A little later today at St John’s (our sister church) we have the wonderful duty of welcoming into the family of God, through baptism, three new disciples! This gives us all an opportunity to reflect on our own baptism promises, what they’ve meant to us in the time since we were baptised and what they mean to us in our everyday lives.
Many of us were, quite possibly, baptised as babies or younger children. I certainly don’t remember my baptism, I was only two, and in all these years I don’t even recall seeing a photo of the event. However I do remember my brother’s baptism. I was probably about 7, he was 3 or 4, and I still hold in my head the image of him standing outside the church, wearing a cream cable knit jumper and little blue shorts, with his pale white legs dangling out the bottom – clutching his baptism candle, smiling at the camera.
In our bible reading from 2 Thessalonians, we heard it said that ‘We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits.’ What a wonderful description of all those that join God’s family – first fruits. Imagine, we were chosen by God to be saved, saved and made holy by the Holy Spirit. Imagine we were each part of God’s original plan, chosen to share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When we chose baptism – whether that choice was made by parents or family, or by ourselves; we were responding to God’s love and promising to live out the faith we have in Him as He fills us with confidence and promises unending help. His promise is to be there for us to lean on, to confide in and to lift us up. We are asked to stand strong and continue to believe the teachings we have been given; those teachings are God’s word given to each one of us in the Bible. These teachings will strengthen us, invigorate our work, and enliven our speech as we share our faith, which should encourage us to read our Bible on a regular basis, embedding it into our routine as a holy habit.
Prayer should also form, and inform, our walk with God. In our reading we were given these words: ‘We pray that the Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father will comfort you and strengthen you in every good thing you do and say,’ that is every good thing, not just sometimes, or now and again, but every time we speak, every time we make a move, God will always be by our side for all of our lives. And when we do pray, we can recall our own baptism, and how that may have been the start of a journey, that along with many through the ages has helped us journey into the fullness of God’s love. We are all part of something so much bigger, a part of God’s never-ending Kingdom.
We actually have a good role model in Jesus. We know that his life was saturated in prayer, the Bible gives us many accounts of Jesus constantly praying – often going off and making time to focus on, and spend time with his Father. Not only did He give us the Lord’s prayer when asked by his disciples how to pray, but in John 17 where it tells us that he prayed for his disciples – and that’s us! He was praying for all of us that witness and share our faith with others, he wants us to be one in unity, one in heart and mind with him.
Jesus himself was baptised, at his baptism we hear in the Bible that the heavens opened and he saw the spirit of God in the form of a dove, and it rested on him. In fact, our gospel reading describes heaven as a wonderful place where God is, a place of angels, a place where there is no sadness and as we saw at Jesus’ baptism, heaven often breaks through into the here and now, and changes our lives right now! We need to recognize these breakthrough moments, develop a joyous awareness that it is God, fully alive and active in our lives as we live out our faith and those promises we made. Just as the Holy Spirit rested on Jesus, God sends the Holy Spirit to rest on, and fill us, today.
And those promises from God will live on in heaven. There are more worlds than one. A present visible world, and a future unseen world – a world that we know nothing of and can’t even conceive. But as committed and active Christians we know that we have the promise of eternal life. The final line of our gospel reading – ‘Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’ – gives us that assurance that wherever we are in his Kingdom we are alive. Our souls live with and in God, what an awesome promise for those of us who live up to the commitment we have made, to turn to God and trust him with our lives. So not only do we have the promise of God with us right now and throughout our lives on earth, but in heaven we will be raised to new life and will still be alive forever in the new life of heaven.
So, as we think of those baptismal promises that we made, or that were made for us – to turn to Christ, to repent of our sins, and to come to Christ as the way, the truth and the life, let us think afresh of what they mean to each one of us now, as we live in hope and rest in God’s love. How have we fared on our journey with God since baptism? We can be thankful that we have a Father who is alive and through baptism wants to live in relationship with us. Can we see the Holy Spirit active in our lives? Do we seek opportunities to spend time with the one who made us, who knows us by name, and who rejoices when we turn to him in our need?
When we leave here today may we take with us the last line of our reading from Thessalonians to support us through the weeks and years of our lives: ‘God loved us and gave us, through his grace, a wonderful hope and comfort that has no end.’
Amen.
Service: Reverend Rebecca Yates 6th October 2022.
(St Luke’s Church Peterborough UK)
Referenced Scripture: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, and 13-17, Luke 21:5-19