Baptism of Eleanor Vincent 23rd February 2014

Sower Sunday fits Eleanor’s baptism as we’re sowing seeds for a new growth in her life in its spiritual dimension.

It’s got something appropriate also with dad’s work helping Ethiopia improve its agriculture, not to mention the food component of John’s UK involvements that link in with Government on free school meals.

John, Katie, Natasha and Eleanor look over fields at Treemans but like many English fields down south they’re rather more for horses than for cultivation.  Incidentally we sympathise with them on their tree fall, and with them that no one was hurt in the fall of that massive oak.

Eleanor follows her mum’s musical passion with her flute and piano. Mum is a familiar figure on BBC, former news reader, now Radio 3 presenter with regular appearance on TV for Last Night of the Proms. Katie and I were reflecting last week on whether Land of Hope and Glory was written at Treemans since the poem’s author Arthur Benson lived there with his mum, Mary, the widow of Archbishop Benson.

It’s lovely to have your family and many friends gathered in St Giles this morning, especially our godparents Dean and Angus, old friends of John’s and Kate and Helen, close friends of Katie who go right back. David, who can’t be here on account of medical treatment, is here in spirit and also in our thoughts and prayers.

All of us gathered here add to the sense of celebration at such an important junction for Eleanor on this Sower Sunday in the Prayer Book cycle. I want to turn with you now to that Gospel reading from Luke Chapter 8 verse 4 to 15 which you can follow again on p 3.   

‘A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.’

It’s when we hear his Parables that we come closest to Jesus. He spoke the truth and all truth is self-evident and compelling to those who get the point while staying a mystery to those who don’t. Parables are literally comparisons or analogies. In the Parable of the Sower Jesus is making an analogy with how worthwhile it is to communicate the love of God, even if it causes a lot of hassle, for how much we welcome the love of God will determine the fruitfulness of our lives.

Jesus’ message that his Father and ours has unconditional positive regard for everyone in the world caused hassle. One of the reasons they put him on the Cross was he said repeatedly that God isn’t just God of the righteous but of sinners a well. 

Speaking of himself as a seed Jesus said in John 12 verse 24 ‘unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit’. Jesus sowed seeds of God’s love at the greatest cost to himself – God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.

The Buddha gave his teaching. Christ gave his life as well as his teaching. In Eleanor’s world Christianity stands side by side with other faiths in a way it didn’t when her parents or grandparents were her age. Sometimes alas they don’t just stand side by side – they conflict!

People sometimes say ‘all religions lead to God’ to counter religious extremists so convinced their brand is right they condemn all the other brands.

 In the best sense saying 'all religions lead to God' is an exercise in sweet reasonableness in the face of those using religion to divide the world but I would have a couple of questions for those who say so!

The first is 'how do you know so? By whose authority - do you know what God knows?' The second is 'who says religion leads to God anyway'? Jesus Christ showed by his words and sacrificial deeds humans aren't worthy to enter God's presence, since we're sinners and God is holy. If anything or anyone leads us to God it’s not religion but God himself so loving the world as to give his Son Jesus and bring sinful humans to be one with a holy God through faith and baptism.

That being said I recognise there's a measure of holiness in all humans and therefore in practitioners of all religions, so something of God is to be found outside Christianity. God is bigger than all of us including all religions so there can’t be a perfect religion. Jesus set himself against  religious leaders whose nit-picking legalism made them unworthy of a great and loving God. He all but said to them 'your God is too small'. The hope for religion lies in a figure like Jesus who is so much bigger than Christianity that Hindus and Muslims honour his person and Buddhists and many other faith practitioners engage with his teaching.

Today Eleanor is affirming the Christian faith of her parents and grandparents. In so doing she is committing to Jesus the Sower who would sow the truth of God’s love in the hearts of people everywhere.

With her parents, with all of us here this morning who own the Christian tradition, Eleanor has caught a glimpse of the love of God shown in Jesus. It’s an inclusive and protective love, like that Eleanor and her sister already receive from their parents Katie and John.

To know you are loved is the springboard for human endeavour and creativity. We have here a creative young lady, born into a loving and creative family. May the love of God enfold her and equip her to give to others as it has been given to her by God.

May the figure of Jesus Christ who is ever new and ‘the same, yesterday, today and for ever’ (Hebrews 13.8) continue to intrigue her, and all of us, so that we may hold fast to him with honest and good hearts and bear fruit [a hundredfold] with patient endurance.