The Resurrection plus Baptism

1989 (Year C), 26 March, Easter

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

It’s always difficult starting something new, there’s strange ways to learn, unpredictable people to meet, different expectations to cope with. My first Holy Week in this place was overpowering, mostly because of the impact of the services. I remember being almost overcome by the Good Friday liturgy in particular, and reeling out of the doors at the end, feeling desolate and waiting for all the other people to come out. I was sure that they would feel the same too and come out in a very sombre mood.

I was staggered when Stan and Nora came out happy and smiling and wished me ‘Happy Easter’. ‘What’s the matter with them I thought, it’s not Easter yet, funny lot in this church but maybe they aren’t going to come on Easter Day. Just a way of gently warning me. Kathleen followed and did the same. By the time Ruby had also wished me a ‘Happy Easter’ I was convinced that there would be nobody but me in church on the Sunday.

It’s taken six years for me to learn not only did they intend to come to church at Easter but that they’d seen things I’d never dreamt of.

Joseph, Kimberly, Stephen and Sachala, the children being baptised on this most appropriate of days, are so new that they won’t have a clue what the members of the church were talking about, but I hope in their turn, they’ll learn.

I hope they’ll learn that when Jesus cried out from the cross on Good Friday, ‘It is finished’, that it really was. There was absolutely no more that he could do and there was no way back. He had believed in God as far as he could, right up to, and beyond the point of death. And he had died, it’s true, as he had lived, trusting in God completely. But God let him die in agony. He didn’t take it away. His friends who had already run away became totally demoralised. It was the end of him, there could be no more.

At that point on Good Friday, when a man could do no more God acted, and Easter had begun – I now see it’s alright to say it. Indeed, it is profoundly true.

The death was not erased in some magical way nor was Jesus given some sneak preview into an unforeseen glory. There was an end of Jesus. He died and God acted.

The children we will baptise in a few minutes are so similar to the rest of us. Their lives will be full of highs and lows, mirroring much in Jesus’ life. Maybe they’ll fall in love and that will be glorious, but maybe the one who is loved will not respond in the way they would want and that would be tragic. Maybe they’ll work out finally what the right job for them is and realise that they’ll never achieve it. Maybe things will go well for a time then there will be an illness to be faced. Each day of their lives will bring its own joys and sorrows and we swing from one to the other.

Perhaps the tragedies will threaten to swamp the glories and we will recognise that we cannot, in this life, ultimately possess the end we pursue. Jesus did all he could and still died.

But just as it is true that when Jesus died then God acted. so it is true that when we have done all that we can and there is nothing more – then God acts, and brings our resurrection. By opening his arms for us on the cross Jesus lost his life so that he and we might gain it. Stan and Nora. Kathleen and Ruby knew it. and they’ve taught it me.

By emptying ourselves we can be filled with God. All of us must be caught up in that death and resurrection which Christ fulfilled for us.

My hope for the children to be baptised today and for all of us is that we in turn might reach our end and our newness and be filled with God. AMEN