dunked in water. It can be in a church or outside in a river. It can happen when we are babies or not until we are fully grown. There is no right way to do baptism, there is only the traditions in the faith community in which we are raised.

Baptism is an old Greek word that means to “cover yourself with water”. In Jesus day it was the practice of Hebrew people to wash themselves before they went into the temple to pray. They believed almost everyone was “unclean” so they went into special baths to get “clean” before they could worship God.

One group, known as the Essenes, washed themselves every single day, and we think John the Baptist was one of the Essenes.

For Jesus’ baptism, he was outside in a river. John the Baptist (named that because we read in the Bible that he baptized Jesus), was helping people get that ceremonial cleaning all while telling them that one was coming soon who would baptize with the Holy Spirit. John was talking about Jesus. But before Jesus could baptize others, he wanted to be baptized himself, probably to show that he was an ordinary person just like everyone else, even if he was also the Messiah.

When Jesus came out of the water that very Holy Spirit came upon him, and ever after Jesus’ baptism, that means one cleaning ritual, a single ceremony of baptism was all anyone needed. Unlike the Hebrew tradition, for the Jesus followers, they only had to be baptized once.

Today we still only need to be baptized once, and the words “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” are said to remind us what family of faith we are now a part.