Baptism
sermon: St Mary’s 16th July
2000
Losing your
head, finding your life
Ephesians 1:
3-14
Mark 6: 14-29
The patient's family gathered to hear
what the specialists had to say. "Things don't look good. The only chance is
a brain transplant. This is an experimental procedure. It might work, but the
bad news is that brains are very expensive, and you will have to pay the costs
yourselves." "Well, how much does a brain cost?" asked the
relatives. "For a male brain, $500,000.00. For a female brain
$200,000.00." Some of the younger
male relatives tried to look shocked, but all the men nodded because they
thought they understood. A few actually smirked. But the patient's daughter was
unsatisfied and asked, "Why the difference in price between male brains
and female brains?" "A standard pricing practice," said the head
of the team. "Women's brains have to be marked down because they have
actually been used."
Well
it's rather a strange story for a baptism.
The beheading of John the Baptist.
But perhaps it is quite an appropriate one. Not only because it’s a story about the Baptist. But it is story about the Baptist who lost
his head because of what he did. We
have to remember that what we are doing here today for Maddie would be seen as
pretty brainless by most people in our society. Most people might think Sue and Lee that you are beginning to
lose your heads, or your brains.
There
is a kind of madness about baptism. But
maybe it's also an appropriate story because it reminds us that this is a
serious business. John the Baptist was
killed for sticking to the truth, for doing what God wanted him to do. And many Christians have been killed for
doing the same. It might be difficult
to believe but the last century was one which saw more people dying for their
faith than any other century beforehand.
So coming here today, if you were for example in Afghanistan , would be
risking your lives.
So
what are we saying about Maddie today?
The first thing is that in a sense we are giving her life away. We are saying that she belongs to God more
than to us. Our second reading today
was from a letter written by Paul to a small church. In that letter he told that church that they had been adopted as
God's children through Jesus Christ.
Yes, Maddie belongs to you her parents, but more fundamentally all of us
have been adopted by our father in heaven.
In a
way, that lets us of the hook.
Parenting is a challenging enough task.
Often you feel like a mosquito in a nudist camp – you don’t know where
to start. But even more than that Sue
and Lee, the truth is that you will never be able to be all that Maddie
needs. You cannot provide her with
everything she will need to flourish as a human being. And as you know from your work, life is
difficult. There is tragedy as well as
beauty. There are things you will not
be able to protect her from. But God,
who has faced pain and death himself, will be able to do all the things that
you cannot. God is not an escapist
God. To be a Christian, to follow
Jesus, is not an act of escape. Jesus
doesn't take you out of your work in which you see children suffering and
dying. And baptizing Maddie today won’t
rescue her from the possibility of suffering in her own life. But what we are saying is that God is the
only one who will be able to carry her and give her ultimate meaning in her
life.
So the
first thing we are doing today is saying that in a dangerous world God is the
only one that will be enough for Maddie.
One woman I heard of who could have certainly used God’s help was
Joan. Joan, who was rather
well-proportioned, spent almost all of her vacation sunbathing on the roof of
her hotel. She wore a bathing suit the
first day, but on the second, she decided that no one could see her way up
there, and she slipped out of it for an overall tan. She'd hardly begun when she heard someone running up the stairs.
She was lying on her stomach, so she just pulled a towel over her rear.
"Excuse me, miss," said the flustered assistant manager of the hotel,
out of breath from running up the stairs. "The Hilton doesn't mind your
sunbathing on the roof, but we would very much appreciate your wearing a
bathing suit as you did yesterday."
"What difference does it make?" Joan asked rather calmly. "No one can see me up here, and
besides, I'm covered with a towel."
"Not exactly," said the embarrassed man. "You're lying on
the dining room skylight."
A lot
of people go through life really unsure of the reality of what is happening to
them. If you go up into space, you will
find that there is no solid ground on which you can stand. Everything has to be nailed down, self
contained, and sealed tight or it will simply drift away. Toothpaste will not stay on your
toothbrush. It is called living in zero
gravity. A lot of us live in zero
gravity at the moment. We go on day to
day going through the motions of living, without really knowing what it is all
about. Without having at solid base on
which to live. But something like the
birth of a child starts to make us think about the questions of why we are
here, what we can stand on in our lives, what is ultimately important.
Maddie’s
greatest need in life is to know what she can stand on, who she is. We so often think about who we are depends
on what we do, or what other people think of us, or on what we have. But today Maddie we say to you that who you
are is not about those things. Who you
are was written about in a letter 2000 years ago which we have read here
today. Paul told you who you are. It’s like a letter read by a peasant girl
which tells her she is really a princess.
He said “Maddie you are blessed in Christ. Maddie you have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of
the world. Maddie you have been and
will be forgiven by God for anything you do wrong. Maddie you have been marked with the holy spirit, you belong to
God, and he has lavished his love on you.
One day he will gather everything up into his final purpose for all
creation, and you will be part of that.
Maddie you live for the praise of God's glory.
When
John the Baptist sat in prison, contemplating his own death., did he think
about who he was? Did he hear words
like this? Did he hear that he belonged
to God, that he lived only to praise God's glory, that he was guaranteed a
future? And as we ourselves come to
support Maddie we have to think about the purpose of our own lives. Are we going to live in zero gravity? Or are we going to find out who we are in
God, and live for him.
Sue
and Lee, today you make promises on behalf of Maddie. We pray that God will bring you to the fullness of those promises
in your own lives and that you will be a couple who in losing your heads, find
your hearts and lives renewed.