ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Sermon preached by the Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at High Mass on The Baptism of Christ, 13th January 2008

Readings: Isaiah 42. 1-9; Acts 10. 34-43; Matthew 3. 13-end

I suspect that one thing we would all agree about is that we want to feel safe. We desire security. When we go home today we don't want to find that we've been burgled. When we go to our bank we don't want to find that our money has disappeared. If we have a job we want to go into work without always thinking we'll get the sack.

But security has an upside and a downside. The upside is that when we feel secure we flourish. We look forwards. We aren't always looking over our shoulder. We're outward-looking instead of being defensive. But the downside is that we can become complacent. We take things for granted. There's a spirit of 'I'm alright Jack'.

Clergy can be guilty of the 'I'm alright Jack' attitude. If a priest has a freehold then he can stay in his parish until he's seventy. In the good old days he could stay 'til he died. Mervyn Stockwood (that well-known Bishop of Southwark) was once moaning about a priest who had stayed in his parish too long and hadn't done much work. He couldn't be moved and Bishop Mervyn was heard to growl 'Where there's death, there's hope!'

In the scriptures 'I'm alright Jack' is translated as 'We have Abraham for our father.'

John the Baptist is a multi-faceted character. He was a forerunner, preparing the way for the Messiah. In his death he was a martyr. But today, as the baptizer of Jesus we see him as something else: as a new Elijah, 'a troubler of Israel', a bit of a stirrer. It seems that there were those who thought that because they were Jews, because they had Abraham as their father they were inviolate. They saw their religion as a shield. By virtue of their forebears they were untouchable. But they were wrong.

John comes baptizing. Heuses a sign: baptism by water. It's a sprinkling, a washing, a means of sloughing off all that holds folk back - sin, corruption and complacency. These are all washed away in the Jordan River.

Water, like security is double-edged. We aren't secure on water. We'd never survive if there was no land. We're not amphibious. We can swim but we don't naturally inhabit the deep. If we are to stay afloat we need help - boats and ships.

So it's amazing that for thousands of years we've done just that. Human beings have moved across the oceans, created trading routes, started afresh. We've moved away from the security of dry land, setting off from the place of our birth and sought new worlds. But it's risky. We can be shipwrecked. We can drown.

But there's something deep in our humanity that says 'Launch out'; 'Set sail'. The first indication that any of us were about to be born was when our mothers' waters broke. There's something urging us forever outwards, forwards.

What is that? What is it?

It's the image of God in us. Our God is a God who takes the plunge. In Christ, God dives into the human condition. The Incarnation is God's movement towards his creation. God swirls towards us and presents himself as a man, a Jew, a man of his times.

Jesus identifies himself with his people. He doesn't stand aloof saying 'I'm no sinner. I need no baptism'. Far from it! He receives baptism at John's hands to signal his solidarity with the human lot - physically, historically, geographically and in religion. Jesus was a Jew who had a profound vocation to disclose what is at the root of the Ancient People's belief in God.

The Christian Church incorporated baptism into its belief and practice. It's one of the seven sacraments. Each time we enter church we dip our fingers into holy water and make the sign of the cross. We call to mind that we have entered not just the church building but the Church itself through baptism. We pass the font, the place of our baptism.

In baptism we are exposed to something elemental - water. Without water nothing lives. Yet water can also destroy us. This very ambiguity poses one of life's great questions. Is the universe of which we are a part our friend or our foe? Is the cosmos benign or malign? Is creation our home or the place of our exile?

When things go wrong in our lives; when everything is falling apart; when even our faith is challenged and we're overcome with doubt it's easy to think that the world is against us; that the world is remote from the good God. Albert Einstein said that the only the only question that human beings have to answer is this: 'Is the universe friendly or not?'

Five years ago I had a sabbatical. It was a time when I examined what I really believed. One day I sat on a beach and spent a long time looking out to sea. I prayed and contemplated Einstein's question. I was given a spiritual gift. I 'saw' something. I say 'saw' because it's the only way that I can talk about it. It was an inward 'seeing', something in my imagination but it had a powerful effect on me.

As I looked intently out to sea I fixed my gaze on the horizon. The line between sea and sky was very clear. It was a still and sunny day. The sea was like glass. As I prayed and looked intently, the ends of the horizon seemed to turn upwards. The cosmos smiled.

Saying it like that makes it sound silly. I'm not a follower of New Age gurus. But when I 'saw' this 'smile' I had a huge feeling of well-being and that's never left me. Creation celebrates our presence. At its core, the world created by God is a friendly place.

As I read the New Testament I see in Jesus someone who did not come to found a new religion in the sense of replacing an old orthodoxy with a new one. Jesus was a radical; someone who went to the roots of his religion. He was not just a Son of Abraham. He was the Son of the God of Abraham. He wasn't 'alright Jack'. He made himself vulnerable, laid himself bare - in a manger, in a river, on a cross.

The security that we have as Christians resides in this God. We proclaim that in the most basic yet profound of signs - touching our foreheads with water done once at our baptism and repeated many times since as we've entered church - we proclaim that our ultimate stability, the ground of our being is the God who gives himself to us and draws us into himself. In that lies our ultimate security.