It's not always easy to
be excited on a chilly Sunday in February...but today is REALLY
exciting.
It's a day of new
beginnings...for Sacha, as he returns to the Cathedral where he
ministered as a Reader, but now as an ordained priest come to
complete his curacy among us...
for Victory, as she is
baptised into God's church and starts a new phase of her life journey
as a member of the Christian family.
I'm tempted. indeed, to describe this morning as a "family service". But before you all head straight for the door, let me reassure you that I'm not about to launch into an action song and I promise I've nary a puppet concealed in the pulpit.
But nonetheless - today is
very much about family.
It's there in our
readings and in our collect...which we might sum up by saying
“He's the image of
his Dad”
That's a comment we
often hear as joyful relatives cluster around the cradle of a new
baby.
And really, we all know
what they mean.
We aren't talking
mirrors or plaster casts.
We recognise familiar
features displayed in a different context, in another face – and
are, for the most part, delighted
Family likeness matters
to us, because we are embodied creatures...we recognise one another
through our particular arrangement of physical attributes – height,
weight, colouring – as well as through tones of voice, shared
stories, habits of mind.
Our bodies will carry
the gene patterns we inherit from our parents – and we live in
those bodies.
Solid.
Incarnate.
Hang on to that thought
for a moment – we'll return to it, I promise
But the image we're
invited to reflect on by both collect and epistle today is of a
rather different order.
Let's start with the
epistle...a declaration on the same sort of grand, cosmic scale as
the majestic text of John's prologue, which we heard as our gospel.
The Colossian
Christians are invited to consider the amazing truth of Christ's
nature...Christ who is transcendant, who has always been there, at
the heart of all things, the one in whom all things hold together.
There is absolutely no
doubt about his nature as the one “in whom all the fulness of God
was pleased to dwell”
In other words, though
God himself is invisible, Jesus is nonetheless the image of his
father...showing all those features that we understand to be part of
the nature of God.
“The Word was with
God, and the Word was God”
Just as John takes us
back to the dawn of creation, so does Paul, reminding us that Jesus
is both the means and the purpose of creation “all things created
through him and for him” and also its first expression...“The
firstborn of all creation”.
The first-born – with
more to follow, as our collect reminded us
“You have made us in
your own image”...
Ordinary, everyday
people like you and me – made to reflect God...and invited to look
for that reflection in all whom we encounter.
That's what we're all
about – and that's what I want to share with Victory, on this her
baptism day.
Very soon your parents
and godparents will make some big promises for you...and then I'll
give you that invisible badge, the sign of the cross that I'll drawn
with special oil on your forehead...the sign that says that from
today and forever you belong to Jesus.
I know that you
understand already that God loves you and that Jesus wants to be your
friend and companion on every step of your journey through life...
But today is special –
your church birthday, if you like.
Of course you've got a
perfectly good family already – but today you get an extra one,
just in case...because from now on WE are your family too, as are all
the other Christian women, men and children that you'll meet in your
lifetime.
We're your family
because we belong to Christ's church...and because each one of us
should share a family likeness. We too should be the image of our
father, God.
And we don't have to
wonder or worry about how that might work out.
God has made it easy
for us to understand because, though Father God is invisible...Jesus
– well, Jesus shows us exactly how God is...
In his paraphrase
Bible, The Message, the American theologian Eugene Petersen puts this
in a way that I find really helpful.
As simple as that.
We understand the world
through our bodies...so God became flesh and blood.
We live in community,
alongside friends and neighbours, so God moved in beside us.
God living among God's
creation.
The fulness of God
contained in a human body
Sharing everything.
Birth and birthdays.
Joy and sadness.
Life and death.
Embodied
The word became flesh.
And that's still how it
works.
Though we don't see
Jesus himself walking among us, that's where our role as the “image
of God” comes in.
WE are to embody God's
love, his grace, truth and generosity.
WE are to become a
reconciled and reconciling people, coming home to God and enabling
others to do so too.
WE are to so live that
we help others to understand what God is like.
Don't for a moment
imagine that this role belongs only to the ordained. When a friend of
mine was inducted to her new church in the States, she put her
ordination certificate – her Holy Orders – up on a wall in her
church office. Her PA responded by pinning her baptism certificate
proudly to the wall beside it, because, she said “That's my
ordination certificate...If priests are ordained to be signs of God
at work, well so are all those baptised in his name”.
In other words, the
message of today is for Victory as much as for Sacha...for you and me
and the lady sitting next to you, even if you don't know her name.
Touched by the Holy
Spirit at Baptism, receiving God's life week by week in bread and
wine,
We are God's children – called to live so that everyone who
meets us recognises “the image of our Father”.