Wivelsfield Church Baptism of Taron Close 31.7.22

Introduction

A warm welcome to East Sussex, Wivelsfield and St Peter & St John the Baptist parish church to those online and those gathered in this time hallowed building for the eucharist and baptism of Taron Close. As our parish priest Fr Christopher is on leave it's down to me to be celebrant and that is a particular joy. When I retired from Horsted Keynes 5 years ago I covered the pastoral vacancy between priests here when I baptised Taron’s big sister Lily, so it's more of the same this morning so to speak.  A special welcome to all who’ve travelled far to join Chris, Annie and the children for this special day on which we recall another priest, Annie’s late uncle Fr Martin Onions well known to me and to you.

The service today has three parts - word, baptism and eucharist - and we hope all can join in the bold text and in the various ceremonies as fully as conscience permits. In the Gospel reading for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity we have a warning against over immersion in worldly things and the need to seek the riches of God. As we begin the service we pray for cleansing from over-worldly preoccupation, for our failure to love God, neighbour and self and for a right spirit, the Holy Spirit, to be planted in us. Let’s keep silence a moment before we make the prayers on page 2 of the booklet our own as we join in the responses.

Sermon

I want to look back to the first reading set for this Sunday from the first eleven verses of Colossians Chapter 3 going through the passage to open up its meaning. I’ll divide the passage into three sections, which I will read again, starting with verses 1-4:

If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

People struggle with the meaning of life. When you study Christianity you engage with the greatest clue to life’s meaning and it's tied up with what conquers death, or more precisely who conquers death, Jesus Christ. Just as we can’t see God as the same as any other being - God is the ground of being if he is God at all - so we can’t see the event on account of which Christians gather Sunday by Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus, as in anything like the same category. History records Christ’s tomb as being empty that first Easter Sunday but that awesome event sees eternity intersecting time and can’t be ranked properly in human history.

His empty tomb - never disproved - and consequent change in his disciples from fearfulness to confidence in God and the later astonishing change in holy day from Friday to Sunday, have made this day for Christians ‘the Lord’s day when the Lord’s people gather in the Lord’s house around the Lord’s table’.  As we gather to celebrate the resurrection, what God did for his Son is done for us: If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above. To be a Christian is to be drawn mystically into Christ’s dying for sin, rising to immortal life and the expectation of his return: you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Now, moving on, listen again to verses 5-9 from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, Chapter 3: 

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things - anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices.

Last Sunday I caught up with Annie, Lily and Taron. We explored our ancient font together. Lo and behold, Taron climbed into it! It’s so deep he could in principle have a bath in it this morning! Not only that, Lily climbed in with him - it is an enormous font! The idea of baptism is about plunging underwater and emerging fresh, just like bathtime! What Paul teaches in this passage, by coincidence used this morning at Taron’s christening, is this: Jesus died in our place to rise in our place. He died for our sins and rose to lift us into deathless life. When we are baptised we go under the water, so to speak, to help effect freedom from sin, and come up fresh to welcome the Holy Spirit who plants God’s immortal life in us, sealed by receiving the bread and wine which is his body and blood after confirmation. The baptism rite we follow shortly is not just for Taron. It's for us all. We are to be reminded that ‘to follow Christ means dying to sin and rising to new life in him’. Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly… anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language... Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices. Today’s first reading colours the promises we make with and for Taron this morning. Baptism is only done once but we need holding to its principle hour by hour, day by day. For example, if the baptised fully lived their baptism there would be no lies in society, in government, on the internet - no truth telling crisis in the world for Christ would be all and in all - Lord, hasten that day!

Moving on to he last section let’s listen again to Colossians 3 from the end of verse 9 to verse 11:

You have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

The new clothes Taron wears today link to this aspect of baptism which is a clothing of ourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. What we most want for Taron is what we most want for ourselves and for the population of the world past present and to come - we want him to become more fully what he is meant to be. God who made us desires this earnestly, but on account of his gift of free will God can’t do this without our cooperation with his grace. Sunday worship, daily prayer, study of the bible and the saints, service of others, regular self examination - all of these are means of grace, ways God makes baptism real for us as we seek the best for ourselves.

Jesus died in our place to live in our place. In baptism Taron’s fleshly life dies, in a sense, so that the immortal life of a child of God can live in him as his life principle fighting valiantly against sin, the world and the devil and remaining faithful to Christ to the end of his life. 

If human beings were perfect there’d have been no need for God to send his Son to die. When we look at the Cross and think of Christ’s sufferings we see how much God wants the best for his children and provides for them a new start - day by day forgiveness, guidance and empowerment. Annie and Chris, who we know would willingly suffer hardship for Lily and Taron, share with today’s godparents a great yet joyous responsibility to help their children become what they were made to be. We at St Peter and St John the Baptist stand with you in this today. We congratulate Chris and Annie for your decision on behalf of your children to seek God with us in worship and prayer. May the Holy Spirit counter all that’s negatively at work within us through sin, all that frustrates that fantastic process already well underway in the world and in us, which is to make Christ all in all. So be it!

 

Holy Tuesday online 7 April 2020

Hello and greetings from Anne and I in 13 Marylands off New England Road where we’re growing in the spirituality of the housebound. I’m grateful with us all to Fr Chris for the online network his gifts have generated. Besides saying the office with a group of us on the phone I’m offering Mass here every day at 715am as a rule and friends at St Richard’s are high on my list of intentions. 

It’s Holy Week and we’re trying to get more holy. We’re doing that, most of us, without Holy Communion. How do we manage? C.S.Lewis said ‘next to the Blessed Sacrament… your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses’. I’ve always liked that saying but being shut in for weeks on end seeing our close neighbour as ‘the holiest object presented to your senses’ is another matter. I feel for Anne!

In today’s Gospel we read of Our Lord’s close associates in the days of his flesh, Judas and Peter, and how they failed Jesus their close neighbour. Both had spent years with Christ but when it came to the crunch self-interest triumphed over loyalty. Both were living by their own power with its sinful devices and not by the power of the Holy Spirit. Think better of them a bit because the Holy Spirit was only released as a result of the uncomfortable events of Holy Week they were living through. 

To be made holy we need the Holy Spirit and that we have received at baptism and confirmation. Holy Week is a call to renew that anointing which doesn’t just come from above us. It comes also from around us and within us. Those difficult decisions we have to work out with one another being housebound are part of our sanctification. At our family video conferences online we’re struggling to get the quieter members to speak and shine. Not everyone is like you and me - I speak to an online congregation - not everyone is comfortable with being on TV if you like. My youngest son James, like some of you listening working from home, is expert on the protocol of such conversations with ten or more folk on screen. He’s leading our struggle to get the best listening to one another in the fun, chaos and time consumption of video linking.

Christianity is about love of God, neighbour and self. Sin is about falling short in all three dimensions. Sometimes we deceive ourselves through going to Church, praying, reading the Bible, serving others and confessing our sins that we’re getting holier. Those things are good but they can be done in our own power and not in humility with confidence in the Holy Spirit. That’s why having Holy Week on our own away from Church fastened in at home, save for an hour, maybe family members is a God-send. 

I dare to say it though I don’t fully live it - the struggle to see God in our closest relations is an opportunity for spiritual growth. 

On Friday we come to the foot of the Cross where the ground is level. Corona puts everyone on that level ground in terms of our mortality. As Christians that ground is level in a more profound sense. When you live knowing your need of the Holy Spirit you recognise the sinful shortcomings that put you at the foot of the Cross. Living housebound, alone or in company, can awaken our need for God and loosen us from judging overmuch the shortcomings of others.

On Easter Sunday we’ll renew our baptism promises. In baptism our sinful nature got drowned, in principle, and the new Holy Spirit graced nature came to life, in principle. Christian life, growing in holiness, is about putting the principle of baptism into practice. The sinful nature is still in us but so is the Holy Spirit. Holy Week gives us a chance to put the old nature down and to invite the Holy Spirit to rise in us - so be it even if the Spirit comes as grace under pressure, the pressure of these extraordinary times.

Baptism of the Lord (translated) St Bartholomew, Brighton 14.1.18

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? Acts 19:2

The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord is a shade neglected in the western compared to the eastern Church. Today’s commemoration in the Eastern Orthodox community is the apex of Christmas known in Greek as Theophany, God’s revelation, with outdoor ceremonies literally chilling the blood, folk diving into pools made in the ice and the like. We’ll not go there - but we will go rather this morning to something or Someone who warms the heart: the Holy Spirit.

Today by the Holy Spirit Jesus was revealed as God’s Son, the Christ, the Anointed One so as to share with us Holy Spirit anointing and there’s nothing more warming to the heart than the Holy Spirit for none can guess its grace, till he become the place wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

On this Feast of Christ’ Baptism we sing come down, O Love divine, seek thou this soul of mine and visit it with thine own ardour glowing! May we, like those disciples in Ephesus who hadn’t heard of the Holy Spirit gain ardour (Acts 19:6). May we, like our Lord, anointed by the Spirit, hear God’s voice saying to us individually at this Mass, : ‘You are my Son, my daughter, with you I am well pleased’ (Mark 1:11).

What me? You might ask. How could I be worthy of that? Of God filling my life, of the empowerment in love, joy and peace that Our Lord knew? Well he knew it in his flesh so you could know it! He was anointed so you could be anointed as John the Baptist said in the Gospel: I have baptised you with water; but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.

Today we’re talking not just a one-off Theophany, or manifestation of God, but of the choice of and manifestation of God to you and I represented in our Christian allegiance and our sealing by the Spirit at our baptism, confirmation, and our welcoming Christ Sunday by Sunday in Holy Communion that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.

The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men could be children of God. That’s our good news which though in the providence of God, remains mighty strange!

Both Our Lord’s earthly origins and our own Christian origins thrill with paradox! As the preacher in All Saints, Margaret Street told us the other Sunday Christianity has an ‘extraordinary particularity’. Incidentally I told him afterwards I was helping here and he commented, you’ve got a bigger place to fill than we have! Very true - but the same Catholic religion in London-by-the sea as there at Brighton-in-land!

I’ve distracted you - that phrase ‘extraordinary particularity’ is a good one and is worth examining. Just as the wise men found there own way to Jerusalem but needed special revelation to find Bethlehem so the universal instinct for God needs revelation of where in particular we can find Him.

Christianity’s no man-made religion. It’s nothing made up - its revealed! God so loved the world he revealed - he gave - himself. That revelation unlike that of other faiths is rooted in well evidenced historical events, those we mark at Easter, and in the choice and call the Holy Spirit brings to individuals in every age.

It is as outrageous to logic that you and I welcome the Holy Spirit at this Mass as it is that the Founder of Christianity should appear in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King. That though is the recipe for salvation planned before the foundation of the world.

On this feast we ponder something given to us that goes beyond but not against reason - the privilege Christ shares with us as his sisters and brothers, children of God, who hear again with him those awesome words: ‘You are my Son, with you I am well pleased’.

The Son of God became Son of Man so children of men could be children of God. 

Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers? Yes, you did, but you need to truly believe it! Believe as surely as Our Lord Jesus is the particular Theophany or revelation of God that you in particular are, through the Spirit’s calling, in words spoken of you at your baptism, a child of God and inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

You have that grace - even if like sugar put in tea it needs stirring to sweeten the drink.
God sweeten our lives by stirring up the Spirit he’s put within us. May he bless us as we welcome his coming afresh by his Spirit into our lives in the most holy Sacrament. This is my body given for you.. this is my blood shed for you…  O Christian, recall your nobility! God has chosen you, made you his child and fills you with his Spirit!

Trinity 8 Romans 8 BCP 8am 26th July 2015

Little James and his parents were in church and there was a baptism.

The boy was taken in by all of this. He observed the priest saying something whilst pouring water over the infant’s head.

With a quizzical look on his face, he turned to his father and asked with all the innocence of a five year old ‘Daddy, why is he brainwashing that baby?’

Out of the mouth of babes!

At the baptism later this morning we’ll be reminded of what it is to be a Christian.

We will say we turn to Christ, repent of our sins, renounce evil and profess faith in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

As we say it we will all be a little more brainwashed into Christianity.

At no other place does the Church of England make it so clear what it is to be a Christian than in the baptism service.

We will be brainwashed that bit more into the truth Paul announces in our epistle that the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God and, if children, heirs; heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

As we say what we believe, as we just did in the creed, our words enter our ears and descend to our hearts so that we believe it all the more.

Little James had a point.

In our or our parents choice for us of baptism there is a choice to be placed within the influence of Jesus Christ and his Spirit.

We are influenced by all sorts of worldly things but as Christians our greatest concern is to possessed by the spiritual focus that Jesus offers. 

It doesn't matter how much we do or have but it does matter how much love we put into it and the use of it and to possess what Saint Paul writes of in Ephesians, namely to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, to… be filled with all the fullness of God.

Such an aspiration is a long haul. Baptism is a long haul. It costs a lot but it’s worth a lot as the promises of God make clear, and the pivotal promise is that we just affirmed of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

We do baptisms on Sunday morning when Jesus rose as a reminder of the call to the baptised to honour  Sunday as the Day of Resurrection.

One of the things we get brainwashed or disciplined into as Christians is coming to church on a Sunday.

Sunday’s the day life triumphed over death in the resurrection of Jesus and there’s no more meaningful thing in life than what conquers death.

Earthly life’s a prologue. The book of life proper starts beyond the grave with Christianity’s Founder who is the life, the truth and the way.

Life is what Jesus is all about. God who gives us life wants to give us his life in his Son who said I came to bring them life and have it to the full (John 10 verse 10).

For a Christian the glass is never half empty it’s half full at the least and it gets to overflowing.

Another scripture, again from John, makes this plain. Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. Jesus says Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.

When we choose Jesus there’s a fruitful overflowing. Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit… wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

As someone said God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.

Religion can get a bit nutty, yes. It’s God-given but it does get man-handled.

We seek the spiritual fruitfulness that flows from the long haul of baptism, trust in God’s promises and the hope of the resurrection.

May the Holy Spirit who anoints us with the bread and wine and words of the eucharist bring us energy this morning as we offer ourselves our souls and bodies in union with Jesus Christ to God our almighty Father. 

Baptism of Jasmine Pike 21st September 2014

To live is Christ – or living is Christ in today’s translation of Philippians 1:21 – what does that mean?

What does it mean to 1st century Paul and 21^st century you and I?

To Jasmine whose happy day of Christian initiation this is?

To live is Christ. It’s a mystical saying, four words that sum up the life philosophy of Christianity’s greatest teacher. After a blinding light of revelation on the road to Damascus Paul had carried resurrection news of Jesus to the four corners of his world and now he is in prison. The words we read today are a letter from one under sentence of death who writes to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.

What assurance! Assurance linked to personal knowledge of our risen Saviour Jesus Christ. The Lord who had said to him what he would say to us this morning:  Your way leads to a hopeless end. My way leads to an endless hope!

To live without Christ is to live towards a hopeless end. To live with Christ is to live towards an endless hope, for dying Jesus broke the power of death and rising opened joyous eternity to all who’ll live in him.

To live is Christ. What does that mean? It means to live your life with the gift of faith, rooted and grounded in the Christian community, walking with them in the way of Christ and the worship of his Church. So says the baptism service!

This is the way Harry, Milly, Anthia, Anicia and Jasmine want to follow and its lovely for Anthia and Anicia, baptised and confirmed last year, to be standing by their little sister this morning as the family commit her to God’s family of which they’ve made themselves part.

To live is Christ. Making an analogy with classic figures from ancient history St Alphonsus Liguori who lived in the 18^th century wrote: Diogenes went about seeking a man upon earth: hominem quaero; but God seems to be seeking a Christian among the many faithful: Christianum quaero. For very few are they who have the works, the greater part have only the name; but to these should be said what Alexander said to that cowardly soldier who was also named Alexander: change either your name or your conduct: Aut nomen, aut mores muta. But as written elsewhere it would be better if these miserable creatures were put in confinement as madmen, believing as they do, that a happy eternity is prepared for him who lives well, and unhappy eternity for him who lives ill, and yet living as if they do not believe this.

We cannot say with Paul to live is Christ unless we not only believe in and pray in Christ’s name but also act in Christ’s name, act as if we believe.

Ten days ago I attended the Chichester diocesan clergy conference at the University of Kent. 300 priests and deacons worshipped, prayed and learned together gaining a new sense of purpose and collaboration under the leadership of our diocesan Bishop Martin Warner and his assistant Bishops Mark Sowerby of Horsham and Richard Jackson of Lewes. We were privileged to stay in freshly restored rooms at the University, to be fed like kings and to worship with Archbishops, so to speak, down the road in Canterbury Cathedral.

In his closing address Bishop Martin, who is like me a Latinist, took an ancient motto lex orandi lex credendi which means ‘the law of praying is the law of believing’ and added lex agendi, the law of action. The bishop wants seamless connection between Christian worship, the Christian creed and Christian action. What we pray is to be more fully linked to both what we believe and what we do with our lives and in our churches.

To live is Christ and to be rooted in Christian prayer, teaching and action.  Bishop Martin extended this challenge to us as fellow priests and diocesan leaders to form up a diocese that’s younger, financially solvent and better at risk-taking.  He wants tighter and more immediate communication across the church in Sussex and many more gifted laity operating in the counsels of the diocese, especially in finance, property and liaison with the political world.

Above all he applauded the virtue of kindness as a key quality of life in Christ. If to live is Christ that is to live kindly, literally in kindred, related to one another, to those whose nature, whose humanity we share. All of which is counter to the depersonalising commodification of the person that afflicts our culture.

The German philosopher Nietzche was no friend of Christianity and famously said: Show me that you are redeemed and then I will believe in your redeemer. He had a point. St Augustine was fully aware of that point 1500 years before him when he said No fragrance can be more pleasing to God than that of his own Son. May all the faithful breathe out the same perfume. If to live is Christ it is to be Christ to others through kindness.

To live is Christ which means not as mean-spirited, narrow-mind sour pusses lacking in mercy but as those who know forgiveness from God and who show it to others.

I know that my redeemer lives said Job in words prophesying Christ’s resurrection. To know that redeemer and his redemption from the tendency within to harm others is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is also the basis of hope in the face of death, as Paul adds, after saying to live is Christ, to die is gain. We are in life if we’re in Christ, life that can never die, eternal life.

Your way leads to a hopeless end. My way leads to an endless hope!

God’s nothing to do with death he’s our life and hope for ever!

To live is Christ is to know that life, to know that your redeemer lives, that he is your redeemer and that he lives in you by the grace and the fruit of baptism.

It’s to be the fragrance of Christ, giving people opportunity to breath in the perfume of his Spirit’s work in our lives.

To the joyless we bring joy, to the loveless we bring love to the unforgiving we bring forgiveness.

May such grace be ours through the eucharist we celebrate this morning.

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.

Baptism of the Lord 12th January 2013

I’ve got my passport out - here it is - and we're getting the children to look at where I’ve been: Guyana, Lebanon, Brasil, Barbados, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and so on and what an awful picture!

Did you know the earliest reference to a passport is in the Bible? It’s in the book of Nehemiah Chapter 2 and is from around about 450 B.C. Nehemiah, an official serving King Artaxerxes of ancient Persia, asked permission to travel to Judah. The King agreed and gave Nehemiah a letter "to the governors of the province beyond the river" requesting safe passage for him as he travelled through their lands.

Today's passports still carry such a letter of request. Inside the front cover is a letter issued in the name of Her Majesty the Queen. Like Nehemiah's letter, it also asks for safe passage and protection for the holder of the passport.

In the Middle Ages passports were letters saying which cities and city gates a person might travel through, pass porte is a French term which means, pass through the gate.

So what’s all this to do with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord?

When God’s people passed from one country to another they went through the river. 

They passed through a river into the Promised Land, where they could start a new life as God s people. 

When John the Baptist came to tell people that Jesus was coming he took them to the river as well.  He baptised them because they were saying that they wanted to start again with God, and live his new life. 

Jesus came to give us new life.  If we have been baptised it is as if we have been given a passport, which allows us to pass from living for ourselves to living for God.

At his baptism Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit as Christ so that we might share in his anointing and be given a passport to abundant living!

We live as Christians with dual citizenship. We’re citizens of this world (UK passport) with all its privileges and we’re citizens of God’s kingdom through baptism with additional privileges, what I’ve just called ‘abundant living’.

I  asked folk last week to think about sharing this morning something of what they see as the privileges of living in God’s kingdom, the benefits of church membership, of being a Christian, of abundant life as I’ve called it. One of our members sent me this e mail in consequence:

I had simply never thought about it, so it’s been intriguing me! She says, then lists four items:

To receive Communion, which reminds me that I am loved by God.

To learn from other individual Christians, who give me a good example to follow.

To be part of a fellowship which has nothing necessarily to do with my social life, or my family, or my work, which connects me to the family of God and encourages me.

To know that we are stronger together than when we try to work alone.

Maybe that’s got you thinking yourself of the blessings that are yours!

A Christian is one very aware of their privileges in sharing the anointing of the Anointed One.  We can only live to the full if we welcome and own that anointing in the Holy Spirit which is our own through baptism.

Maybe the church in this land has not failed so much as shrunk back from its task and that we need to get back to basics. That is why we need what Jesus received and offered at his baptism – we need the Holy Spirit to come in power upon us.

Almost his last words to his first disciples at the hour of his ascension were a promise that takes up these first words about him at the start of his ministry: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses he said, as recorded in Acts 1.8

We hear regularly on the news of people from abroad seeking passports or the equivalent to Britain so they can live with greater abundance materially. That should make us proud to have British passports!

How proud are we of the spiritual abundance that is ours through our Christian faith and the passport of baptism?

How’s your enthusiasm for your Christianity and for sharing it? As one who shares in the Spirit’s anointing could today’s eucharist be for you a rekindling of passion through a fresh anointing in that Spirit on the Feast of Jesus’ own anointing?

So be it! God grant us a right pride in both our nationality and our Christianity!

Marriage blessing Mark & Lyndsey Taggart & baptism of Niamh 15.9.13

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

Christianity’s as simple as that statement and it’s exactly what we’re affirming this morning with Mark and Lyndsey with their wedding blessing and the baptism of Neeve.

The couple have known each other since they were teenagers working in Somerfield at Rustington. Their friendship developed alongside their separate careers, Lyndsey’s in law and accountancy, Mark’s at Abbey National, Lloyds, photography and now at Abbots pharmacy and as Neeve’s carer. In my years at St Giles I’ve met Mark as a wedding photographer and, more recently, as ‘the drug man’ on Abbots deliveries. Today is the fruit of Rectory doorstep conversations.

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

It’s that sense that brought Lyndsey and Mark to a civil marriage six years ago and to the Christian blessing of that marriage and the baptism of Neeve today.

As regular worshippers Mark and Lyndsey know that last week I returned from the Holy Land with a bottle of Cana miracle wedding wine that we used last Sunday for Holy Communion. We were going to use the residue this morning but due to a mishap I’ve only got the cardboard box left show – and no I didn’t drink it. There was an accident before the 8 o’clock. Still the thought – and indeed the smell of spilled Cana wine – is still with us on the occasion of Mark and Lyndsey’s nuptial blessing.

You just heard the story - Jesus’ first miracle performed at a wedding in Cana, a village I visited two weeks ago in the Galilee region of Israel. In the story Mary intercedes with Jesus her son to win a blessing on an embarrassed bridegroom when the drink ran out, rather like my own embarrassment this morning. His marriage began with a special blessing from the Son of God as Jesus turned water into wine. This morning the Jesus of Cana will become our spiritual drink at the eucharist as we celebrate marriage and family with the Taggarts.

Being married is a bit like being changed from water into wine. We enter a richer state, one in which our life is shared, in which we lose our life to one another and so gain.

"In marriage husband and wife belong to one another" says our marriage service.

It is not always easy to recognise the claim we have on one another when we are husband and wife - and I speak as a married man.

However if we accept as Christians that our lives do not belong to us in the first place but are lent from God it is a lot easier to be married and lose control of your life.

The real destroyer of life and of marriage is the anti-Christian view that "it's my life and I can live it as I wish".

In truth all of us whether we admit it or not come from God, belong to God and go to God. He and he alone is our beginning. He and he alone is our end - and in calling us to marriage God is challenging us to live not for ourselves as selfish people but for one another and for him as godly people.

Self love is God's enemy and it is the enemy of marriage, family and society, but it is in us all!

Jesus Christ comes into our world and into our lives to root out self love and plant his generosity within us so that we live by his spirit. I have just returned from the place – Cana in Galilee – where Jesus provided his first miracle and from Jerusalem, the place of his greatest miracle.  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre marks the place of his Resurrection, an event that is held by a third of the earth’s population today to reveal love so extravagant it shrinks death to nothing.

When Jesus Christ suffered and died God was in him. There was a divine judo at play. Death flew at God and ended up upside down and out at the count.

For when they came to his tomb there was no Jesus. Just a promise, ‘Lo I am with you always even unto the end of the world’ – and so he is!

We come from God, we belong to God, we go to God.

God does not send us alone on life’s journey but in company with his Son. He also gives us companions through friendship and through the union of life-giving love we know as marriage as Mark and Lyndsey have reminded us this morning.

The Church also provides us with companions for that journey from nd to God. We are God’s never ending family made so through Jesus Christ who died and rose and gives us his Spirit. In Horsted Keynes that family has met for worship on this hill for 1000 years. Mark, Lyndsey and Neeve are joined to the family this morning. Neeve’s name is entered as latest name into our baptism register as my name was entered 4 years ago as latest name on the century old Rector’s list at the back.

Priests and people, married and single, young and old we are all called by God to belong to him and to find fulfilment in his praise and service.  

The Lord Jesus is God’s Son sent to accompany us in joy and sorrow. It is he who represents the claim of God to us – God’s claim of love!

Mark and Lyndsey as a couple belong to one another. They recognise the claims they now have upon each other. May Jesus be truly with them as he was with that couple in Cana of Galilee so that they will lack no blessing on their pilgrimage in life with Neeve and whoever is to come.

May they live to see their children's children, strengthened by the Lord and by the fellowship of families and friends all joined together by this happy occasion.

The Lord bless you as he did that couple at Cana in Galilee with the enjoyment of him and one another, and all who come your way, so that your family be made itself a blessing to the world!

Baptism of Ruby Fuller & BCP Easter 5 James 1.17-21 28th April 2013

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1.17

Spring has sprung. When St James speaks of gifts from above we are very aware at this time of a flowering of life and vitality that comes in Christian understanding from God the giver of every perfect gift.

As I look out of the Rectory window I can watch the lambs running joyfully in the field below. They’re an uplifting image of freedom that touches a spring inside of me. Their excitement at life is evident as they go leaping and bounding around, blissfully unaware of the commercial aspect of their life, nor of its brevity.

In this moment they are an image of joyful abandonment that refreshes my spirit. Their seeming carelessness goes as soon as their mothers lift themselves from the ground and they dart underneath them for milk. They are driven as all animals are, including myself, by the need for food.

As I watch them I am uplifted and as I am lifted I become aware of how unlike a carefree lamb my life is running. I am regretful of past faults, mindful of a load of administration pressing upon me and I am somewhat anxious about all the tasks that fall on me as a parish priest.

Unlike the lambs I am aware of the weight of care that pulls my spirit down. For the lambs each moment stands alone – no past regrets or future anxieties – indeed no real sense of past or future accomplishment. They prosper without repentance, just following the law of nature, since they are incapable of the disobedience that is mine. Their capacity to skip down the field shows a mastery over gravity that, whilst warming my heart, challenges my sinful weight of self preoccupation. 

I think Stewart and Alison, with all their cares as parents, must feel the same when they look at Ruby and thrill at her joyful carelessness. It is so good to have you here following your marriage almost two years ago. We are delighted – me especially as Cricket Club Chaplain – to further join your family to God’s family here at St Giles.

That image of gravitational pull can be a way of thinking about the things that matter in life. You could think of the gravitational pull up of divine love as competing with the gravitational pull down of the evil in the world and that in our souls we call sin. The one gravitational field of the spirit draws us into God’s love and the other field drags us down.

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. But our spirits – they get pulled down too and can feel very heavy.

Human beings are pulled down in the gravitational field of what our first lesson describes as sordidness and rank growth of wickedness. The downward gravity of sin 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 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 when we make him our choice as we do in baptism. Through Christ’s resurrection from cruel death the gravitational pull of God’s love has proved itself more powerful than the quicksands of sin, death and the devil.

The sinful human condition is something we can’t escape from unaided. 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.

Look to him my friends – not least in this Holy Eucharist!