It is a special joy to
welcome Dexter with his mum and dad this morning.
Craig and Samantha were
married in 2004, divorced and then remarried two years ago. In their own words
they’ve gone back to the truth.
Their choice of Amazing Grace
for this service captures their being lost and found as will the baptism
promises they make for Dexter this morning.
Today though we’re all invited by our Lent challenge to
come back to the truth by writing a Letter to God and returning it in a sealed
envelope via the collection plate, to be burned on Easter Day as a sign of
offering.
‘I’ll say Yes, Lord’ is the
theme of these last two weeks of Lent – yes to celebration, yes to sorrow, yes
to today, yes to tomorrow – and the yes artwork includes a Cross.
The sign of the Cross is
‘I’ crossed out – in one interpretation. In another it says ‘Jesus came down
from heaven to earth and died upon the cross for me’. This is the truth we all come back to at Easter.
Incidentally you don’t have
to be Roman Catholic or Orthodox to make the sign of the Cross. Our service
booklet has the invitation to do so and a pointer to where we might do so
together. Anglicans have always included the sign of the cross in their worship
and especially in baptism.
Saying Yes to God in the
baptism service is about Craig and Sam with Dexter committing to regular
worship with God’s family, as the promise puts it ‘with the help of God’. It’s saying God I turn to you, I repent of my
sins, I renounce evil.
In a similar way we as a
congregation are being invited to voice a Yes to God in a confidential letter, giving
him our strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, as concrete expression of
our love for him and commitment with him to love and serve a hurting and needy
world.
Just as St Giles is getting
a spring clean this week, so her members are being invited to make Lent the
springtide of the soul it should always be by coming back from all our
delusions and pretensions to the truth. That truth we call Christianity, which
is relationship with God and one another. Its truth that energises us, as faith
comes again and again to life, through God’s amazing grace.
What’s suggested won’t
involve going to extra services so much as examining your life and saying Yes
to celebration, sorrow, today and tomorrow. Those four headings touch on
gratitude, penitence and seeking God’s provision for today and tomorrow.
Sometimes it takes putting pen to paper, or keyboard to screen, to present our
thanksgivings and needs to ourselves and to God. Talking to him in this way can
take us deeper into his love and open up more of what he’s got in store for us.
Doing this together,
symbolised by placing our letters in the Easter fire, will I believe have enormous
repercussions for St Giles, especially as we look from next week at the annual
reports and ready ourselves for the
Annual Meeting in three weeks time with the opportunities there for commitment
to service.
How might my letter look, as your parish priest?
Yes to celebration – I
would tell God I’m so grateful St Giles is the high achieving church it is in
terms of community service.
Yes to sorrow – I would say sorry our
ownership of proportionate giving to his work is so weak, reflecting not just
suspicion about where the money goes but lack of faith in the future he has for
us.
Yes to today – I would tell God in my
letter that we need today Elishas to follow Elijah’s like James Nicholson, new
leaders to be elected as church officers at the APCM, and leaders in prayer to
back them up – today!
Yes to tomorrow – I would tell God of our
concern to be a church that grows in faith, love and numbers and of our need
for toilet facilities so as to make for that better tomorrow in terms of access
to Christian community.
Those are just some of my ideas
I’ll give God in my Easter letter, alongside personal thanksgiving for lives
I’ve helped touch for him, regrets over my shortcomings, prayer for his Spirit
to empower me today and discernment about best future employment of my gifts.
Yes to celebration, yes to sorrow, yes to today, yes to
tomorrow is our prayer. It is also that of Craig and
Samantha with Dexter. Craig is au fait with the sort of strategic thinking I’ve
presented through the large team he runs at EDF Energy. He knows any
organisation must struggle to keep the important things the important things.
Sam is a good foil to him in her child care work which is less strategic and
more of a going with the day by day hour by hour flow of things.
I’ve talked to them and at
least two other young families recently about the struggle to get to Church on
a Sunday. It seems the answer is a matter of discipline and nothing less. If,
as the promises of baptism indicate, church is be all and end all, how can we
fail to keep Sunday, the Lords’ day, but with the Lord’s family around the
Lord’s table?
Children need a path to
follow, they need both to know and to honour the most important things in life.
Daily prayer, Sunday eucharist, bible reading, knowing the creed, welcoming the
sacraments, confessing your sins, placing your time, talents and money into
God’s service are part of serving the great cause that will outlast us all -
that of the Love which moves the sun and the stars.
Today’s gospel reading
showed us this love as Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus and then showed his
power raising him from the dead. I believe Jesus weeps over me and over you and
what is deadly within us through sin. Then, again and again, he says ‘come
out!’ drawing forth from us the immortal life of his Spirit.
My letter to God will have
words like the first sentence of the gospel, ‘Lord, he whom you love is
ill’. Sickness of spirit is our
condition but it’s a condition with a remedy. God who made us anticipated this
sickness, caused by misuse of our freedom, and provides in Jesus Christ the
remedy for sin, sickness, fear, doubt, death and the devil! When we call on God
he counters these evil powers with forgiveness, healing and deliverance - but
we need to call on him!
This morning we join
Samantha and Craig in calling on God for Dexter and his future. We join them in saying ‘Yes to God’ who
offers spiritual regeneration to all who believe and are baptised. Just as this
couple strayed from one another and yet came back, so we all stray from God day
by day and still find our way back, drawn by his magnetic love. The Letter to
God exercise is his call to come back to the truth and love that is in Jesus.
God wants our yes and our success but he wants our yes more than our success – a costly yes signed, as Dexter will be,
with the cross.
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