This was a sermon for a baptism. Readings were 1 John 4:6-16 and Matthew 19:13-15
Introduction
We have come here this morning as we do every Sunday morning to worship God as a Christian community, to praise God, to pray together and to sustain and support each other in our Christian life.
And this morning we are especially blessed to welcome the family of L who has just been baptised and, through his baptism, welcomed into the world-wide Church of Christ.
This morning’s reading from the first letter of John gives us a very good summary of the core beliefs of the Christian faith: That God loves each and every one of us because he made us. That God showed his love for us through Jesus. And that God lives in us and that he calls us to be agents of his love in the world.
So, I want to think about each of these things very briefly this morning in light of L’s baptism.
God loves us because he made us
First of all: God loves us because he made each and every one of us.
The baptism service that we witnesses this morning is a wonderful sign of God’s love for each and every one of us. In the service, we heard that everything that God has done for L – and for us, of course – was done before he (or we) could even know anything about it.
The offer of God’s love never depends on anything that we do, it is simply there, like the love of a good parent. God’s love doesn’t depend on our good behaviour; it doesn’t depend us loving God back; it doesn’t depend on anything. God simply loves us because he created us. And God loves everything that he created.
Just like a good parent wouldn’t say: ‘I’m not going to love you until you clean up your room’, God doesn’t make his love dependent on our good behaviour. God simply loves us because he created us.
We heard in this morning’s short reading from Matthew that God wants to give his love to little children, but he also wants to give his love to adults, even those who might think that they are no longer loveable.
God Showed his Love for Us Through Jesus
Secondly: God showed his love for us through Jesus.
On the one hand, this is a simple statement, on the other hand, there is an awful lot in it. There is enough material here for many sermons and we only have a few minutes.
In Jesus, God was born into the world as a small baby, and, like L here today, he was dependent on human beings in order to grow into an adult. Not only did Jesus come to teach us, but in some sense he also learned from us and was dependant on us.
But Jesus did also come here to teach us. He was a healer and someone who forgave sins.
Imagine what the world would be like if every single person imitated Jesus and devoted their life to healing rather than harming and to forgiving rather than holding grudges.
But human beings didn’t embrace Jesus’ message of healing and forgiveness. Instead, we rebelled against who he was and we killed him.
And there is something about that death of Jesus that brought hope into the world. We killed God, we thought that we killed healing and forgiveness and hope, but God had the final word at Easter. The resurrection is God’s demonstration that healing and hope and forgiveness will always be his final word to humankind.
And so today we have baptised L into God’s world of healing and hope and forgiveness.
We are Called to Live As Christ Lived
And finally, we are called to live as Christ lived.
When an adult is baptised, he or she receives confirmation directly after the baptism according to the ancient pattern. This confirmation is the adult person’s declaration that they intend, with God’s help, to try to live the sort of life that Jesus lived.
L, of course, can’t make that decision for himself and so today is he has been baptised into the sign and symbol of God’s love. As a baby, L’s ‘job’ right now is to be loved and cherished and to grow up surrounded by the love of God and of family.
And so baptism is a fitting sacrament in light of L’s age and L’s ‘job’.
But it is the hope and prayer of the church that, as he grows up, he will learn about the love of God and that he will want to be confirmed and to make a public commitment as a follower of Christ.
Because Christianity isn’t just for babies and children. As we grow older, we wrestle with life issues that are complex and don’t always have easy answers. Things like uncertainty, fear, disappointment, and health issues. As Christians, we believe that we have guidelines by which to negotiate difficult life situations.
Life doesn’t always provide easy answers in these situations, but not only do we have our brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we can share our burdens and struggles, but we also believe that we have the help and power of the Holy Spirit through prayer and fellowship.
Conclusion
So this morning we have participated in L’s baptism as a Christian community and we have welcomed him into the house of God via the sacrament of Baptism.
This sacrament expresses the love of God, freely given to all of us before we even knew anything of it.
In a few minutes we will celebrate another sacrament: the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is also a place where human beings are freely invited into the love and forgiveness of God. This God’s celebration banquet where all are welcome. With God, there is no such thing as an invited guest or an uninvited guest, but all are welcomed provided that it is their intention to meet with Christ and accept the hospitality of his table.
So it is my prayer this morning that, just as L has met with God in the sacrament of Baptism, that the rest of us may also meet with Christ in this service of worship and at the Lord’s Table. As God’s family, we come to his meal, we celebrate his presence and his love among us, and we welcome our brother L and his family into the presence of the living God.
Showing posts with label Baptism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baptism. Show all posts
Monday, April 14, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Sunday 13 January 2008 - The Baptism of Jesus
This is a sermon on The Baptism of Jesus based on Matthew 3:13-17 and Isaiah 42:1-9.
===
Matthew 3:13-17
I remember the day well, even though it was many years ago. I was a disciple of John then – John the Baptist as you call him.
John was a unique and charismatic figure in the life of the people of God. He’s been viewed by many as the last in the line of the Prophets. At the time I began following John – before Jesus came along – there were a number of us who were beginning to wonder whether John was the Messiah.
You see, John ticked all the boxes of what many of us thought the Messiah would look and sound like. John lived in the desert, wore rough clothes, ate locusts and wild honey and constantly called the Jewish people to repentance.
There were many of us who believed that if one Jewish man could keep all of the Law for just one day, then the Kingdom of God would come to earth. Some thought that John would be the man to keep all of the Law and that, in his keeping of it, he would be given divine success in calling the whole nation to repentance. Anyway, I followed John because it was clear to me that the power of God’s Spirit was with him, whether he was the Messiah or simply a great Prophet.
So it was a thrill to go down to the River Jordan and listen to John. He preached ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’ and hundreds, if not thousand, of people would respond to his call to repent and be baptised.
One day, though, I was surprised when a man came to John to be baptised and John started insisting that he didn’t need to be baptised. Since everyone needs repentance, I wondered about the identity of this man who John seemed to think had no need for repentance.
Of course these many years later, I now know that the man was Jesus, the Messiah, who we as Christians now profess to be both Son of God and Son of Man. Clearly on the day that Jesus presented himself for his baptism, John was confused, possibly feeling humble and inadequate and trying to work out why it was that the Messiah would need to be baptised. Jesus simply stated that his baptism was needed to ‘fulfil all righteousness’ – a statement that I’ve had thirty years to think about!
Jesus’ baptism was, of course, the beginning of his ministry. And obedience to the Father was a mark of Jesus’ mission here on earth, so perhaps it was appropriate that Jesus begin his ministry by behaving in obedience to the Father’s will. To tell you the truth we’re still trying to figure this one out. By ‘we’, I mean me and the rest of my brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re trying to come to grips with what it means that Jesus is the Son of God. If Jesus was divine, as we believe him to have been, perhaps his baptism was simply following a script that he and the Father had established before the foundation of the world.
But I’m not sure that his baptism was just about inaugurating his ministry. The appearance of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and the presence of the Father’s voice were certainly confirmations of Jesus’ divine mandate but I think that there was something more to his baptism than that.
Maybe the question isn’t ‘What did it mean for the man Jesus to be divine?’ Maybe the question is ‘What did it mean for God to become a human being?’
When we – ordinary people – are baptised, we say that as we go under the water that we are dying to ourselves and rising to Christ. We also say that the water washes away our sins; it’s as if our sins drop to the bottom of the river and are washed away in the current. But, of course, Jesus didn’t need his sins washed away.
This is what I wonder, though: What if all those human sins – the ones I’ve pictured washing away in the current of the Jordan river – what if, instead of being washed away, they attached themselves to Jesus during his baptism? What if, for our sake, God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might be made righteous?
I hope you understand that I’m not saying that this ‘literally’ happened. I’m thinking of this as a sort of picture or metaphor. But I’m trying to say that there was something important about Jesus’ ministry that was not just about understanding human sin-and-suffering - but actually experiencing human sin-and-suffering even though Jesus was divine.
And just as, in baptism, we die to ourselves in order to live for Christ, so I think maybe at his own baptism Jesus died to himself in order to fulfil the will of the Father, or what he called ‘all righteousness’.
Well, it’s been good chatting with you. I’ve not thought about these things for a long time and I’m an old man now. I think I’ve made my brain hurt and I wonder if yours hurts too. If I could, I’d invite you into my house for a meal and fellowship, but as that’s not possible, I thought that perhaps we could take a brake and have a song.
Isaiah 42:1-9
Of course, we in the early church only had the Hebrew Scriptures. In my time we didn’t have any scrolls of what you now call the books of the New Testament. We had to try to understand Jesus and his mission in the light of Old Testament. And the image of the Servant in Isaiah was a picture that was familiar to us.
Remember that Jesus washed the disciples’ feet just hours before he died. And Jesus constantly said that the last would be first and the first would be last. And so it’s not surprising that we in the early church turned to images of the servant and the suffering servant in order to try to understand Jesus’ mission.
Isaiah 42:1 reads: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
Now, back in the old days, before Jesus came along, we Jewish people understood this image of the Servant to have a double meaning: The Servant was, some thought, a promise of a future Messiah. But it was also an image of the role that Israel would play in bringing about God’s kingdom.
So it’s hardly surprising, then, that when we came to understand that Jesus was the Messiah, that we understood these texts to be talking about Messiah Jesus and about his followers as the people who would bring about God’s kingdom.
Did you notice, that at Jesus’ baptism, the Father uses similar words as Isaiah? This is my son in whom I am well pleased; This is my servant in whom my soul delights. As a friend of mine joked: ‘God has a good working knowledge of Hebrew scripture.’1
Through my eyes, friends, this is a wonderful passage, especially as I read it in the light of Jesus’ baptism. This is a glorious promise of salvation and justice for a people in exile. And it’s not the kind of justice that will sweep the earth burning everything and everyone in its path, but rather a justice with kindness that acts on behalf of those who have already been broken by the sins of the world.
This is a picture, not of a conquering hero, but of a saviour who takes on my sin and who knows exactly what it means to struggle on earth as a finite human being with limited knowledge. To me, this is a picture of a God in the mess with me. It’s not a God who observes the pain of being human, but it’s a God who experiences the pain of being human. In Jesus, God knows by experience what it means to be rejected and hunted down and what it means to be God-forsaken. 2
But, of course, there is the other side of the coin: our calling to be like Jesus. Just as Israel was called to be like the Messiah, so in Jesus is the Christian church called to be like Christ. Christ was baptised into our sin and we were baptised into Christ’s holiness so that we too could take part in his resurrection.
And so it’s my prayer this morning that the story of the Baptism of Christ will inspire us all to remember our own Baptism. May we give God thanks for loving us so much that he became human and took our sin on himself in order to destroy it on the cross.
And I pray that we will dedicate ourselves anew to being the instruments of God’s justice on earth and that we will be kind and gentle in our dealings with others so as not to further hurt those who have already been broken by sin. Amen
---
1 From the article ‘Descent into the depths’ by John Pridmore in The Church Times 11 January 2008, p. 18.
2 From a letter to the editor written by Jeremy Craddock in The Church Times 11 January 2008, p. 15.
===
Matthew 3:13-17
I remember the day well, even though it was many years ago. I was a disciple of John then – John the Baptist as you call him.
John was a unique and charismatic figure in the life of the people of God. He’s been viewed by many as the last in the line of the Prophets. At the time I began following John – before Jesus came along – there were a number of us who were beginning to wonder whether John was the Messiah.
You see, John ticked all the boxes of what many of us thought the Messiah would look and sound like. John lived in the desert, wore rough clothes, ate locusts and wild honey and constantly called the Jewish people to repentance.
There were many of us who believed that if one Jewish man could keep all of the Law for just one day, then the Kingdom of God would come to earth. Some thought that John would be the man to keep all of the Law and that, in his keeping of it, he would be given divine success in calling the whole nation to repentance. Anyway, I followed John because it was clear to me that the power of God’s Spirit was with him, whether he was the Messiah or simply a great Prophet.
So it was a thrill to go down to the River Jordan and listen to John. He preached ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’ and hundreds, if not thousand, of people would respond to his call to repent and be baptised.
One day, though, I was surprised when a man came to John to be baptised and John started insisting that he didn’t need to be baptised. Since everyone needs repentance, I wondered about the identity of this man who John seemed to think had no need for repentance.
Of course these many years later, I now know that the man was Jesus, the Messiah, who we as Christians now profess to be both Son of God and Son of Man. Clearly on the day that Jesus presented himself for his baptism, John was confused, possibly feeling humble and inadequate and trying to work out why it was that the Messiah would need to be baptised. Jesus simply stated that his baptism was needed to ‘fulfil all righteousness’ – a statement that I’ve had thirty years to think about!
Jesus’ baptism was, of course, the beginning of his ministry. And obedience to the Father was a mark of Jesus’ mission here on earth, so perhaps it was appropriate that Jesus begin his ministry by behaving in obedience to the Father’s will. To tell you the truth we’re still trying to figure this one out. By ‘we’, I mean me and the rest of my brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re trying to come to grips with what it means that Jesus is the Son of God. If Jesus was divine, as we believe him to have been, perhaps his baptism was simply following a script that he and the Father had established before the foundation of the world.
But I’m not sure that his baptism was just about inaugurating his ministry. The appearance of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove and the presence of the Father’s voice were certainly confirmations of Jesus’ divine mandate but I think that there was something more to his baptism than that.
Maybe the question isn’t ‘What did it mean for the man Jesus to be divine?’ Maybe the question is ‘What did it mean for God to become a human being?’
When we – ordinary people – are baptised, we say that as we go under the water that we are dying to ourselves and rising to Christ. We also say that the water washes away our sins; it’s as if our sins drop to the bottom of the river and are washed away in the current. But, of course, Jesus didn’t need his sins washed away.
This is what I wonder, though: What if all those human sins – the ones I’ve pictured washing away in the current of the Jordan river – what if, instead of being washed away, they attached themselves to Jesus during his baptism? What if, for our sake, God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might be made righteous?
I hope you understand that I’m not saying that this ‘literally’ happened. I’m thinking of this as a sort of picture or metaphor. But I’m trying to say that there was something important about Jesus’ ministry that was not just about understanding human sin-and-suffering - but actually experiencing human sin-and-suffering even though Jesus was divine.
And just as, in baptism, we die to ourselves in order to live for Christ, so I think maybe at his own baptism Jesus died to himself in order to fulfil the will of the Father, or what he called ‘all righteousness’.
Well, it’s been good chatting with you. I’ve not thought about these things for a long time and I’m an old man now. I think I’ve made my brain hurt and I wonder if yours hurts too. If I could, I’d invite you into my house for a meal and fellowship, but as that’s not possible, I thought that perhaps we could take a brake and have a song.
Isaiah 42:1-9
Of course, we in the early church only had the Hebrew Scriptures. In my time we didn’t have any scrolls of what you now call the books of the New Testament. We had to try to understand Jesus and his mission in the light of Old Testament. And the image of the Servant in Isaiah was a picture that was familiar to us.
Remember that Jesus washed the disciples’ feet just hours before he died. And Jesus constantly said that the last would be first and the first would be last. And so it’s not surprising that we in the early church turned to images of the servant and the suffering servant in order to try to understand Jesus’ mission.
Isaiah 42:1 reads: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
Now, back in the old days, before Jesus came along, we Jewish people understood this image of the Servant to have a double meaning: The Servant was, some thought, a promise of a future Messiah. But it was also an image of the role that Israel would play in bringing about God’s kingdom.
So it’s hardly surprising, then, that when we came to understand that Jesus was the Messiah, that we understood these texts to be talking about Messiah Jesus and about his followers as the people who would bring about God’s kingdom.
Did you notice, that at Jesus’ baptism, the Father uses similar words as Isaiah? This is my son in whom I am well pleased; This is my servant in whom my soul delights. As a friend of mine joked: ‘God has a good working knowledge of Hebrew scripture.’1
Through my eyes, friends, this is a wonderful passage, especially as I read it in the light of Jesus’ baptism. This is a glorious promise of salvation and justice for a people in exile. And it’s not the kind of justice that will sweep the earth burning everything and everyone in its path, but rather a justice with kindness that acts on behalf of those who have already been broken by the sins of the world.
This is a picture, not of a conquering hero, but of a saviour who takes on my sin and who knows exactly what it means to struggle on earth as a finite human being with limited knowledge. To me, this is a picture of a God in the mess with me. It’s not a God who observes the pain of being human, but it’s a God who experiences the pain of being human. In Jesus, God knows by experience what it means to be rejected and hunted down and what it means to be God-forsaken. 2
But, of course, there is the other side of the coin: our calling to be like Jesus. Just as Israel was called to be like the Messiah, so in Jesus is the Christian church called to be like Christ. Christ was baptised into our sin and we were baptised into Christ’s holiness so that we too could take part in his resurrection.
And so it’s my prayer this morning that the story of the Baptism of Christ will inspire us all to remember our own Baptism. May we give God thanks for loving us so much that he became human and took our sin on himself in order to destroy it on the cross.
And I pray that we will dedicate ourselves anew to being the instruments of God’s justice on earth and that we will be kind and gentle in our dealings with others so as not to further hurt those who have already been broken by sin. Amen
---
1 From the article ‘Descent into the depths’ by John Pridmore in The Church Times 11 January 2008, p. 18.
2 From a letter to the editor written by Jeremy Craddock in The Church Times 11 January 2008, p. 15.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Sermon - The Dishonest Servant
This sermon is based on Luke 16:1-13, the parable of the Dishonest Servant.
====
Introduction
This morning, I want to ask the question: 'What is it in life that matters?' In many ways, this is a personal question for each one of us and there are no right or wrong answers. From another perspective, as Christians, our faith will have an important role in informing our values.
We all have points in our lives where we are given to contemplate - sometimes forced to contemplate - what it is that matters to us.
A friend of mine has just moved house to take up her first appointment as a minister. In making this move, the whole family has been consulted over a time period of about five years: husband as well as children. Although everyone in the family agreed to the move, one of her teenagers is finding life quite difficult right now: uprooted from school friends and, it seems, from a budding but fragile sense of identity. What is it that's important in this situation? No easy answers here. Certainly, my friend's child is one of the most precious and important things in her life.
Another friend became a grandmother for the first time last year. Many of you might recognise the scenario, but I was surprised at the effect it had on my friend. For the first few months after her grandson was born, she was walking around acting like a love-sick teenager. You couldn't have any kind of conversation with her without her telling you about the latest cute thing her grandson had done: 'We know it was probably only gas, but it looked like he was giving his mummy the biggest most wonderful smile. He's the most wonderful baby in the world!'
'What is it in life that matters?' What matters to you? What matters to God?
A Difficult Parable
Today's Gospel reading about the shrewd servant is probably one of the most difficult gospel readings for modern people to understand. I suspect that this is possibly because we are used to reading parables in a rather incorrect way. For example, we are used to reading the Parable of the Prodigal Son in a certain way. And no matter how the preacher jumps up and down trying to tell us how outrageous and utterly unthinkable it would be for a son to ask for his inheritance before his father's death, or how unthinkable it would be for a father to then forgive such an action, we still tend to read parables as if they were analogies. The son represents the ungrateful sinner, the father represents God, and so on and so on, and this is what the parable means.
But today we have a parable that is as outrageous to modern ears as many of the original parables would have been to Jesus' hearers and we don't know exactly what to do with it. If we read it in the manner in which we are used to reading parables, I think we get a message that is something like verse 11: 'If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?' To which, I think, we can only
say: 'Huh?'
And that's why I am posing the question, 'What is it in life that matters?' I want to suggest that one thing the parable might be saying to us is something about the importance of relationships: the importance of God's relationship with us and our relationships with other people.
To give a quick defence of this approach: this parable comes directly after the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the parable of the Prodigal Son. It comes before Luke launches a denunciation on those who make money their priority, which culminates in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, which is next Sunday's Gospel reading. Like the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost Son, God longs to draw all people into relationship with him. God will do whatever it takes to form a relationship with human beings: he will search us out and he is even prepared to forgive some pretty outrageous behaviour.
Relationship & The Body of Christ
What is it in life that matters? To love God and to love our fellow human beings and to be in relationship with them. Life is about relationship and, for Christians, all our relationships are fundamentally grounded in the love of God. However feeble or misguided our energies and efforts (and we know that most of our human efforts are feeble and misguided) it is advisable to direct them toward things that will last rather than toward things that will pass away.
Relationship is, I think, at the very core of what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian is to enter into a community via baptism: the universal Christian church, the Body of Christ. In that baptism, we symbolically die to our Self and we rise to become one with Christ in his Body here on earth. We enter into the life of Christ: a life that looks outside of our own private concerns to other people, to the community and to the world.
St. Augustine said that to be baptised is to be baptised into a life of sacrifice, which he defined as 'loving God and loving one's neighbour as oneself'.
With Christ we also enter into the life of the Trinity: into a relationship with a God who is a force for creation rather than for destruction; into a relationship with a God whose nature is - as the prayer book says - always and everywhere to have mercy; into a relationship with a God who empowers us through himself to reach outside ourselves and to manifest his love to those around us.
The Church is the Body of Christ here on earth and we are charged with Christ's on-going mission until the Kingdom of God has arrived. In entering into the life of the Trinity, we benefit from God's creative energy, from his mercy and his strength; we hopefully grow in our own capacity for love and for reaching out to others. Relationship and community are the essence of human life as God created it to be.
Conclusion
It's my hypothesis for this morning that however far away the Dishonest Servant might have been from the will of God, he did at least understand the importance of relationships. Despite all his faults and all his mistakes there was something inside him that told him what was of ultimate worth.
The Dishonest Servant was bumbling and inept and we might imagine that the relationships he formed by buying friendship would not have been terribly satisfying until they were transformed, but at least he had a tiny inkling of what's important.
We can imagine that perhaps, just perhaps, the God who leaves the 99 sheep to look for one in the wilderness might have mercy. We can imagine that perhaps the God who sweeps everywhere looking for the lost coin might have mercy. We can imagine that perhaps the Father who rushes to meet the son who wronged him might have mercy.
In a few minutes, we will come as the Body of Christ to meet with the risen Lord at his table. I pray that, as we do so, we may enter more fully into the life of the God who loves us. I pray that our hearts may be filled with love of God and love of neighbour and I pray that we each find what it is that is important in life. Amen
====
Introduction
This morning, I want to ask the question: 'What is it in life that matters?' In many ways, this is a personal question for each one of us and there are no right or wrong answers. From another perspective, as Christians, our faith will have an important role in informing our values.
We all have points in our lives where we are given to contemplate - sometimes forced to contemplate - what it is that matters to us.
A friend of mine has just moved house to take up her first appointment as a minister. In making this move, the whole family has been consulted over a time period of about five years: husband as well as children. Although everyone in the family agreed to the move, one of her teenagers is finding life quite difficult right now: uprooted from school friends and, it seems, from a budding but fragile sense of identity. What is it that's important in this situation? No easy answers here. Certainly, my friend's child is one of the most precious and important things in her life.
Another friend became a grandmother for the first time last year. Many of you might recognise the scenario, but I was surprised at the effect it had on my friend. For the first few months after her grandson was born, she was walking around acting like a love-sick teenager. You couldn't have any kind of conversation with her without her telling you about the latest cute thing her grandson had done: 'We know it was probably only gas, but it looked like he was giving his mummy the biggest most wonderful smile. He's the most wonderful baby in the world!'
'What is it in life that matters?' What matters to you? What matters to God?
A Difficult Parable
Today's Gospel reading about the shrewd servant is probably one of the most difficult gospel readings for modern people to understand. I suspect that this is possibly because we are used to reading parables in a rather incorrect way. For example, we are used to reading the Parable of the Prodigal Son in a certain way. And no matter how the preacher jumps up and down trying to tell us how outrageous and utterly unthinkable it would be for a son to ask for his inheritance before his father's death, or how unthinkable it would be for a father to then forgive such an action, we still tend to read parables as if they were analogies. The son represents the ungrateful sinner, the father represents God, and so on and so on, and this is what the parable means.
But today we have a parable that is as outrageous to modern ears as many of the original parables would have been to Jesus' hearers and we don't know exactly what to do with it. If we read it in the manner in which we are used to reading parables, I think we get a message that is something like verse 11: 'If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?' To which, I think, we can only
say: 'Huh?'
And that's why I am posing the question, 'What is it in life that matters?' I want to suggest that one thing the parable might be saying to us is something about the importance of relationships: the importance of God's relationship with us and our relationships with other people.
To give a quick defence of this approach: this parable comes directly after the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the parable of the Prodigal Son. It comes before Luke launches a denunciation on those who make money their priority, which culminates in the parable of Dives and Lazarus, which is next Sunday's Gospel reading. Like the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost Son, God longs to draw all people into relationship with him. God will do whatever it takes to form a relationship with human beings: he will search us out and he is even prepared to forgive some pretty outrageous behaviour.
Relationship & The Body of Christ
What is it in life that matters? To love God and to love our fellow human beings and to be in relationship with them. Life is about relationship and, for Christians, all our relationships are fundamentally grounded in the love of God. However feeble or misguided our energies and efforts (and we know that most of our human efforts are feeble and misguided) it is advisable to direct them toward things that will last rather than toward things that will pass away.
Relationship is, I think, at the very core of what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian is to enter into a community via baptism: the universal Christian church, the Body of Christ. In that baptism, we symbolically die to our Self and we rise to become one with Christ in his Body here on earth. We enter into the life of Christ: a life that looks outside of our own private concerns to other people, to the community and to the world.
St. Augustine said that to be baptised is to be baptised into a life of sacrifice, which he defined as 'loving God and loving one's neighbour as oneself'.
With Christ we also enter into the life of the Trinity: into a relationship with a God who is a force for creation rather than for destruction; into a relationship with a God whose nature is - as the prayer book says - always and everywhere to have mercy; into a relationship with a God who empowers us through himself to reach outside ourselves and to manifest his love to those around us.
The Church is the Body of Christ here on earth and we are charged with Christ's on-going mission until the Kingdom of God has arrived. In entering into the life of the Trinity, we benefit from God's creative energy, from his mercy and his strength; we hopefully grow in our own capacity for love and for reaching out to others. Relationship and community are the essence of human life as God created it to be.
Conclusion
It's my hypothesis for this morning that however far away the Dishonest Servant might have been from the will of God, he did at least understand the importance of relationships. Despite all his faults and all his mistakes there was something inside him that told him what was of ultimate worth.
The Dishonest Servant was bumbling and inept and we might imagine that the relationships he formed by buying friendship would not have been terribly satisfying until they were transformed, but at least he had a tiny inkling of what's important.
We can imagine that perhaps, just perhaps, the God who leaves the 99 sheep to look for one in the wilderness might have mercy. We can imagine that perhaps the God who sweeps everywhere looking for the lost coin might have mercy. We can imagine that perhaps the Father who rushes to meet the son who wronged him might have mercy.
In a few minutes, we will come as the Body of Christ to meet with the risen Lord at his table. I pray that, as we do so, we may enter more fully into the life of the God who loves us. I pray that our hearts may be filled with love of God and love of neighbour and I pray that we each find what it is that is important in life. Amen
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sunday 27 Mary 2007 - Baptismal Sermon for Pentecost
This sermon is based on Acts 2:1:21. It is a sermon for an infant baptism delivered on Pentecost Sunday to a mixed group of Christians and non-Christians.
During the sermon, I referred to the child, her parents and the godparents by name. Here in the sermon, I have used initials except for the baby's mother and father as the baby and her father have the same initial.
===
Introduction
It’s a real joy and a pleasure to celebrate with E and her family on the occasion of her baptism.
The church family here at B Methodist church is pleased that E and her mum have been worshipping with us. (You can see that E has already made her mark on our church, as she’s been showing rather too much interest in the pulpit for her mum’s liking. We’ve decided that she’ll need to learn to talk – and walk! – first before we allow her up there.)
I said earlier that E’s baptism is about two things. It’s about E being baptised into the Church of Christ. And it’s about God’s love for E. So I would like to talk about these two things this morning.
Relationships
First of all, I want to talk about the Church of Christ, the universal Christian Church.
I also said earlier that today is a very special day for E to be received into the Christian Church. Because today is Pentecost and on Pentecost, we celebrate the birthday of the Church. You heard the birthday story earlier. It’s a strange story about tongues of flames descending on a crowd and about people speaking together in foreign languages that they had never learned.
But what’s this rather odd story got to do with the Church? I want to suggest one fairly simple idea for our consideration this morning: That relationships are very important to God. I want to suggest that relationships are so important to God that God breathed his holy breath of life into the Church by founding it in relationship. Relationship with God and relationship with our fellow human beings.
Now I don’t really think that I need to ‘preach’ about the importance of relationships. A good many of you are here today because you are in relationship with E and Mum and Dad. Whether by blood relationship or by friendship, your lives have touched them and been touched by them in some way. And there is also the Church community here at B Methodist Church; As a regular attender, E has also touched our lives.
Illustration
I’d like to you imagine that we had a very, very long piece of magical string. And imagine that this string could become as long or as short as we wanted it to be and that it was infinitely flexible and could divide as many times as it needed to. Like a virtual reality drawing tool.
Now imagine that we took one end of this string and gave it to E and then E gave another end to each person here who she knows. Each of those people, in turn, would extend their strings to those people here who know them, and so on, until everyone was connected by this magical string to every other person here who they know.
Think of how many people here today who you know and you can begin to understand why the string needs to be magical. I might be mistaken, but I think everyone would find that they were connected to this piece of string. And if someone decided to change their seat or to leave, then the shape of our magical string would change, and that change would be felt in some way by everyone here.
That’s how it is with relationships: everything we do has an effect on others, either directly or indirectly.
But the Christian Church is not just about relationships between human beings, it’s also about relationships between individual human beings and God. And it’s also about God’s relationship with the community of Christians. Imagine that each one of us also has a string that connects us with God.
When we deliberately gather together as Christians to pray and to worship, we are gathering together in acknowledgment of our connection to God. In these deliberate acts of prayer and worship, the Christian Church calls upon the power of the Spirit of the Triune God to help us to grow to become the people who God calls us to be: a people who are rooted and grounded in love.
This is the church into which E has been welcomed and baptised this morning.
The Church which was founded in the Holy Spirit of the Triune God and which strives to be faithful to that Spirit. Although today E is not old enough to intellectually work out what being part of a Christian Community means for her, she is nonetheless part of that community.
Because baptism was never about just me and God. Baptism – by water and by the Holy Spirit – was always about community.
As the old song goes: ‘love isn’t love until you give it away’. Love is about relating to other people; you can’t give love to yourself.
Love
And so that brings us to ‘love’. We said that, in addition to making E part of the Christian Church, that her baptism proclaims God’s love for her.
The bible talks about a God who loves us like children. It often refers to God as our Father but there are also images of God as a mother. It is in these parental images that we can get a hint of God’s love for each one of us.
Mum and Dad have very literally committed the rest of their lives to being in relationship with E and seeking the very best for her. They will devote all of their waking hours to her during her first years, and a considerable amount of emotion, attention, time, money and devotion after that. No matter what she does, they will always be her parents and always seek what is best for her.
This is with this parental tenacity that God loves each one of us. Although we do have the freedom to decide not to speak to God, there is nothing that we can do that will make God stop offering us his parental love. God’s love will always seek to bring us into right relationship with him and into right relationship with other people. God will always seek to do right by us.
In baptising E, we did not bring her into this love of God for the first time, we simply acknowledged together as a Christian family the love of God which already existed for her before she was even born.
Conclusion
Today is Pentecost, the Church’s birthday. It is the day when the Church celebrates her relationship with God. And it is the day when Christians celebrate their relationship with each other.
Today of all days, we remember these invisible strings that connect us, in love, with God, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and with all of humankind. We remember that relationships are fundamental to our humanity and to our spirituality. And we remember that love, the commitment to the well-being of others, is the stuff by which good relationships are made.
Today we also celebrate the fact that Mum and Dad have brought E to be baptised and to acknowledge God’s love for their daughter. We rejoice with them that J, D, T and R have pledged to support Mum and Dad in nurturing E in her Christian faith. And we give thanks that E has been baptised into the Christian Church.
I pray this morning that E and her family and Godparents may grow in the knowledge and the love of God, and that the Spirit blesses each one of us here today with God’s love.
And I make my prayer in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen
During the sermon, I referred to the child, her parents and the godparents by name. Here in the sermon, I have used initials except for the baby's mother and father as the baby and her father have the same initial.
===
Introduction
It’s a real joy and a pleasure to celebrate with E and her family on the occasion of her baptism.
The church family here at B Methodist church is pleased that E and her mum have been worshipping with us. (You can see that E has already made her mark on our church, as she’s been showing rather too much interest in the pulpit for her mum’s liking. We’ve decided that she’ll need to learn to talk – and walk! – first before we allow her up there.)
I said earlier that E’s baptism is about two things. It’s about E being baptised into the Church of Christ. And it’s about God’s love for E. So I would like to talk about these two things this morning.
Relationships
First of all, I want to talk about the Church of Christ, the universal Christian Church.
I also said earlier that today is a very special day for E to be received into the Christian Church. Because today is Pentecost and on Pentecost, we celebrate the birthday of the Church. You heard the birthday story earlier. It’s a strange story about tongues of flames descending on a crowd and about people speaking together in foreign languages that they had never learned.
But what’s this rather odd story got to do with the Church? I want to suggest one fairly simple idea for our consideration this morning: That relationships are very important to God. I want to suggest that relationships are so important to God that God breathed his holy breath of life into the Church by founding it in relationship. Relationship with God and relationship with our fellow human beings.
Now I don’t really think that I need to ‘preach’ about the importance of relationships. A good many of you are here today because you are in relationship with E and Mum and Dad. Whether by blood relationship or by friendship, your lives have touched them and been touched by them in some way. And there is also the Church community here at B Methodist Church; As a regular attender, E has also touched our lives.
Illustration
I’d like to you imagine that we had a very, very long piece of magical string. And imagine that this string could become as long or as short as we wanted it to be and that it was infinitely flexible and could divide as many times as it needed to. Like a virtual reality drawing tool.
Now imagine that we took one end of this string and gave it to E and then E gave another end to each person here who she knows. Each of those people, in turn, would extend their strings to those people here who know them, and so on, until everyone was connected by this magical string to every other person here who they know.
Think of how many people here today who you know and you can begin to understand why the string needs to be magical. I might be mistaken, but I think everyone would find that they were connected to this piece of string. And if someone decided to change their seat or to leave, then the shape of our magical string would change, and that change would be felt in some way by everyone here.
That’s how it is with relationships: everything we do has an effect on others, either directly or indirectly.
But the Christian Church is not just about relationships between human beings, it’s also about relationships between individual human beings and God. And it’s also about God’s relationship with the community of Christians. Imagine that each one of us also has a string that connects us with God.
When we deliberately gather together as Christians to pray and to worship, we are gathering together in acknowledgment of our connection to God. In these deliberate acts of prayer and worship, the Christian Church calls upon the power of the Spirit of the Triune God to help us to grow to become the people who God calls us to be: a people who are rooted and grounded in love.
This is the church into which E has been welcomed and baptised this morning.
The Church which was founded in the Holy Spirit of the Triune God and which strives to be faithful to that Spirit. Although today E is not old enough to intellectually work out what being part of a Christian Community means for her, she is nonetheless part of that community.
Because baptism was never about just me and God. Baptism – by water and by the Holy Spirit – was always about community.
As the old song goes: ‘love isn’t love until you give it away’. Love is about relating to other people; you can’t give love to yourself.
Love
And so that brings us to ‘love’. We said that, in addition to making E part of the Christian Church, that her baptism proclaims God’s love for her.
The bible talks about a God who loves us like children. It often refers to God as our Father but there are also images of God as a mother. It is in these parental images that we can get a hint of God’s love for each one of us.
Mum and Dad have very literally committed the rest of their lives to being in relationship with E and seeking the very best for her. They will devote all of their waking hours to her during her first years, and a considerable amount of emotion, attention, time, money and devotion after that. No matter what she does, they will always be her parents and always seek what is best for her.
This is with this parental tenacity that God loves each one of us. Although we do have the freedom to decide not to speak to God, there is nothing that we can do that will make God stop offering us his parental love. God’s love will always seek to bring us into right relationship with him and into right relationship with other people. God will always seek to do right by us.
In baptising E, we did not bring her into this love of God for the first time, we simply acknowledged together as a Christian family the love of God which already existed for her before she was even born.
Conclusion
Today is Pentecost, the Church’s birthday. It is the day when the Church celebrates her relationship with God. And it is the day when Christians celebrate their relationship with each other.
Today of all days, we remember these invisible strings that connect us, in love, with God, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and with all of humankind. We remember that relationships are fundamental to our humanity and to our spirituality. And we remember that love, the commitment to the well-being of others, is the stuff by which good relationships are made.
Today we also celebrate the fact that Mum and Dad have brought E to be baptised and to acknowledge God’s love for their daughter. We rejoice with them that J, D, T and R have pledged to support Mum and Dad in nurturing E in her Christian faith. And we give thanks that E has been baptised into the Christian Church.
I pray this morning that E and her family and Godparents may grow in the knowledge and the love of God, and that the Spirit blesses each one of us here today with God’s love.
And I make my prayer in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen
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