Second Sunday in Easter: Baptism of Nqobizitha Ngwenya and membership of Nqobizitha Ngwenya and Nomagugu Pinky Mpofu
Hebrew Bible reading: Isaiah 45:1-8
It is a powerful passage that Nobi has chosen for us to read on the occasion of his baptism. God is revealed in this reading as the power behind the universe, the one who unseats kings, levels mountains, breaks the bars of iron supposed to protect a city from its enemies. God is the one who has chosen the people of Israel and will save them. Yet strangely, this saving knowledge comes to the people only when they are in dark places: defeated by their enemies and exiled from their land, now ruled by a power which does not recognise God.
Before, when they were secure in their own land, the people did not need to look to God in the same way. Now, when everything they used to know has disappeared from them, when they have lost their power and must rely on others for support, they must look at their situation in a new way, recognise that even the foreign ruler who has defeated and exiled the people is an agent of the God whom he does not know or serve. And God, their God, is not just their God, defeated by the gods of Babylon or Persia, but God of the whole world - the one true power on whom all who worship God must call, because there is no other. And it is this God, whom once they took for granted, on whom they must now call for justice, and on whom they will not call in vain.
Each time someone comes seeking baptism, whether a child brought by its parents, or an adult such as Nobi coming of his own free will, we proclaim again our faith in this God, who is to be found not only when we are at peace in the safety of our homes, but also in the dark places of exile and regret. And when we find ourselves in those dark places, which will come to each of us in different ways, it is the treasure of our baptism, of God's choice of us before we ever loved God, which will give us hope not just that we may endure the dark times, but that God will transform our lives from darkness, sorrow and sin to light, joy and forgiveness.
CG 138: We cannot measure how you heal
R&S 64: I lift my eyes to the quiet hills
R&S 613: Lord, speak to me
The day of our Annual Church Meeting is an excellent day to welcome new members into our church, for it is a day when we look both back and forward: back, to give God thanks and praise for what has been good in this past year in the life of St Andrew's, and forward, to ask for God's help in what is to come. And both looking back and looking forward are important.
In our Gospel reading this morning we look back to one of the stories which the first Christians must have told and retold: of Jesus coming to his friends after his death, not as a ghost, but as a living human being, to share his peace with them, to eat with them and to share with them the Scriptures which showed how God's leader must suffer and die before God's new life could be shown in him. And what does he say their response should be? To pass on to everyone they meet, of whatever culture, the good news that everything wrong, however bad, can be forgiven by God; that anyone, however far away from God they may have wandered, may return and be welcomed with open arms.
By saying that, however, I'm not meaning to imply that ‘anything goes', that the deliberate separation from God and others that is evil is a trivial matter. In his nail wounds on the cross Jesus has borne the cost of human separation from God, and in his risen body those wounds are still visible. Those who have suffered pain and loss through no fault of their own cannot pretend that the damage evil does is negligible. Yet Jesus shows us that though the destructive results of evil may not be expunged, it is possible for it to be healed, made good, forgiven.
This may not immediately sound like good news when we are going through hard times. Why does God not protect us from disaster, rather than promising that its damaging effects will not last forever? Yet if it is Jesus we follow, God's suffering servant, we cannot expect to avoid suffering ourselves. A similar note is struck in our psalm. The writer calls on God for help in time of trouble. But his prayer is not so much for material prosperity, for corn and wine to increase, as for an increase in holiness, in closeness to God, which alone can bring peace of mind. And in the current financial climate, that does indeed seem more reliable than wealth.
Hm. Doesn't that sound a preacherly thing to say? A cynic in the congregation might wonder whether in practice we would really choose holiness over material wealth. Well, I can think of an example. After today's annual church meeting, we will be eating a delicious lunch prepared by members of Network, and hearing of a good cause to which those of us who are not guests are invited to give whatever money we can afford, leaving us to go away less wealthy, but closer to God, because more engaged in God's work.
Yet how can we human beings be involved in ‘God's work'? God is the ultimately powerful ruler of the universe. How can any of us dare to say we are working with God, especially when we know that some who use God's name are only working for their own benefit? Yet to use God's infinite power as an excuse for us to sit back and do nothing would be equally mistaken - for what are we called, in our New Testament reading this morning from the first letter of John? We are called, he says, God's children - and that name is properly given to all who have chosen to follow Jesus and to commit themselves to a body of Christians, including us.
One thing about this passage, when I first heard it as a new Christian at school, worried me greatly, and that was the line: No one who abides in God sins; no one who sins has either seen or known God. I've probably told you this before when the reading has come up, just because it was such a relief when someone explained it to me. It does not mean that we never get anything wrong again, or there could be no Christians. But anyone who has begun to have that friendship with God which has made them choose baptism or, for those of us baptised as children, who has decided on church membership, will not deliberately and happily go on behaving in a way they know to be wrong.
As the letter of John comments, we are God's children now, yet what we will become, just how we will be more like our heavenly parent, is yet to be revealed. And that's true for us as a church too. Recently the Elders have been looking through the pastoral profile put together during the last ministerial vacancy, with a view to taking a closer look at our church's life during the Elders Retreat this coming November. It's amazing how things change. Some of our longest-standing members are no longer with us, but new members have helped to shape the life of the church. Broomhall and Sheffield have not stood still either, and nor has the United Reformed Church in Yorkshire or nationally. If we want to live up to our name as God's children, we have new opportunities to take up and new challenges to meet. But as we struggle to be faithful to our calling, we work from the conviction that God has promised to forgive our sins and transform our lives, whether we were baptised this morning or seventy, eighty or ninety years ago. For always, and particularly when we baptise and welcome new members, we can look back as a church with thankfulness to our own past experience and the tradition of generations, handed down as a guide to our action now. And we, no less than those who first gathered in an upper room in amazement and joy, are commanded by Jesus to proclaim the good news that we have heard - of forgiveness, of reconciliation - to all nations, even to Yorkshire.
Isaiah foretold that everyone from east to west will discover that almighty God is the only one in whom we can place our trust. It might have come as a surprise to Isaiah's hearers to discover that God's almighty power is most clearly shown through the love which forgives even enemies. Yet a cynic might feel moved to raise an eyebrow. It's easy to talk about forgiving love, but what happens in practice when we rub one another up the wrong way? Do we give each other the benefit of the doubt? Do we grumble in private? Or, if there is a problem, do we talk it over with each other, speaking the truth in love? It may not sound heroic, but it is in acting with God's forgiving love to each other and to others beyond our fellowship that we will show most clearly in the years to come our divine parentage, as God shows us how we can continue to follow Jesus together with these people in this place.
