I will love them and reveal myself to them Jesus says and we take this as a promise for Arthur, Thomas and all of us.
How do we see this love?
It’s a gravitational field that lifts us up to become what we’re meant to be.
The gravitational pull of the love of God competes with the gravitational field of the evil in the world and that, in our souls, we call sin.
When the astronauts trod on the moon they found themselves able to leap and jump with ease because gravity on the moon is a sixth that on earth.
If they had been able to visit Jupiter they would have crawled on the surface so strong is the downward gravity.
You and I get pulled down all the time. Our bodies, thankfully, get pulled down to stay on earth in Horsted Keynes. But our spirits – they get pulled down too. They can feel very heavy - as heavy as what we call depression.
I will love them and reveal myself to them says Jesus and in doing so he invites us to look up and find the gravity of God’s love which lifts us out of ourselves to head where we’re meant to head.
In baptism this morning Arthur and Thomas are being set off in the direction they were made to go with the support of their family. The love they’re being drawn up into is already real to Gordon and Penny and has been proved so through the trials they so cheerfully bear on behalf of their children.
There is one gravitational field of the spirit drawing us into God’s love and there’s another spirit dragging us down.
Human beings, you and I, are caught! We’re caught in the gravitational field of evil: of pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth – remember – PALE GAS – P-A-L-E-G-A-S - the seven deadly sins.
For some of us this heaviness is sloth, laziness - especially as we get older. For others it’s the weight of indulgence through gluttony. Or it’s the dead weight of pride that sinks so many of our relationships. Then we have avarice – greed - which, as I describe in the news sheet, weighs down the world around you.
So we can picture and imagine the downward gravity of sin that affects us all.
When we try to rise above it by our own efforts we feel like the man in the gym trying to lift weights that are beyond his capacity.
The more we try to lift ourselves the heavier life feels.
The gravitational field of God’s love that lifts our lives can’t be felt through our own efforts. It reaches down to offer us a hand up in Jesus and all he has done for us by his life, death and resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
As we struggle with our relationships, insecurities and spiritual emptiness we find ourselves caught by the gravitational lure of sin as if in a quicksand.
The more we struggle in our own strength to release ourselves the deeper we go down. I remember someone driving his father’s land rover onto a beach south of Morecambe Bay where it sank hopelessly into a quick sand there before they could get a purchase on it. He had some answering to do to his dad!
It is a sad truth of life that so many of our attempts to better ourselves prove counter-productive. People caught in quicksand sink faster through gravity the more they struggle to get out of it.
They need an upward pull from outside themselves.
Jesus does that for us.
I will love them and reveal myself to them.
Every Sunday is a day of resurrection, but particularly a Sunday in Easter Season.
Through resurrection from cruel death the gravitational pull of God’s love has been proved more powerful than the quicksands of sin, death and the devil.
You can prove that’s true - if you accept it!
You won’t escape the quicksands of pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth on your own. You need an upwards pull from outside.
There’s a Man outside of you who can. Jesus. He’s alive. He loves you and wants to give you that lift so you can become what you’re meant to be!
That’s why, in a moment, we’ll rightly say I turn to Christ. I repent of my sins. I renounce evil.
As we baptise Arthur and Thomas we are reminded of the two gravitational fields of the spirit we’re all caught up with and the need to welcome God’s rescue provision daily.
We can’t become godlike. We can’t elevate ourselves beyond the quicksand that drags us down however hard we try.
Jesus can, though - he can make us godlike.
He will - if we will let him - provide us with the upward pulls we need hour by hour to rise above the heaviness of our human condition into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
I will love them and reveal myself to them so be it, for Arthur, Thomas and all of us in St Giles this morning.
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