Baptismal eucharist 13th June 2010

If you had to argue with someone for the existence of God you could try a number of lines.

You could say that physics accepts the universe had a beginning 14 thousand million years ago in the Big Bang. The idea of someone who gave it that beginning makes more sense therefore than it did 50 years ago when there was a steady state theory that gave the universe no beginning.

A second argument for God is from the ordered nature of the universe and the fine tuning it seems to have which has allowed life and consciousness. As Einstein said once, ‘The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.’ Does matter really come before mind or is it the other way round? We’re given minds not only to explore the world we inhabit but to understand the Mind that put us here.

A third argument for God is to ask people to think about themselves. You and I are evidence for God. There’s something about us and our ability to shelve our own interests for others that points beyond the animal kingdom. When we show love we’re showing something beyond this world, what has been called the image of God in us.

Today we baptise Rupert Harris. The birth of a baby always gets people thinking about God and love. In Rupert’s case he brings joy as the least of a family of six with mum and dad, John and Caroline, brothers Alexander, Cameron and sister Anushka. The children were telling me the other day how much happiness Rupert’s birth has brought them. They think that having him has built even more love in their family.

We’re thinking about love this morning. The collect for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity spoke of ‘that most excellent gift of love... without which whoever lives is counted dead before God’. The epistle reminded us ‘love bears all things and...never ends’. In the second Gospel reading we had that mysterious saying of Jesus about the sinful woman, ‘her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much’.

I read the other day a story of how a mentally impaired youngster was in the chemist’s. Seated on the floor he began to play with some bottles he’d taken from the shelves. The chemist ordered him to stop and then scolded him with an even sharper tone. Just then the boy’s sister came up, put her arms around him and whispered something in his ear. Right away, he put the bottles back in place. ‘You see,’ his sister explained to the chemist, ‘he doesn’t understand when you talk to him like that. I just love it into him.’

People respond negatively to being scolded and harassed. Those six words, ‘I just love it into him’ are another clue to God and indeed to life.

Perhaps the greatest distortion of Christianity in our age is that it’s a scolding, harassing creed that targets those who fall short. It’s actually the very opposite of that false perception. We hold to a Saviour who wants the best fro us and gives us that best by loving it into us and not forcing it in.

‘Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way’.

‘Jesus is patient; Jesus is kind; Jesus is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Jesus does not insist on his own way’.

The great thing about the Christianity into which we baptise Rupert this morning is this – there is Someone over us who is love. God treats us as better than we are so we get inspiration to do the same. Look how Jesus dealt with the sinful woman in the gospel. Her love for him came out of his love for her, his readiness to treat her not as the sinner she was but as the beloved daughter of God she was called to be.

So it is with us. We are sinners but love covers a multitude of sins.

A former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp was visiting a friend who had shared the ordeal with him. ‘Have you forgiven the Nazis?’ he asked his friend. ‘Yes.’. ‘Well I haven’t. I’m still consumed with hatred for them.’ ‘In that case’ said the friend gently, ‘they still have you in prison’.

Our enemies are not so much those who hate us but those whom we hate. Once we refuse to treat people as better than they are we fall short of Jesus Christ who actually died for people who were pretty worthless and I am thinking about myself primarily.

‘Without love – which means forgiveness many a time - whoever lives is counted dead before God’.

God has blessed the Harris family with love in Rupert’s birth. May he continue to bless them as their family is linked once more to God’s family at his baptism.
May God’s love be poured afresh into our hearts through this eucharist for the world is thirsty for love.

There is nothing we can do to make God love us more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us less – that is the riddle of Jesus Christ.

We want to turn to him now, repent of our sins and renounce evil