Third Sunday of Advent

Lucy and Josh

Baby Theo

John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you withe the Holy Spirit and fire.

In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

I have two young daughters, Belle and Didi, and I remember well the days they were born, or nights they were born. I remember thinking, hmmm, giving birth looks hard. Very hard indeed. But what a joy when the child is born! Today, we’ve acted as midwives to another birth, braking the baptismal waters for Theo as he is born into the Church.

As Theo grows up he will, like the rest of us, face times in his life which are hard. Times when he doesn’t know if he has it in himself to face whatever challenge lies ahead. Times maybe a bit like Israel, when they stood in front of the Red Sea, with the Egyptian army behind them and a wall of water in front, and they didn’t know what to do. How would they come out the other side?

The pattern of God’s work in the scriptures is that God turns moments that feel like the end into moments of new birth. This is true throughout our lives as much as it is true at the end when we face the final waters of death which, through Jesus, turn out to be but the breaking of birth waters as we are born from the womb of this world.

How do we turn those moments in our lives which feel like the end, like they are too much for us, how do we turn them into moments of new birth? Perhaps it is by giving each other resources to draw from, building each other up so that we can be people who see that there really is goodness in the world. That there is something worth fighting for. That there is grace and it doesn’t matter if we fail.

When we annointed Theo with oil today, that is us, the church saying, we are going to try our best to give Theo those things which will help him turn those moments in his life when he stands before the chaos waters, to turn them into moments of new birth and life. Just as the baptism water cannot easily wash off the oil, just so, those blessings he is given, blessings of love, of kind words, of our time, of a story to cling on to, of beauty in the world, those blessings cannot easily be washed away by times of trial. They have the capacity to bring him out the other side as even more of the person he will grow up to be.

When Lucy and Josh, and Theo’s godparent’s trace that sign of the Cross over the oil, they in particular are affirming their unique relationship to Theo. They are making a covenant with Theo that they will shape their own lives in a way which offers Theo these gifts of grace to bring him through times of trial. To show him the light of God in the beauty, goodness, and love of the world and to show him examples of receiving grace in their own lives; showing him how to say sorry or showing him how to be generous with each others words by showing him how these things are really done, even when it’s difficult.

And we pray that, just as the oil has brought Theo through those waters into a community at the start of his life, we pray that, at the end of his and all of our lives, we will be brought through the waters of death by those blessings, to enter into the community of the saints in light.

Let us all remember then, this Christmas, the blessings we have been given. Let us remember our godly task here on earth of being a blessing to others, to Theo, to this community here in Worplesdon, and to others in our lives, to build them up. To be midwives to them so they might perservere through trial and not feel threatened by the unknown but be like a baby in the womb dreaming of the wonderful strangeness of what might be. In GK Chesterton’s poem, “By the Babe Unborn,” the baby in the womb dreams of the unknown world outside:

If trees were tall and grasses short, As in some crazy tale, If here and there a sea were blue Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air To warm me one day through, If deep green hair grew on great hills, I know what I should do.

In dark I lie: dreaming that there Are great eyes cold or kind, And twisted streets and silent doors, And living men behind.

Let storm-clouds come: nev’r better an hour, And leave to weep and fight, Than all the ages I have ruled The empires of the night.

I think that if they gave me leave Within that world to stand, I would be good through all the day I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me Of selfishness or scorn, If only I could find the door, If only I were born.

Today, in the Church’s calendar, we remember John the baptist and we think of Jesus sharing in our own baptism, sharing in our trials, and we look to Jesus as the one who gives us the ultimate blessing which will bring us into eternal life, into the world outside. The blessing that God loves us unto the end.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.