At what might be called a "macro" level, along with the Nativity and the adoration of the magi, Jesus' baptism can be seen as an Epiphany, a manifestation of the divine. Jesus' baptism, because the Father and the Spirit appear on the scene, it is truly a manifestation of the triune nature of God: Father, Son, and Spirit. Not just a manifestation but an theophany.
It is an assertion that goes back to patristic times that through his baptism, the Lord sanctified not just water, but the whole of creation.
While it is utterly obvious, is that to be baptized (as well as to suffer and die), Jesus had to be incarnated, that is, he had to have a body. This is the whole thing when it comes to sacramentality, is it not? After all, as you can tell by the suffix -urgy, liturgy is something you do, enact, perform, etc., as opposed to just something you think. Every sacrament is administered and received through a liturgy, a rite. Every sacramental rite includes an epiclesis, a "calling down." It is the Holy Spirit who is called down.
In baptism, the epiclesis occurs when the celebrant calls the Spirit down on/into the water, which is done while putting a hand into the water, touching it. But because Trinity refers to one God in three (divine) persons, where one is present the other two are as well. It is in this holy water that we are baptized "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Given that baptism by complete immersion remains and will likely always remain the premier way to be baptized, in baptism we are immersed, plunged into the very life of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a life characterized by unity, the result of agape.
Among its several meanings, baptism is a rebirth. But it is rebirth through dying, being buried, and rising with Christ to new life. More than a birth, baptism is a resurrection.
Baptism, along with confirmation, which is closely associated with baptism and that, in a sense, can be said to "complete" baptism, not orders, not matrimony, is the fundamental sacrament of the Christian life. I deeply believe that the synodal process in which the Church is currently engaged is aimed at highlighting this truth and bringing the reality of ecclesial life more in line with it.
The final part of the final Intercession for Morning Prayer for this feast, the Church prays to Christ that he will "renew the spirit of adoption among the royal priesthood of the baptized."
As to Jesus' own baptism, I think what Karl Barth wrote in the second part of the fourth volume of his magisterial Church Dogmatics, shows well the Lord's solidarity with us in his baptism:
No one who came to the Jordan was as laden and as afflicted as He. No one was as needy. No one so utterly human, because so fellow-human. No one confessed his sins so sincerely, so truly as his own, without side-glances at others. He stands alone in this, He who was elected and ordained from all eternity to partake of the sin of all in His own person, to bear its shame and curse in the place of all, to be the man responsible for all, and as such, wholly theirs, to live and act and suffer. This is what Jesus began to do when He had Himself baptized by John with all the others. This was the opening of His history as the salvation history of all the others
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