Sermon by Clare Heard, Sunday 14th May 2017, Easter 5 and Holy Baptism, at St George's Church, Campden Hill.

Sermon by Clare Heard, Sunday 14th May 2017, Easter 5 and Holy Baptism, at St George's Church, Campden Hill.

Promises

Today is a celebration – Freddie is being baptised and we are welcoming him into our church community, into God’s family.

Now the baptism itself involves promises. Parents, godparents, the congregation – we all promise to help Freddie grow in the knowledge and love of God. This is a significant step, it recognises that the growth and nurture of a child is not something to undertake alone, but with the help of wider family, close friends, and our community.

Each one of us promises to play our part in helping Freddie to grow in faith. That part might be a small part – making him feel welcome in church, or it might be a significant part – telling him the story of God, modelling Christian values, helping him learn how to accept differences in others, how to forgive, how to give generously, how to love.

These are big promises to make, and I would suggest we are only able to make them because of the promises God first makes to us.

The gospel reading for today give us some of these promises, so let’s look at it in more detail.

This passage is often read at funerals, and it’s easy to see why – Jesus is promising us that he is preparing a place for us, for us to be with the Father. But it is equally relevant for a baptism because it reminds us what Christianity is all about, and perhaps why Jaspar and Tamasin have made this choice for Freddie.

Firstly, Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, Believe in God, believe in me”. He is reassuring his disciples ahead of difficult times, telling them to have faith. We all need this reassurance. We all face difficult times in our lives – raising a child is one of the greatest challenges we face, but there are others – dealing with illnesses, coping with stressful jobs, balancing the increasing demands on our time and resources within an ambitious, consumer driven society. Life is not straightforward. And so it is enormously comforting to hear Jesus’ words – do not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith.

He goes on to say that there are many dwelling places – this is not an exclusive club where only a special few make it – this is for many – we are guided away from our individualistic view of the world and reminded of family, community, neighbour. Jesus is preparing a place for us, for all of us – and will then take us to himself. This is a promise, ultimately we will be with Jesus, we matter to God, Freddie matters to God.

But then Thomas asks – How can we know the way? I find Thomas’s question remarkably comforting as it is how I and many others would probably react – show us the way – give us a clear map, GPS co-ordinates, we want exact instructions, we want detail. However, I think this desire for clarity can sometimes come at a cost – Jesus didn’t leave us a list of instructions – a roadmap if you like, for exactly how to follow him. And I think this was very intentional. Why?

Because words are often misinterpreted and misunderstood. Particularly words disconnected from their original context and time. At their worst, they can be used as tools to insist on conformity, narrowing down options and restricting the freedom and personhood of individuals and communities. Just look at the history of Christianity, at some of the debates and arguments over the interpretation of scripture and you can see the dangers that arise. Now I’m certainly not saying that means we should ignore the Bible, which has huge riches within it. But I would suggest it should only be interpreted within the right framework – and what is that framework? It is one of relationship – relationship with God, with our communities and with our world.

Look at Jesus – what did he do? Did he sit there writing instructions for people? No! He built relationships with the disciples, he told stories, healed people and modelled a way of being that could be passed on. He lived a life of teaching, healing and love that brought people into relationship with him, with each other and with our loving Father.

Now much as this is a lot less comfortable, a lot less clear, than a set of instructions, it is also strangely reassuring, because it’s not trying to give us all the same path to follow. It’s not trying to fit us all into the same mould and box us in. Great relationships celebrate the differences between people. They thrive precisely because we are not the same and each have something special to offer.

Freddie is a unique person – he is not simply a copy or combination of Jaspar and Tamasin, he is a new person who will be different from anyone else in this world. God created him, God loves him, and the way he will come to know God and follow Jesus is through relationships – with his family, with the church and ultimately with his loving creator.

Jesus’s explanation about himself as the way, as a window to the Father are not just guidance but also promise to the disciples – when he says “I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one comes to the Father except through me” this is to comfort his disciples that they do know him and therefore they know the Father.

This is not a threat to exclude all those who don’t know Jesus (as it has unfortunately often been used), but read in context, is a promise of reassurance to his disciples. They can know the Father and come to the Father because they already know Jesus. He is all they need.

And this is a good reminder for us today. We live in a society which is all about results and achievements, accumulation of wealth and financial security, and it’s very easy to forget that Jesus is our greatest need, is indeed all we need. With Jesus at our centre, all these other things we try to measure, become less significant.

The lent book this year, by Justin Welby, was called Dethroning Mammon, and in it, he pointed out that in today’s society we have a tendency to value what we can measure. This has the unfortunate consequence of forgetting to value what we can’t measure. But if we reflect on our lives, what are the most important things within it?

I imagine many of us would say the relationships we have with those we love. Shared experiences, loving and nurturing relationships are far more valuable than our homes or bank balances – but far more difficult to measure. And it’s good to remember that.

As we move towards an election period with all political parties making all manner of promises, it is tempting to become cynical. How many more broken promises will we see? Can we trust our politicians? What will they do for our society and our economy?

And here, I think it is important to remember that God’s economy is so very different from the economy of the world. In God’s economy, more for others does not mean less for us. It is an economy based on love. When Freddie was born, this didn’t mean Tamasin and Jaspar loved Margot any less, rather the amount of love within the family grew. There was more to go round.

And this is like God’s love and his vision for the world. Yes, some resources are limited; we need to care for our creation and nurture it, use its resources wisely. But there are so many other things where more means more for all, not less for some.

Love, knowledge, forgiveness, wisdom, generosity, hope…these are the things that God is asking us to have more of, to share in this world. We can have faith in Jesus promises, because they are rooted in a God who is faithful.  

The gospel reading today reminds us that our primary need is faith in God – Jesus is our light and guide – he will show us the way, he will help us keep our promises – to him, to each other and to Freddie – if we let him.

And of course, the passage does not end without reminding us that once we believe, once we have received the love of God, we are called to share in his work of reconciliation and healing – spreading his love in our communities and world. And whilst this can feel very overwhelming, Jesus makes another promise – I will do whatever you ask in my name.

Now clearly this doesn’t mean that whatever we pray for we will get. There is still much pain and suffering in this world in spite of our many prayers about it. What this is telling us is that Jesus will help us in glorifying the Father. And that we are not alone.

And this is absolutely fundamental to our faith – Jesus goes to the Father, in order to be able to send the Spirit, who is the one who brings us into relationship with God and allows us to receive his love.

Freddie will grow up in a world which is both beautiful and broken. As a child of this world we know that he will be happy and he will be sad, he will be good and he will be bad, he will succeed and he will fail, but as a child of God – he will never be alone.

This is the faith we have as a church, this is the faith Freddie is being baptised into today. He is being invited to participate in the loving Trinitarian relationship of Father, Son and Spirit. He is being welcomed into a community of people who will love him, and he will grow up, filled with the Spirit of God, in faith and love.

The promises we all make today are rooted in the promises God has made to us. They are promises that we hope and pray that Freddie will grow to receive and understand, just as we too continue in our journey of faith, towards our loving Father, who is the way, the truth and the light, who is all we need.

Amen