Baptism - Easter 5

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.”

(1 Peter 2.2)

Well I’m sorry if you had hoped for the end of the world last night at 6pm. Although I did wait to prepare my sermon till after 6pm - you wouldn’t want to waste all that preparation would you.

I sent a brief facebook message of consolation to the American Baptist, Harold Camping, who predicted with such certainty that yesterday would be Doomsday.

It just said, ‘Never mind Harold. It’s not the end of the world.’

Not all American Baptists are like Harold.

My first baptism in an American Southern Baptist church was a revelation. No unseemly dunking and splashing for them, like English Baptists. The candidate held a cloth over their nose and mouth and was very gracefully and slowly eased back under the water as the lights dimmed and the organ played seraphic music.

The pastor of the church explained to me that, as baptism represented being buried with Christ, it was more appropriate to lower the candidate lovingly into the water, the grave, rather than to follow the English Baptists who appeared to throw them into it.

Of course babies were baptised by total immersion for many centuries in the worldwide church and still are in some parts of the church.

The normal procedure in the Book of Common Prayer, given in the rubric says:

(If [the parents] shall certify the priest that the Child may well endure it), he shall dip it in the water discreetly and warily… But if they certify that the child is weak, it shall suffice to pour water upon it…

Well baby Cyr may be strong as an ox, but Fr Alan will be pouring and not dipping.

Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that baptism by immersion is a very dramatic re-enactment of the heart of our Christian faith.

The NT imagery of Baptism is of dying and rising in Christ; of being buried with him in death and reborn to a new life in his resurrection. This is why the language of the baptismal liturgy is so stark and uncompromising: ‘Do you reject? Do you turn? Darkness and light.’

Or in the words of 1 Peter which we read earlier and which were always read at early Christian baptisms:

Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (I Peter 2.10)

And this is why traditionally we baptize during this Easter season in which we celebrate new life springing from the death of Good Friday; from the cold hard winter; from the empty tomb.

Baptism is also symbolic of the new life we dare to hope for, when, one day, we each pass through the uncertain waters of our own death.

Of course Stephen Hawkins, the physicist, caused a stir last week when he likened the human brain to a computer and added:

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

In today’s Gospel, Thomas wrestles with this. How can anyone know what comes after death? How can we know where you’re going Jesus? (John 14.5)

Now I admire Stephen Hawkins at lots of levels and enjoy his writings. But please, don’t patronise millions of us by saying the afterlife ‘is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.’

Say ‘I think it is a fairy story…’ by all means, but you don’t know Stephen, any more than Thomas the apostle did. You’re a scientist Stephen. You can’t prove it’s a fairy story any more than I can prove it’s true.

Whatever else we do or don’t believe in Christianity; however many doubts we have - and some of us are plagued by more of them than others –

This one, central, historical fact is more important than any other.

It is the crux of Christianity, and if it is true, it is the crux of human history – God raised Jesus from the dead, in a resurrection body.

The witness of Christian history is that it wasn’t just a ‘nice idea’ or a ‘fairy story’ that the disciples dreamed up because they were ‘afraid of the dark’.

If it was, then I think they would have abandoned it when they were faced with torture and death, as most of them were. Stephen, the first martyr that we read about in Acts earlier, might have decided not to have died horribly for a fairy story. It’s not proof, but it’s part of the evidence.

I’m with my brothers and sisters down through the centuries, who although they were often wracked with doubt, nevertheless chose to believe. If I didn’t believe – well I’d have better things to do with my time.

And as Jesus says to Thomas later in our Gospel, ‘happy are those who have not seen [what you have seen, Thomas] and yet believe” – that’s us!

But of course baptism is only a first step along the road to spiritual maturity.

Peter reminds us in this letter, that just as babies quite naturally crave for their mother’s milk, so we should continue to long for spiritual nourishment throughout our lives.

It’s nourishing our faith, not re-enforcing the fairy tale, which deepens our appreciation of life; and strengthens our hope that the love we enjoy within our family here today is something that endures beyond death.

We have all been given the gift of new life in our baptism. Do we pursue this spiritual life and feed it with these other sacraments of bread and wine? Or do we starve our spiritual life, until it simply withers away to religious sentimentality – a fairy tale?

Baptism is a reminder to all of us of our baptismal vows. It is a reminder that if we wish to live life fully, then we must live by the power of the risen Jesus and in loving, daily dependence upon him.

“Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.”

(1 Peter 2.2)

The Emmaus Road - Easter 3

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?” Luke 24.32

You know what it’s like. You’re invited out to supper and you gladly agree and put the date of the Friday night in your diary.

But when that Friday comes, you’re exhausted. It’s the end of a long week. You just want to get home, open a bottle of wine and settle down to watch Coronation Street and CSI and wake up half way through newsnight.

The last thing you feel like doing is dressing up and getting back on an overcrowded tube train again.

But, you can’t get to supper without making a journey.

So in today’s Gospel, it’s Easter Sunday afternoon. It’s been a traumatic three days for these two disciples of Christ, Cleopas, and perhaps his wife, Mary. (Cf John 19.25)

But they can’t get home for supper without making a journey.

They are despondent, confused, disappointed and exhausted as they set out on the two-hour walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, hoping to arrive home before nightfall at about 7.

A stranger joins them on the road – nothing too surprising there. There’s safety in numbers on a dangerous road.

But he must be the only person in Jerusalem who seems to know nothing of the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the rumours which flew about this morning that some women had found the tomb of Jesus empty with angels telling them he was alive. Clearly they were deluded and confused.

So Jesus gives them a Bible study for an hour or two. He explains to them what Scripture says about the Messiah – about himself.

But they still don’t get it.

At last they reach Emmaus and Jesus looks as if he’s travelling on beyond the village. Cleopas and Mary are unwilling to see this stranger go off into the dangerous night and press him to stay for supper and sleep on the couch.

And then there’s the famous revelation; the subject of a thousand paintings, of sculptures and stained glass windows and the Caravaggio on the front of today’s Service Sheet.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him, and he disappeared from their sight. (Luke 24.30f)

They met with Jesus in the breaking of bread. (Luke 24.35)

The breaking of the word, his explanation of the Scriptures, had not been enough. They had not understood it until his actions took them back to the scene in the upper room on Thursday a few days ago – his Last Supper. They had been talking with the other disciples about it all since his death on Friday.

For many people, doctrine and dogma and Bible verses are not enough. Indeed, they sometimes obscure the presence of Jesus. He is not recognised in them.

It is in the mystery of the Breaking of Bread that he is both recognised and disappears from our sight: the hiddenness of God; the Cloud of Unknowing; the believing and seeing and hoping; yet doubting and wondering where God is and why he seems so silent.

In our Anglo-Catholic tradition, we know that liturgy and music and symbols take us beyond words.

I am afraid to admit that I knew Pavlova as a tooth-pulling, meringue dessert long before I knew she was a ballerina. She died far too young some 20 years before I was born.

After one of Anna Pavlova’s great performances, one of her admirers, who had been moved to tears, asked her what the dance meant.

Pavlova replied simply, but profoundly: “If I could have said it, I wouldn’t have had to dance it.”

Today’s Gospel is about journeying, and those we meet along the way, and understanding what we have learned when we stop for supper.

CS Lewis has always been a great inspiration to me in the intellectual pursuit of God, faith seeking understanding in Anselm’s memorable phrase.

In the year that Anna Pavlova died, 1931, CS Lewis was on a journey with his brother Warnie, travelling pillion on his motorcycle to Whipsnade zoo.

In a now famous passage of his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis related his final step into real joy, for his intellectual conversion two years earlier had been a miserable affair and he described himself as “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

This is how he describes the journey that was to change his life:

I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.

That journey to Whipsnade Zoo was Lewis's Emmaus Road.

Writer Terry Lindvall, in a fascinating article Joy and Sehnsucht: The Laughter and Longings of C.S. Lewis, explains Lewis's conversion like this:

C.S. Lewis was drawn into the kingdom of God by joy - by a taste of this blessed fruit and divine gift. Joy was the divine carrot that persuaded such a self-proclaimed donkey as Lewis to plod down the road toward Jerusalem. It was the soft, disturbing kiss of God that unmade all of Lewis's world. Joy compelled Lewis toward the resurrection laughter of Easter…

Early Christians were called the people of The Way. Even the fact that you have travelled to church today is a symbol that our meeting and understanding of Christ is in travelling as well as arriving.

For Christ is not only the destination, but he is the Way, the journey and our travelling companion helping us to understand all that has happened to us along the winding path of our life.

And sometimes, when we come to this supper; this breaking of bread; this opening of our eyes; this mass; we look back on the ups and the downs of our life journey so far, and although we did not recognise the presence of Jesus with us at the time perhaps, we can now reflect with those early disciples:

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?” Luke 24.32