Baptism

1993 (Year B), 5 December

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

Today three children, Isabel, Donovan and Julian come for blessing. It’s the traditional one lavished on creation by God since the beginning of time. And that original blessing by which Adam received everlasting life, is restored in these children. If that wasn’t enough, today, these three children, have come home. What’s even more marvellous is that so many others have come home with them.

For this is their home. Today it becomes theirs as well as ours. It’s a place where whatever happens in the years to come, we will be accepted for what we are. Not for what we think we might be or what we should be, but for what we are. And we are children of the same heavenly Father, inheritors together of the kingdom God. It’s home. It’s where we belong. It’s a place of security. No matter what happens – no matter how we treat each other, even here, there will always be the welcoming arms of the divine.

The mystery of life is being unveiled even as we worship. We’ve come home. Come to our Father’s house. Come to where our Father waits continually. The Father will always be here looking for us with outstretched arms to receive us back and to whisper to us, ‘You, Isabel, you Donovan, you Julian are my beloved, on you my favour rests.’

The mystery of life is profound, for the love which the Father offers with outstretched arms is the same love with which He gives us the freedom to walk away to distant countries, far away from this home. We may well find ourselves at home today but as sure as night follows day we will walk away. Our leave taking after the service is incredibly symbolic. It stands for all the occasions we’ve already walked away from God as well as those times we’ll find ourselves walking away in the future.

And when we leave we’ll walk into a land we already know well. It’s the land of ‘Ifs’. It’s a place these children will discover only too soon. It’s populated by people running round asking others: ‘Do you love me? Do you really love me?’ And the answer is always conditional. The answer is, ‘Yes, I will love you if you are good looking, intelligent and wealthy. I will love you if you have a good education, a good job, and good connections. I will love you if you produce much, if you sell much, and buy much. There are endless ifs hidden in the world’s love. And they enslave because it’s never possible to respond adequately to all of them. The worlds love is and always will be conditional. Always be proceeded by ‘if’.

They will learn the world’s love is fickle and not to be trusted for conditional love can always be withdrawn. In the end it can never be relied on. It always seems to promise the Earth but the chances are that these children like the rest of us will be hurt.

These children will hear many ifs as they grow up. They will become burdensome. They carry great weights. They try to persuade them that they are of little worth unless they earn their goodness by making it up the ladder of success. They lead them quickly to forget the voice that calls them by name today, ‘my child, the beloved’. That voice reminds them that they are loved independently of any acclaim or accomplishment. The voice reminds them that they are loved unconditionally. The others drown out the gentle voice, the one that’s soft, light – giving, that calls us the favourite one. They drag us away from the centre of our being and make us doubt that there is a loving God waiting for us there.

The truth is that they foul up our relationship with God. For although perhaps with our heads we can claim our true identity as children of God we think in our hearts that His love is conditional and that this home is a place we’re still not sure of. We rehearse speeches that we will make to God, when we finally arrive. We spend incredible energy doing it. We boast, or apologise or defend ourselves on this homeward journey we’re still not sure whether we’ll be truly welcomed. We cling to our sense of worthlessness. We project for ourselves a place far below that which belongs to those who inherit the kingdom. Belief in total, absolute forgiveness does not come easily. It’s always surrounded by Ifs.

Yet these children are living parables. They have done absolutely nothing to earn their blessing and yet it comes. They can have done nothing, yet it’s showered on them like rain from above. They have come home. They remind us that we too are at home. Home where we can feel the embrace of our Father. Where we are reminded that not only heaven is ours to claim but that earth is our inheritance as well. A place where we can live in freedom, without obsessions and compulsions. Free from ifs. AMEN