When I read through the liturgy for today, my first thought was that between them +Humphrey and Tom had left me absolutely nothing to say. The blend of words and music that we are sharing together expresses so much about life and faith that honestly, there’s very little more that anyone can add.
However, that’s never yet stopped me from filling a silence, - I’m an Anglican priest for goodness sake- so let us embrace the challenge and think a little more about what we are doing this afternoon, this one more step along the world that we are taking together with Tom and Martin.
You see, though of course we are all here to give thank and support them, I think it’s really important to remember too that this IS a journey that we all make.
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” says God to Jeremiah…and to each one of us here as well.
God gives each precious soul the gift of life, the gift of our being – and invites us, in our turn, to respond by offering to God the gift of our becoming. No matter who we are, where we might place ourselves on the many continuums by which we choose to define our identity, that holy endeavour to become whom we are called to be is the work of a life-time.
Tom, this means, I’m afraid that this celebration of your new name, this opportunity to affirm who you are and how you can live out your identity as a child of God is not, after all, a destination but simply another staging-post on the journey. From the unlimited vantage-point of eternity the God who formed you in the womb has always known that you would reach today…The new names you have chosen do not represent a radical change of direction, whatever it may sometimes feel like – but rather an affirmation of something that has always existed…That bundle of cells and life experiences that we now recognise as Tom has always been known and called, loved and precious. God is in no way surprised that we find ourselves here today.
More, God knows too all the delights and struggles that have shaped you thus far, and those which will be part of the picture in the future. Excitingly, God knows exactly who and what you, as a finished product, perfected by God’s grace can be….
But you, and I, and all those gathered here are still on our journeys of discovery…still engaged in that holy work of becoming…and of course we are essential to one another in that process. As I prepared to preach, I was reflecting on images for that business of becoming.
I remembered the words of Michaelangelo who said “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
I loved that sense of an always-present identity being gradualky released by the skill of the artist, but I decided that the image didn’t quite work for us after all. It told part of the truth, but not all. Somehow it felt too fixed, too final. The last thing we need it to be frozen in a moment – even a moment of affirmation and joy. This work of becoming is dynamic and indeed relational…not about medium and artist alone, even when the artist is the great creator, God
So I imagined not a great lump of marble but a much smaller stone – a pebble, one of dozens, hundreds, thousands on the bed of a fast-flowing stream. That stream might be, perhaps, the tide of God’s love into which we step at the moment of baptism…the stream that can carry each one of us away in directions we had never imagined if we are willing to go with the flow. And as we are carried on that journey, we bump up against one another…shape and polish one another through our acts of kindness or of cruelty…That’s the stuff of human relationships. We are all the sum of our experiences of love and its absence, of fear and reassurance, condemnation and encouragement, grief and consolation. God works through us as we shape one another, for better or worse, day by day.
In our response to one another lies the essence of our becoming.
God’s grace at work in each of us, enabling us to be those agents of change for one another…Barnabas, that great encourager, saw God’s grace and rejoiced. How extraordinary to know yourself caught up in another’s journey of salvation…just as they are caught up in yours. What an indescribable gift. And as that tide of God’s love flows over us, - we shine.
You Tom, and Martin.
+ Humphrey and Danny
And me and Jack and Rachel, Anne-Marie, Leanne and all of you whom I don’t yet know by name, though our names are called daily by the God who says 'Do not be afraid. You are mine"
Carried on that stream of love, we lose our sharp corners we are shaped day by day through our encounters with one another, til in our becoming, we can be mirrors that reflect God’s light and love.
Shining beacons of hope for one another on this life journey.
Does that sound remotely credible?
I know there are days when it seems quite laughable…When all we register are our own failures and insecurities, those fightings and fears which plunge us into darkness and leave us wondering whether in fact we dreamed the whole thing, and are condemned to an existence that has no sense of purpose of promise of transformation.
But you know, that stream of God’s love flows on over us, whether we are conscious of this or not. And, like it or not, shaped and polished, we can shine
Do not doubt, but believe…because this is gloriously, and eternally true.
God’s light is reflected in you, even here, even now.
Of course, I know all too well that we don’t feel this every day. The journey of becoming can sometimes seem pure drudgery but even on the most laborious of days, please pause to listen.
The God who makes all things new is calling you by name, calling you on to become yourself, calling you to come, sit and eat at God’s table…Don’t worry that the name card might be wrong. Don’t worry that you might not be expected. I promise that there’s a seat ready for you there, a place set for you just as you are.
Just come.
Sit.
Eat.
Be transformed as you receive the Body of Christ and become who you are.
